One July night in 1860, on a remote river bend just north of Mobile, Alabama, the last-known American slave ship went up in flames.
At the behest of a wealthy Mobile businessman and slaveholder named Timothy Meaher, who had wagered a bet that he could smuggle enslaved people into the U.S. undetected, Captain William Foster had just sailed the 86-foot wooden vessel Clotilda from the port of Ouidah, in present-day Benin, back to the United States. Aboard were 110 captive Africans—even though the international slave trade had already been outlawed in the U.S. for more than 50 years.
Once the enslaved people were hastily unloaded under the cover of darkness, Foster set fire to the ship, sinking Clotilda in an attempt to destroy all that remained of the horrific crime that the captain and the businessman had just committed.
This week, I was in Mobile, Alabama to speak with scientists who have recovered artifacts from inside Clotilda's sunken hull, including charred timbers, that directly point to the fiery coverup of the crime more than 160 years after it was committed.
Click the link in my bio to read my latest story for @natgeo.
Photo 1: @deppphoto
Photo 2: @elias.williams
Photo 3: Alabama Historical Commission
#clotilda#america#natgeo#history#race#shipwreck#archaeology#truecrime#storytelling#nature#river#alabama#africatown#mobile#sunset
This is Cleon Jones. Early one Sunday morning, I found him mowing the lawn in front of a welcome sign for Africatown, a historically Black neighborhood founded in 1872 by formerly enslaved people and their descendants near Mobile, Alabama. Mr. Jones is known as the “informal mayor” of the area, a fixer-upper who has dedicated his retirement to the place where he was born. We had a long and thoughtful conversation—mostly about Africatown, which had long since been divided by a highway and polluted by industry almost on all sides, fracturing and dispersing the community. Only when I was about to say goodbye did he add: “I used to live in New York for 14 years.” He worked for the NY Mets. As a left-fielder. And it turns out that in 1969, he caught the final out that won the @mets the World Series. These are the chance encounters behind-the-scenes that make reporting trips so special. Follow me for more @natgeo history/culture stories from across America and beyond.
#natgeo#nymets#cleonjones#africatown#amazingpeople#alabama#africatown#mobile#blackhistory#mlb#baseball#outfielder#worldseries#letsgomets#ballgame#stories#history#miraclemets#1969
"Wade in the water, children/God is gonna trouble these waters"
From the African American spiritual 'Wade in the Water', said to have been sung by Harriet Tubman on the Underground Railroad, the network which helped so many escape slavery.
The words were to take on new significance during the civil rights struggle of the 20th century, during a series of protests on the segregated Southern beaches of the Jim Crow era.
Follow our bio link for the story of how a group of students risked their lives to bring about change; the right to leisure, to health - to be uninhibited and free on the shared space of the shore.
The linked essay by Dustin Meier is the latest from the ongoing collaboration between @originsosu and @gettyimages, Picturing Black History: uncovering untold stories and rarely seen images of the Black experience.
A man and his friend walk away from the water jeered and cursed by white people on the beach prior to being arrested by local police at Savannah Beach.
📷: STF/AFP via Getty Images I July 14th 1963 I #GettyImages#PreservingThePast#GettyArchive
#picturingblackhistory#UShistory#blackhistory#panafrican#wadeinthewater#harriettubman#hbcu#alabama#americanhistory#africanamericanhistory
#blacklivesmatter#humanrights#historyphoto#historyphotographed#nostalgia#archivephoto#photoarchive#vintagephoto#photolibrary