Racism Reinvented into Environmental Pollution in Africatown

Since the year 1808, it was illegal for Americans to travel to Africa with the intent to purchase African captives to enslave them in the U.S. The International Transatlantic Slave System was banned in the United States in 1808, but it did not stop individuals from funding their own slave voyage to Africa to purchase enslaved Africans, to either retain them on their plantation or to sell them. In the year 1860, a plantation owner named Timothy Mayer funded a slave voyage to the port of Oida, where he purchased 110 African captives and embarked them onto a slave vessel called the Clotilda. Timothy Mayer was responsible for the displacement and enslavement of the surviving 108 Africans that traveled to Alabama aboard the Clotilda. When slavery was abolished five years after the Clotilda disembarked, 32 of the formerly enslaved Africans had purchased land from Mayer with the intent to form their own community, to which they called Africatown. Africatown was once a booming city that housed over 10,000 people, but only 1,800 people remain there today. Africatown has been subject to environmental corruption through air, water, and soil pollution since the early 1900s because of the growth of factories surrounding the town. The descendants of the enslaved Africans aboard the Clotilda are still feeling the impact of their ancestors' enslavement through environmental racism in Africatown. Systemic racism, dating back to the transatlantic slave system, has been reinvented into environmental racism today in Africatown. Hello, my name is Kylie Rushing. For this episode of my podcast, I will be talking about the last known slave voyage to the United States, the formation of Africatown in Alabama, and the environmental pollution that Africatown residents have experienced and are currently experiencing. Okay, to start us off, I want to talk about the background of the last known slave voyage to the United States, which was aboard the Clotilda slave vessel. So in the year 1860, a plantation owner named Timothy Mayer made a bet with a friend that he could fund a successful slave voyage to Benin, despite the abolition of the transatlantic slave system in the United States. Timothy Mayer was a wealthy plantation owner who had only participated in the slave system across the Middle Passage through the Clotilda voyage, so he had never before the Clotilda voyage participated or funded a slave vessel to travel to Africa to purchase slaves to bring back to the U.S. The Clotilda voyage in 1860 was his very first one. Mayer had hired a captain named William Foster to lead the Clotilda slave vessel across the Atlantic Ocean. William Foster was an active participant in the slaving system, as he captained three other slave voyages to Africa from the year 1761 to 1860. The Clotilda voyage was his last and only illegal slave voyage. Foster led a 145-day journey from Alabama to Benin, where 110 captured Africans were purchased and brought aboard the Clotilda. Two African captives had sadly perished during the Middle Passage before they reached Mobile Bay, Alabama. Upon arriving in Mobile Bay, Alabama, Foster had set fire to the Clotilda out of fear that the federal government had discovered that they were actively participating in the abolished system. The 108 surviving African captives from the voyage were either enslaved onto Timothy Mayer's plantation or sold to other local plantation owners. Slavery was abolished in the United States five years after the Clotilda voyage, resulting in the enslaved Africans, owned by Timothy Mayer, to be freed. Thirty-two of the newly freed enslaved Africans who were aboard the Clotilda had collectively purchased a piece of land from Timothy Mayer. They had a goal of creating their own community that would resemble different African cultures, languages, and religions, because they had no way of returning to the homes they had before their enslavement. When the Clotilda disembarked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, the lives of the enslaved Africans changed drastically, and their descendants still feel the voyage's effects today. Africatown was founded in 1866, which was only one year after the abolition of slavery in the United States. Thirty-two of the freed enslaved Africans aboard the Clotilda had strived to create a community that would resemble their home countries, in which they were taken from. Africatown founders created a self-governing community that closely resembled the laws of the communities that were present in Benin. They appointed a chief named Gumpa and two young male judges who would oversee their legal system. Gumpa was a noble man from Dahomey. At the height of its population, Africatown housed around 10,000 people, but only 1,800 people remain there today. Africatown was previously described as being a bustling city where African Americans lived amongst one another while freely practicing their African cultures and sharing their history. Africatown is presently a small town that is made up of many of Clotilda's descendants, but they are currently fighting with the local Alabama government because of the environmental pollution that is poisoning their small town. The last known survivor of the Clotilda voyage was a woman named Matilda McCreer, who lived to the age of 83 at her passing in 1940. Matilda McCreer was captured at two years old by the Dahomey people, along with her ten-year-old sister and her mother. Although she did not remember her journey across the Middle Passage, she is grown up hearing the story from her mother. Her mother, named Gracie, had four other children besides Matilda and Sally, whom they were separated from in Benin or in America after they had departed. Matilda's story began to be recognized in 1931 when she had walked 15 miles to a courthouse in Selma, Alabama to plead her case for reparations. Matilda was 72 years old at the time of this court case, where she told the story of her life which began in West