AFRICATOWN Non-Profits receive $200k to help promote Cultural Heritage Tourism
Thanks to the fund raising efforts of The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Mastercard and The Descendant Documentary, four Africatown non-profit organizations had $50,000 donated to each of them ($200k total) to help community efforts to make Africatown an International Cultural Heritage Tourist Destination. Those four organizations are: The Africatown Heritage Preservation Foundation (The Foundation), The Mobile Environmental Justice Action Coalition (MEJAC), The Clotilda Descendants Association (CDA) and Clean, Healthy, Educated, Safe & Sustainable Community (C.H.E.S.S.). The Foundation, MEJAC & CHESS have agreed to pool their funding and produce a professional signage program that will point out the twenty three tourist sites that have been identified within the Africatown Community. The Clotilda Descendants Association will use their funds to help promote their annual Landing Event and Ancestor Festival or L.E.A.F. event. The L.E.A.F. event occurs every year around July 8th and is centered around the date The Clotilda Slave Ship landed in Mobile, Al. That annual Africatown Event has captured International attention and draws tourists to both Africatown and Downtown Mobile.
When Margret Brown, the producer of the Descendant documentary, came to Africatown to produce the film, she talked to members from every Africatown non-profit to see who wanted to participate in her film project. The four organizations mentioned above: The Foundation, MEJAC, The CDA & C.H.E.S.S., responded positively and agreed to participate in the filming of the now award winning documentary. NetFlix purchased the T.V. rights to the documentary and began using members of those four organizations to promote the documentary throughout the world. We traveled to England, France, Amsterdam, Canada and most of the large cities here in The United States. One of the cities we were asked to come to was Birmingham, Al. to show the documentary at their Annual “Sidewalk Festival”. Members of The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (B.C.R.I.) were in attendance at the showing and decided to use their influence to assist us raise funds for things we are doing for The Africatown Community. One of the B.C.R.I. fund raising partners is Mastercard. Mastercard and B.C.R.I. decided to promote the documentary in New York City and show it at “The Apollo Theater” in Harlem N.Y. That promotional Venture was very successful and resulted in the $200k donation we recently received.
One of the areas we expect to spotlight with our signage project is the “Happy Hills Project Area”. If the Plateau Neighborhood is considered the “Family Room” area of Africatown, then the Happy Hills neighborhood should be considered the “Play Room” area of Africatown. Although the Happy Hills Project area was not developed until around 1965, It quickly became a new area children came to play in because it became a new competitive area with new friends we could play with. Because of our love for that area of Africatown, after the apartments had been destroyed, Africatown supporters and friends organized an “International Design Competition” to spotlight how this well kept part of the community could be re-developed to help improve the vision for the renovation of all of Africatown. To entice some of the best designers from around the world $100k of prize money were raised and given out after the competition ended. The winner of the competition included a design that called for the reconstruction of The Last American Slave Ship, “The Clotilda”. That design has now moved to the head of the class as The Alabama Historical Commission has determined that the Real Clotilda that is at the bottom of The Mobile River cannot be raised and is currently looking for a place to put a Memorial to The Clotilda.
It is time for those politicians that said , “The Clotilda would rest in The Africatown Community”, to deliver on that promise to residents of Africatown and put The Clotilda Memorial in Africatown.
Please click on the picture to view a 2 minute video about “The Happy Hills Project Area”.
Dr. Major Joe Womack USMCR(ret)
Executive Director of africatown-chess.org
Co-Founder of africatownhpf.org
251-404-9558 & jnwomack1@yahoo.com
Leader, Doer, Storyteller
