The Legacy of Africatown
By the 1970’s, the pollution from the factories was enough to make plenty of people want to leave Africatown for good. It was no longer safe to breathe the air. Cars would rust after being only a couple years old, and roofs of houses were disintegrating. Something was seriously toxic.
In the 1980’s, a huge portion of Africatown was torn down to construct a highway. While they were digging, they uncovered a huge field of bones. Residents say that it was a graveyard of unmarked graves of the slaves who died on the Clotilda. The government said they were just “dog bones”. They kept moving forward, paving the land. Many residents believe that they actually paved over top of the cemetery of forgotten souls, but it’s too late to prove anything.
In the later 80’s to late 90’s, the nearby factories released over 600,000 pounds of chloroform into the air. That’s right- chloroform. That same chemical you see in every movie that makes people pass out when they breath it in. And it just so happens to cause cancer, too.
The town started having 2 to 3 funerals of residents dying from cancer every week, and people were only living to be in their 40’s or 50’s. Multiple people in every single family were dying from cancer. By the year 2000, International Paper Company and Scott Paper Company closed their factories in that area, but b then, the damage was already done. At its peak, Africatown had 15,000 residents. Now, there are only 2,000. Hundreds of people came together to file a class action lawsuit against the companies, but they were told that there was not enough evidence proving that the chemicals directly caused the cancer. Despite this setback, the residents are continuing to push for grants that would help them clean up the pollution that is still left behind from the factories.
According to Nick Tabor from The New Yorker, Africatown is now filled with abandoned buildings, dusty roads, and mistrust of outsiders. White people took everything they had, and kept making things worse. But there are residents who are determined to make the town as great as it once was in its heyday, and encourage more people to move back there, now that the air is cleaner. The citizens still honor the memories of the lives of the people from the Clotilda every single year, and they have plans to open a new museum sometime in the future.
Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
Barracoon: The Story of The Last Black Cargo. Zora Neale Hurston. Harper Collins. 2018.
Africa Town A Story Worth Knowing, A Community Worth Renewing. YouTube.
Africatown and the 21st Century Stain of Slavery. Nick Tabor. New York Magazine.
Africatown. Joshua Foer. Atlas Obscura.