Published on: December 28, 2022 at 10:00 AM

By Carla Davis
Alabama NewsCenter

Since she was a small girl, Pat Frazier has treasured the stories about her great-great-grandmother, one of the 110 West Africans who were illegally smuggled into Mobile Bay in 1860 aboard the slave ship Clotilda.

“Most people see their experience as a horror story,” said Frazier. “But I see it as a story about people who overcame the worst possible odds and found a way to thrive.”

One of those who indeed thrived was Lottie Dennison, Frazier’s great-great-grandmother. Lottie and James Dennison had been married in Washington County at the urging of their slaveowner but feared that the marriage would not be recognized. When slavery was abolished in 1865, they were remarried in Mobile and built a life near Africatown, the community established by Clotilda survivors.

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