TOUR DEPARTURE/DURATION:

Tour pickup site: History Museum of Mobile 111 S. Royal St., 36602 - Visit Mobile Welcome Center - seating and restrooms available inside main entrance to the right until departure. (*fee to enter museum exhibits)

Duration: 2 hours  - No walking

 

ITINERARY

•We'll begin our tour with a short tour preview with a question and answer session. 

 

•Next, we began our journey of the Dora Franklin Finley African-American Heritage Trail  (DFFAAHT) visiting sites throughout the city of Mobile.

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•We will drive to the Royal Street site where Africans were auctioned in America’s system of chattel slavery that ended with the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, 1863.

 

•We will visit the DFFAAHT Southern Justice marker highlighting the case of "Wiley Bolden" vs City of Mobile, when Bolden and 13 other named African American Plaintiffs sued the City of Mobile in 1976. A final verdict was issued in 1983, ultimately resulting in changing Mobile’s form of city government from a Three Commissioner form of government elected from at-large to the current City Council/Mayor form of Government.

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•Our tour then proceeds to Africatown, visiting the Old Plateau Graveyard, Union Baptist Church, Mobile County Training School (MCTS) - the first African American Training School in the State of Alabama and how Booker T. Washington, president of Tuskegee Institute, and Julius Rosenwald, a philanthropists, and CEO of Sears, Roebuck and Company helped build 5000 schools for African Americans in the United States. MCTS is one of the last remaining active Rosenwald Schools. 

 

•An in-depth up to date status will be provided on the Schooner Clotilda that was scuttled, burned and sank in 1860. The Clotilda rests 25 feet under water approximately 5 miles North of Africatown in the Mobile Tensaw River  Delta, the vessel illegally transported the 110 Africans from Benin, West Africa to Mobile, AL. Many settled and survived in the community of Africatown. Their descendants and other residents of Africatown have survived despite industrial and economic injustices. You will learn the story of the descendants that remained in Africatown, and those taken as far north as Selma, AL.

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•The journey will depart Africatown and visit DFFAAHT Historical Markers of African American entrepreneurs starting from 1878 and continue throughout the city.

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•An audio narrative of sites not visited can be accessed on this websites Tour Maps page. 

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TRANSPORTATION

Transportation will be provided in our 14-passenger D-coach or the 29 passenger J-Coach for larger groups. A 55-passenger coach can be requested.