Descendant: Q+A With Dr. Joe Womack
Dr. Major Joe Womack is a native of Africatown, Alabama, Executive Director of the Africatown C.H.E.S.S. Foundation, and Co-Founder of the Africatown Heritage Preservation Foundation. A community organizer, environmental justice advocate, and lifelong keeper of Africatown’s story, Dr. Womack has spent decades fighting to protect, preserve, and promote one of the most historically significant communities in America. We caught up with him to talk about what’s happening on the ground right now.
Q. It’s been a few years since Descendant and money is starting to come in. How is Africatown doing as a destination?
Better than a lot of people realize. Amtrak recently launched a route between Mobile and New Orleans. The city fought it for two years, but it finally happened. The original estimate was 50,000 to 75,000 passengers in the first year. They’ve since updated that to at least 200,000. And what they’re finding is that half the people who get off the train in Mobile ask: where is Africatown? For the first few months of this year, Africatown is the second most-visited destination in the city, after the History Museum of Mobile. We just have to keep the promotion going. People are still finding out we exist, and something like this newsletter really helps with that.
Q. What would it mean for Africatown residents to see a memorial for the Clotilda, the last known slave ship, placed in their community?
It would mean a great deal. For the community itself and for everything we’re working toward, which is to protect, preserve, and promote this place. We’re still fighting on the environmental front, still working to bring new families in, still getting the word out. A memorial of that scale would anchor all of it.
Q. Where would you ideally like to see the memorial placed?
Happy Hills. It’s a large open area that’s already site-prepared– surveyed, landscaped– and it’s owned by the city of Mobile, which means it belongs to the residents. I want to push hard to get the memorial placed there. And if we can connect it to the Middle Passage marker network (there are about 52 sites around the country, mostly on the Gulf Coast and East Coast) we could create something really significant. Imagine 52 lots around that area, each representing one of those sites. A destination. A place people travel to.
Africatown is doing better than a lot of people realize. We just have to keep the promotion going.
Q. Can you tell us more about the Middle Passage work?
There are marker sites in about 52 cities across the Gulf Coast and East Coast. Places where the slave trade was concentrated, where ships came in. Right now there’s no real central program or headquarters for all of those communities. Our goal is to make Mobile and Africatown that headquarters. We’ve already got support from many of those cities and from the people who run the national Middle Passage program. We’re planning a three-day summit to bring representatives from all those areas together. If we can pull this off, it means annual gatherings here, shared planning, a real network. It would be something this country doesn’t have yet.
Q. What would you want readers of this newsletter, many of whom are philanthropists and people with the power to make things happen, to know about where Africatown stands right now?
We’re on a roll right now, and we just hope it continues. We just announced a $500,000 Humanities in Place Grant for community-led storytelling, and every time we get funds like this and share it with the community, it just keeps the excitement going. People are still finding out about Africatown every day. Tourism is up, new families are moving in, and we have a real vision for what this place can become.
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