By mid-1800s importing slaves into the US had been illegal, although some defied the law.The Clotilda made its journey after Timothy Meaher, a local plantation owner, made a bet that he could sneak slaves past federal officials and into the country.He bought the two-masted schooner and paid a captain, William Foster, to sail it to West Africa and collect 110 slaves from what is now Benin.The captain then navigated the Clotilda up the Spanish River, transferred the slaves to a riverboat and burned the ship and it sunk.Many of the ship's slaves settled a community north of downtown Mobile that became known as Africatown, after the civil war and some direct descendants still live in the area today.
It is very important if this is the ship because this a huge part of the people in Africatown's history and it should be memorialized because it's a representation for blacks to see.
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