Africa. At the time, many people still did not believe that the Clotilda voyage had ever happened because transatlantic slave trading was illegal in the U.S. at the time, and their very existence was disregarded by President James Buchanan, who assured the country that the last slave ship had landed in 1858. W.E.B. DuBois did not include their voyage in his celebrated book, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade. Warren S. Howard and Hugh Thomas dismissed it as a hoax in their extensive studies of the transatlantic slave trade. The Africans who were captured from Dahomey and brought to the U.S. did not openly broadcast that they were part of the slave voyage that took place 50 years after the trade was abolished because they feared what would happen to them. After slavery was abolished, racism and discrimination continued, and lynchings were very common in the South, so people did not want to bring attention to their stories in order to protect themselves and their families. Timothy Mayer, the plantation owner and the man who funded the Quotilda voyage, and his family were incredibly wealthy and held a lot of power within the community in Alabama. If they captured Africans or their children accused Mayer of launching an illegal slave voyage, they could have faced horrible consequences. There is currently a state park in Alabama that is named after the Mayer family, as well as a street named Timothy and Mayer that runs through Africatown. Matilda had proved to the court that she descended from West Africa by explaining the unique scar on her face. Matilda bore a scar in the shape of a crow's foot that spread from her left nostril down towards her lip and further spread to both her middle and upper cheek. This mark was given to her in the community she was born in and was done in a ritualistic way. The scar was evidence of her birth in West Africa and it further proved that she was the last living member from the Quotilda voyage. All right, so now we're moving on to Africatown and the environmental pollution that has been going on since the early 1900s and is still continuing today. So, in the 1970s, the town of Mobile had incorporated Africatown into its city limits, and this resulted in the city rezoning Africatown land for businesses. This led to paper mills, petrochemical, asphalt, coal terminals, highways, and railroads to be built throughout the city. A paper plant named International Paper was built in Africatown in 1928 and was owned by Timothy Mayer's descendant, A. Mayer, Jr. The International Paper Plant had led to an increase in air and water pollution throughout the city. The paper plant had produced small paper particles that would fill the air, with many residents saying it looked like snow to them. The International Paper Plant is no longer running today, but the paper plant had lasting effects on the people up until the 1990s, when the EPA had begun regulating air pollutants that were caused by paper mills. The International Paper Plant was supposed to follow federal cleanup regulations in order to minimize the spread of pollutants into the soil of Africatown after they had closed in 2000. Instead of following the EPA federal regulations, they shut the mill down and bulldozed the site without cleaning up any of their chemicals. So after Africatown was incorporated into the city of Mobile, a major highway was built through what used to be the main downtown area of Africatown and split the town into two parts. This downtown street held multiple local businesses and was surrounded by neighborhoods, but it is all but disappeared because of the highway. The highway that splits the town into two halves creates congestion from traffic and has created a divide through the town, which resulted in many people relocating. The building of various factories surrounding Africatown has also led to many people to relocate because the factories have had an effect on their health and on their water supply. Following the changing of city limits in the 1970s, Africatown residents lost most of their access to the water and much of their land to the industries and the number of neighborhoods dropped by half. In 1999, an asphalt distribution facility was built on the south end of Africatown and was located directly next door to residential homes. The H.O. Weaver and Sons plant was being built without the city officials' knowledge, as the company did not acquire any building permits. The asphalt company was 75% built before it was given orders to stop building until they acquired the correct permits, but they had ignored the orders and continued to build and instead opted to pay off the fines they would receive. In a newspaper article in the Metro Region Mobile Alabama Register, the owner of the asphalt plant stated that he was unaware that he needed permits to build in Africatown. There are currently four different asphalt plants in Mobile, Alabama, one being the H.O. Weaver and Sons plant. Residents surrounding the plant have continued to complain about the plant and its effects it's had on their community and on their environment. In 2022, the Mobile City Councilor William Carroll had led a noise ordinance against H.O.W. because they were violating the residents by working overnight construction projects. As of 2021, there are 17 industrial businesses that surround Africatown, three of them being the top five polluting facilities in the country. The environmental effects of the various factories built around Africatown have had a profound effect on the health of its residents. A pastor named Christopher L. Williams Sr. had conducted a questionnaire for the people in his church after noticing a rise in the funerals he was leading. In 2006, he stated that his church did around 20 funerals in one year, of which the majority cause of death was cancer. His questionnaire was sent to about 150 of his church members and 100 of them replied that themselves or a family member had cancer. Although there are no current studies of the health