By Karim Shamsi-Basha
This is the tale of Africatown: Slave Smugglers of Mobile Bay. It’s not a movie, but a story of intrigue, a bet, illegal slavery, a shipwreck, and a captain dodging the law.
It was 1860. A group of rich shipbuilders and slave owners were gambling one night when a man by the name of Timothy Meaher made them a bet: that he could sneak into America with a shipment of slaves, defying the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. (Domestic slave trade within the United States was unaffected by the law.)
The bet was for $100,000, the equivalent of $4 million today. The others agreed.The Civil War was looming and talk of slavery being abolished filled the South. Captain William Foster piloted and loaded a ship with 110 slaves from West Africa, taking the long route back through the Caribbean.
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