Alabama steamship owner Timothy Meaher financed the last slave vessel that brought African captives to the United States, and he came out of the Civil War a wealthy man.
The people whom Meaher enslaved, however, emerged from the war with freedom but little else. Census forms that documented Meaher's postwar riches list them as laborers, housewives and farmers with nothing of value. Many of their descendants today hold working-class jobs.
Reparations debates usually involve redress for the multitude of descendants from about 4 million black people who were enslaved in the United States. But with Congress considering whether to create a reparations study commission, what might a single instance of reparations look like in the city where this nation's Atlantic slave trade finally ended?
Historical accounts say Meaher refused to provide land after the war to the freed Africans, who then scraped together money to purchase property. They founded a community called"Africatown USA," where some of the west-African ways of the once-enslaved people were preserved. Its remnants still exist. The Mobile area features Meaher State Park and Meaher Avenue near Africatown, and the Meaher family has signs throughout the area offering land for lease. A red concrete marker bearing the family's name stands in the Tensaw Delta near the spot where the Clotilda's remains were found last year.Joycelyn Davis, who helped organize the Clotilda Descendants Association, said conversation would be a good start.
The Meahers aren't saying what if anything they want to do, and have made no public comment about the Clotilda discovery.
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