Published On: 02.22.22 | 

By: 14236

Alabama Power volunteers working to preserve history, heritage of Africatown community

AfricatownCemeteryCleanupFeature

Cleon Jones, an Africatown resident and famed, retired New York Mets outfielder, helps guide the volunteers during the cemetery cleanup. (Alabama NewsCenter)

With nationwide awareness growing about the historic south Alabama community of Africatown, along with the expanding efforts to preserve it, Alabama Power volunteers in Mobile this month joined Africatown residents and other partners in a day of service to spruce up a cemetery that has been part of Africatown’s heritage for nearly 150 years.

Members of the Mobile Division Chapter of the Alabama Power Service Organization (APSO) joined with volunteers from Kemira’s manufacturing facility in Mobile, and Africatown residents, to help clean the Old Plateau Cemetery. Volunteers pruned overgrown trees, mowed the grass and carefully pressure-washed signage and grave markers at the sacred site.

“Our volunteer team has a strong relationship with the Africatown community,” said Mobile Division APSO president Tripp Ward. “As we celebrate Black History Month, it is the perfect time to give back to the historic Africatown community that is such an important part of our area’s heritage and culture.”

Sometimes called the Africatown Graveyard, Old Plateau Cemetery is the final resting place of enslaved Africans, African Americans and a Buffalo soldier. Cudjo Lewis, also spelled Cudjoe, one of the longest-living survivors of the Clotilda – the last documented slave ship to arrive in the American South – is buried in the cemetery, along with 109 other slaves who arrived in Mobile on the ship in about 1860.

The burial ground dates to 1876 – 16 years after the Clotilda smuggled its illegal human cargo into south Alabama. The ship was then burned, scuttled and lost to historians until it was discovered in mud in the Mobile River in 2019.

The northern area of Old Plateau Cemetery is its oldest section, where the remains of Clotilda survivors have been found through archaeological research. Burials in that portion of the cemetery ended in 1990. The newer portion of the cemetery, on the south end, is still in use. A database of graves in the cemetery can be found here.

“It has been some time since this kind of work has been done at our cemetery,” said Cleon Jones, an Africatown resident and famed, retired New York Mets outfielder. Jones helped guide the volunteers during the cleanup and shared some of the cemetery’s history.

“The volunteers showed up with chain saws, pole saws and other yard tools,” Jones said. “They were ready to make a difference, and I can’t believe how much they accomplished in just one day.”

In 2020, Jones started the Cleon Jones Last Out Community Foundation. The not-for-profit organization raises funds to help refurnish homes, combat blight and provide youth programs for the Africatown community. The Alabama Power Foundation has supported efforts to revitalize and preserve the history of Africatown, including a project to create a new museum dedicated to the community and the story of the Clotilda. The Africatown Heritage House is slated to open later this year.

Learn more about the Alabama Power Foundation and the Alabama Power Service Organization by visiting www.powerofgood.com.