The Story of the Clotilda 110

Clotilda Descendants Association

We will never let the world forget! 

Sometimes good stories don’t take long to write.

Others require much longer research, especially when there’s simply more to talk about and even more puzzling details to unravel.

The account of slave ship Clotilda is one of those mysterious chronicles that can’t be written in a hurry. As a matter of fact, it’s taken 159 years to be told and is still not finished.

It started with simple people living simple lives in their ‘own’ African country, before being captured by a rival tribe, sold to a wealthy slave owner from America and forced to live in squalor on a two-month voyage across an unforgiving Atlantic Ocean.

And despite a then 50 year-old federal law against importing Africans for the purpose of working in the South’s cotton fields, Clotilda and its cargo of 110 ‘human beings’ (although some accounts say a female jumped overboard to her death at sea) still dropped anchor at Mobile Bay on July 9, 1860 … capping a gut-wrenching 60-day voyage for those terrified captives. 

Even more reprehensible is that the entire saga was merely to settle a bet by ship owner Timothy Meaher that federal authorities could indeed be outsmarted.

Fast forward to 124 years later, March of 1984 to be exact, when nine descendants of those original “110” … Eva Jones, Dell Keeby, Herman Richardson, LaDresta Green Sims, Paul Green, Melvin Wright, Lillian Autrey, Linda C. Williams Jones and Helen Richardson Jones … filed paperwork with the State of Alabama to register as ‘The Africatown Direct Descendants of the Clotilda, Inc.’ 

That group’s elected leaders were President Beatrice Ellis and Vice-president Theodore Arthur, a noted saxophonist, who along with several other officers of that original association still actively tell the Clotilda story today … including Herbert Pair, gifted historians Lorna Woods and Vernetta Henson, and Doris Lee-Allen. 

The group’s mission was very clearly spelled out in that document still on file in Montgomery: “Preserve and perpetuate the culture and heritage of the last Africans brought to America … enlighten society about their descendants and African history.”

Translation: Never let the world forget!

And now that the scuttled hulk of Clotilda has been found in murky, alligator infested waters around ‘12 Mile Island’ near Mobile, the story of that last ship to ferry enslaved Africans to America is being told in detail through new books, magazine articles, websites, podcasts and soon several documentaries and movies.

Even more “110” descendants have also now come forward to carry on that original group’s mission, this time simply operating as ‘The Clotilda Descendants Association’ (CDA).

Our goal is to bring all things Clotilda to light … things infamously, and literally, done in the dark when that illegal ship set sail from Benin on the west coast of Africa with our terrified relatives crammed into overcrowded, filthy cargo holds.

WE will forever tell their stories, uphold their legacy, build the ‘Africatown Museum and Performing Arts Center’ to honor them and others who helped shape the community… and press for accountability of the crime that was Clotilda.

We ARE 110!