Alabama Power Foundation grant helps capture stories about the enslaved people of the Clotilda and their descendants
Since she was a small girl, Pat Frazier has treasured the stories about her great-great-grandmother, one of the 110 West Africans who were illegally smuggled into Mobile Bay in 1860 aboard the slave ship Clotilda.
“Most people see their experience as a horror story,” said Frazier. “But I see it as a story about people who overcame the worst possible odds and found a way to thrive.”
One of those who indeed thrived was Lottie Dennison, Frazier’s great-great-grandmother. Lottie and James Dennison had been married in Washington County at the urging of their slaveowner but feared that the marriage would not be recognized. When slavery was abolished in 1865, they were remarried in Mobile and built a life near Africatown, the community established by Clotilda survivors.
Frazier remembers the family stories about Lottie.
“They said Lottie could work like a man and was as strong as a man, and she could balance a bushel of potatoes or other items on her head,” Frazier said.
Perhaps the most memorable story, Frazier said, is the one about Lottie and the local constable.
“According to family lore, Lottie was not happy when the constable came to her house, and so she picked him up and threw him back over the fence,” said Frazier, noting that would have been a real challenge because her great-great-grandmother weighed only about 130 pounds and was 5 feet, 3 inches tall.
It’s those kinds of stories that Frazier and the other members of the Clotilda Descendants Association (CDA) are working to share and preserve through its new oral history and video project.
The Alabama Power Foundation recently provided a grant to the CDA to help support the project, which is designed to give “voice and visibility” to the 110 survivors and their descendants.
“We are grateful for the support and the partnership with the Alabama Power Foundation and look forward to building on it,” said Greg Morrison, CDA board member. “When we tell our own stories, we are better as a community because we know our true legacy.”
As a former reporter at WALA-10 in Mobile, Morrison is using his skills to help head the project, which involves recruiting and training youths in Africatown to help pass along those stories. They will help create an oral history of the community by conducting video interviews with their older family members about their experiences and those of their Clotilda ancestors.
“Many of these young kids are sixth- and seventh-generation descendants, and they don’t know the story of the Clotilda,” said Frazier, co-chairperson of the oral history project. “In the past, there was almost a stigma about having African roots. The whole idea is to let the young kids learn the stories by engaging them in helping to tell the stories.”
The funding from the foundation is being used to purchase video equipment, train the teens to operate it and ask the right questions as they interview their family members, Morrison said. An academic adviser will also be hired to launch the project and evaluate its progress.
The videos will be shown at the Spirit of our Ancestors Festival, an annual celebration in Africatown to honor the 110 Clotilda survivors and forefathers of the community, and later posted on a CDA website that will be designed to showcase this oral history.
The History Museum of Mobile will archive the videos at the new Africatown Heritage House, expected to open in 2023. Finally, each family will receive a digitized copy of the video featuring the stories about their own ancestors.
“The videos will help this history come to life,” Morrison said. “If there is a face and a voice on video, people watching it will be able to see the descendants’ expressions and passion as they talk about what life was like growing up in Africatown.”
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The video project is already underway. Morrison has interviewed several descendants of Matilda McCrear, a previously unknown Clotilda survivor.
It was only in the past few years that research has uncovered that McCrear and Sally Smith were among the “110.” When they arrived in Mobile, McCrear and Smith were sold “up the river” and, after emancipation, lived in Dallas County. Both women lived longer than Cudjoe Lewis, who was once thought to be the last living survivor.
“Very few people realize that in 1920, Matilda walked 17 miles to the courthouse to demand that her sons who served in World War I be given their veterans’ rights, and while she was in front of the judge, she asked for reparation as a former slave. She was denied on both counts, but she had the fortitude to do it,” Morrison said. “Those are the kinds of rich stories that we cannot let get away.”
Frazier said the ultimate goal is to honor those intrepid survivors and ensure that their stories are shared with future generations.
“The Clotilda story was one of resilience, determination and a love of family,” she said. “Those people came from different parts of West Africa, but they bonded and became each other’s family. Just knowing that gives me a pride that many African Americans don’t have because, at most, they may be able to trace their ancestors back to a plantation established in the 1700s or 1800s.”
Morrison said although the West Africans came from humble beginnings, their impact is still felt today.
“They came to Mobile in chains, and now their descendants are corporate executives, scientists, musicians, nurses and engineers,” he said. “They have become important parts of society and the community.”
Learn more about the Alabama Power Foundation at powerofgood.com.
This story originally appeared in Powergrams, the magazine for Alabama Power employees.