‘This is not Disneyland’: Tourism opportunities abound for Africatown
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Early last year when a group of Rhodes Scholars planned a trip to Montgomery to learn about history from Michelle Browder, she called on some reenactors to help.
About four reenactors showed up holding Confederate flags and shouting racial slurs at the white tourists. The idea was to “shock” the group with an experience civil rights activists may have felt in the 1960s.
“When people got off the bus, they did not know it was a reenactment,” said Browder. “They were weeping. I had people (later) come up and say, ‘That is what we needed.’”
Alabama’s Africatown can tell stories of slavery in ways few others can, officials say
Updated May 05, 2021;
Africatown efforts to tell the story of America’s last slave ship could eventually draw more tourists than Montgomery has been attracting since the Equal Justice Initiative opened a lynching memorial and museum three years ago, the head of the state’s tourism department said Tuesday.
Lee Sentell, director of the Alabama Department of Tourism, said he believes travelers who “love history” are “anxious” to visit the Mobile area and meet the descendants of the slave ship Clotilda and “absorb their remarkable stories.”
Africatown museum construction begins. Will tell story of Clotilda slave ship and community al.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from al.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
‘Heritage House’ approved: Africatown museum to tell story of slave ship and community
Updated Jan 11, 2021;
Posted Jan 11, 2021
The Africatown Welcome Center is pictured on Friday, Oct. 19, 2012, in Mobile, Ala. At the time, the welcome center was housed in a mobile home across from the Old Plateau Cemetery. The new center will be located in the same spot, but it will be much larger (approximately 18,000 square feet) and serve as a tourist attraction. That project is being funded by RESTORE Act money. (Mike Kittrell/mkittrell@al.com)
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Africatown’s story as a community founded by the survivors of the last slave ship to enter the United States will have a new showcase inside a “heritage house” that will be constructed within the heart of the north Mobile community.