The Clotilda's voyage began with a bet. In 1860, Timothy Meaher, a wealthy Mobile shipbuilder, wagered that he could smuggle enslaved Africans into the United States, more than fifty years after Congress had outlawed the international slave trade in 1807. He hired Captain William Foster to refit the schooner Clotilda for a transatlantic crossing. Foster sailed to the port city of Ouidah in the Kingdom of Dahomey, present-day Benin, and purchased 110 men, women, and children, some as young as five years old. On July 8, 1860, the Clotilda slipped into Mobile Bay under cover of darkness. Foster offloaded his human cargo, then burned and sank the ship in the Mobile River to destroy the evidence.

When the Civil War ended five years later, the survivors of the Clotilda found themselves free but far from home. They pooled their resources and purchased land at Magazine Point, a few miles north of downtown Mobile, and built something extraordinary: a self-governing community they called Africatown. They maintained their native languages, established their own system of governance modeled on West African traditions, and built churches, schools, and businesses. Cudjo Lewis became one of the community's most prominent figures. He lived until 1935, one of the last people in the United States who had survived the transatlantic slave trade firsthand. The neighborhood he helped found was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.

For over a century, the Clotilda existed mainly in oral history and faded documents. Then in 2019, archaeologists confirmed the discovery of the ship's remains in the muddy waters of the Mobile River. The find electrified historians and the Africatown community alike. Within a year, the History Museum of Mobile partnered with the Alabama Historical Commission, Mobile County, and the City of Mobile to create a permanent exhibition honoring the ship and its survivors. The $1.3 million Africatown Heritage House opened on July 8, 2023, the 163rd anniversary of the Clotilda's arrival. National Geographic UK named it one of the best new museums in the United States for 2023. The World Monuments Fund had already recognized Africatown as one of 25 heritage sites worldwide in 2022.

"Clotilda: The Exhibition" walks visitors through the full arc of the story, from West African beginnings through enslavement, the founding of Africatown, and the discovery of the sunken schooner. Interpretive panels, historical documents, and artifacts give individual names and faces to the 110 people who arrived on that ship. The exhibition emphasizes what the survivors built after their ordeal, not just the ordeal itself. It is a story of resilience and cultural persistence, of people who refused to let the Middle Passage erase their identities. The Heritage House sits in the community those same people founded, surrounded by their descendants, making it not just a museum but a living connection between past and present.