A shipwreck awash in Black history takes center stage in Alabama

On July 8, 1860, a schooner carrying 110 men, women and children stolen from Africa sailed into waters near Mobile Bay under the cover of night.

The Clotilda, the last documented slave ship to enter America, made its surreptitious voyage some five decades after the international slave trade was outlawed, amid one of the most pivotal periods in U.S. history. The following year, 1861, the Civil War would erupt over slavery.