New museum in Alabama tells history of last known slave ship to US and its survivors

MOBILE, Ala. (AP) — A new museum Alabama tells the history of the Clotilda — the last ship known to transport Africans to the American South for enslavement. The $1.3 million Africatown Heritage House and “Clotilda: The Exhibition” opened Saturday, exactly 163 years after the ship arrived in Mobile Bay. The exhibit tells about the ship, its survivors and how they founded Africatown community in Mobile after they were freed from five years of slavery following the Civil War. In 1860, the Clotilda illegally transported 110 people from what is now Benin in west Africa. Afterward, the captain set fire to the vessel. Remnants of the Clotilda were discovered in 2019.