I’m writing from a BnB in an old neighborhood in Mobile, Alabama. Its oak trees shade the street from above. From below, their muscular roots buckle the sidewalks, like history rising up from below. Slabs of concrete rise and fall, looking earthquaky. Last night, I saw a young man running on those sidewalks deftly handling the shattered concrete like a mountain goat. I walked on the road where it felt safer.
Tuesday was my trial run on my fully-loaded bike. I call it a confidence run. Before I take my 3 month bike ride, I want to shake out any problems with the bike—into mention my legs. It took me hours, days, to tune up my packing system for this trip—coaxing the competing organizing principles of packing: weight distribution; shape; access. You need to be able tonlean a bike against a wall with the gears facing away from you. That way, if the bike falls, it doesn’t fall on those delicate parts. So, anything you want to get at quickly wants to be on the left hand side of the bike. You also want the left and right panniers to be about the same weight, and, for me, I try to have the weight in the front to ballpark at 30% of the weight in the back.
The route I’m taking, developed by the Adventure Cycling Association, is called “The Underground Railroad Route.” The last big ACA route I took was the Lewis & Clark Route. That name was a little more accurate. There was only one Lewis and Clark route, while the Underground Railroad consists of multiple routes, both east and west of here. Think of this route as an Underground Railroad sliver. I’ll be starting here, in Mobile, and working my way up through Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky—before I cross the Ohio River to the free state of Ohio and then up to New York and into Canada. It’s just a sliver. Along the way, I’ll try to a get better appreciation of this important history. There’s an active move to ban this story from our schools and universities. That movement has a lot of energy behind it. I don’t know if anyone can stop it. The best I can do right now is try my best to learn about it myself.
On my trial run the other day, I rode by the Africatown graveyard.
In 1859, Timothy Meaher commissioned a slave ship, the Clotilda, to sail to West Africa and kidnap 110 men, women, and children. As a result, 110 Africans arrived in these parts in 1861. The international slave trade was illegal at that point—since 1808. In fact, the venture is believed to have been sparked by a bet among friends while eating and drinking on Meaher’s steamboat, The Roger B. Taney. Meaher wagered he could avoid the federal authorities enforcing the law.
I feel like I’ve met people like Timothy Meaher,—boastful, defiant, cruel, and settled in their sense of themselves and their place in the world. After the war, Cudjo Lewis asked Timothy Meaher to give his ex-slaves a plot of land to live on. Meaher mocked that proposal, but he eventually sold the land, now called Africatown.
On my Substack homepage, I’ve listed some of the books I’ve been reading to prepare for this trip. I’d like to call your attention to 2 books that relate to Africatown: Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston and The Last Slave Ship by Ben Raines.
You should read both. Barracoon is an oral history in the voice of Cudjo Lewis, who became a leader in the Africatown community after the Civil War. It’s essential reading. The Last Slave Ship fills in the gaps and updates the history 91 years after the Hurston book. The story is heartbreaking at times—and the heartbreak continues to this day. The community has had its highs and lows over the years, but my sense is that it’s in a middle of a resurgence now. The Clotilda, which was scuttled in 1861 in order to hide the evidence of the crime, has been discovered. There’s some talk of pulling it up and creating a permanent display to honor its passengers and their descendants.
I leave Tuesday morning for a short ride to my first campsite at Blakeley Park.
David,
We are so pleased to be following you. And to have you eventually come to our area! Your box arrived! In perfect shape too!! Hurrah… Lee & John
Thank you so much for sharing this trip with us.....