issues of the residents of Africatown, the residents have noticed a consistent trend with themselves, their families, and their ancestors. Williams and other residents all describe a similar trend, many long-time residents dying before the age of 65, very often from cancer. The factories, like the paper plant, have all had a direct impact on the health of Africatown residents. The International Paper Factory had allowed small particles to fill the air of Africatown, so much so that the residents could see the pieces floating in the air during the day. The chemicals used to make the paper were entwined with the small pieces of paper, which were inhaled by the Africatown residents, as well as being absorbed into the soil of their gardens. An Africatown resident describes playing with the paper debris from the paper plant because to them it had resembled snow as a child. She described the floating particles, as well as mounds of paper that were found at their local playground. When she was in her early 30s, she was diagnosed with cancer and had gone through treatments, which were successful. At the time of her diagnosis, her father was also diagnosed with gallbladder cancer. His treatments were also successful. The paper particles that floated in the air would eventually drop to the ground, which would then be absorbed into any exposed soil. Many families in Africatown had small vegetable gardens that would provide them with food to eat, which would result in them congesting and absorbing the chemicals from the paper plant. In the early 2000s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had imposed new laws on the regulation of factories to prevent excessive pollution. Although the International Paper Plant was shut down in 2000, their inability to properly clean up and dispose of the harmful chemicals has created further issues for the Africatown communities. Two of the chemicals that the International Paper Plant has released were dioxins and furans, which are chemicals that are directly linked to cancer. In 2021, a study was done in order to observe the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in air pollution exposure, and the U.S. scientists discovered that Black Americans are exposed to more pollution from every type of source. This study had looked at the air pollution levels across different states because they wanted to find which ethnic groups were exposed to the worst pollution conditions in the U.S. after discovering that pollution is the largest environmental cause for death. This research directly connects with the health issues that the people in Africatown have been experiencing since the formation of the first factories in the early 20th century. Okay, so the transatlantic slave system that began in the 16th century has led to the wide spread dehumanization of African people. Europeans and Americans had needed a reason to justify the enslavement of human beings, so they began to form new ideas on the inferiority of African people as a whole. The idea of ethnic race was birthed out of the transatlantic slave system itself, which has led to anti-Black rhetoric. The anti-Black racism that formed has continued into our present-day society and can be seen through environmental pollution. There is a clear connection between environmental pollution and the communities who are experiencing the largest amounts of it. So right now I'm going to quote from a book called Shades of Darkness by Carolyn Merchant. In this book, she discusses the environmental pollution and the environmentalists that are studying the different communities of people who are experiencing the largest amounts of environmental pollution. So a direct quote from her book, African Americans bore the brunt of early forms of environmental pollution and disease as whites fled urban areas to the new streetcar suburbs. Black neighborhoods became toxic dumps and Black bodies became toxic sites. Out of such experiences rose African American environmental activism in the Progressive Era and the environmental justice movement of the late 20th century. She also states that slavery and soil degradation are interlinked systems of exploitation and deep-seated connections exist between the enslavement of human bodies and the enslavement of the land. Blacks resisted that enslavement in complex ways that maintained African culture and created unique African American ways of living on the land. She also compared stories of American Indians as well who were having land taken away from them and given by the American government to white Americans even though after slavery was abolished when freed formerly enslaved Africans were freed they were given nothing and at the same time white people were given land for free that had belonged to American Indians. Racism has been reinvented into environmental pollution in Africatown. The 32 Africans who had formed Africatown had hoped to create a community where Africans and African Americans could thrive together. Today their descendants are faced with the environmental pollution of 17 factories surrounding their small town. The last survivor aboard the Clotilda shared her story in 1931 in hopes of receiving reparations from the government. She was captured and enslaved at three years old and was freed when she was eight years old. Her former enslavement had an effect on the opportunities she would have in Alabama in the late 1800s until the early 1900s. Racism that had formed because of the transatlantic slave trade has had a direct impact on the descendants of the Clotilda voyage. The Mayer family owned the international paper plant that spewed paper pollution into the air, soil, and water supply of the Africatown residents. They had made money from the paper plant from 1928 to the year 2000 all while directly polluting the descendants of the slave voyage funded by their ancestor Timothy Mayer. All right so that concludes my podcast episode on the environmental racism that is happening in Africatown, Alabama. Thank you for listening.