Even though the U.S. banned the importation of the enslaved from Africa in 1808, slavery itself was not banned and the enslaved were not freed. Slavery continued to be critical to the economy, particularly in the south but in the north as well. The high demand for slave labor from the cotton trade (the cotton woven into cloth at New England textile factories) encouraged some plantation owners, such as Alabama plantation owner Timothy Meaher, to risk illegal slave runs to Africa. In 1860, his schooner Clotilda sailed from Mobile to what was then the Kingdom of Dahomey He bought Africans captured by warring tribes back to Alabama, creeping into Mobile Bay under the cover of night. Some of the enslaved were divided between Foster and the Meahers, and others were sold. Foster then ordered the Clotilda taken upstream, burned and sunk to conceal the evidence.

After the Civil War, the freed slaves wished to return to Africa but did not have the money to do so. They set up a town in Alabama, near Mobile, called Africatown. It is set up under the same system as the African villages with a chief, a system of laws, a church and a school.

Based on stories told by modern day descendants living in Africatown, a search for the ship Clotilde was begun. Ben Baines, a reporter, found a shipwreck but it was too large to be the schooner. A company that specializes in maritime shipwreck recovery took on the job. Although the wreckage of the Clotilda was not very deep in the water, maybe eight to ten feet, the visibility was so poor that it was hard to find. It was finally recovered in 2019.

The Clotilda is proof that the slave trade went on for far longer than it should have, by law, and far longer than most of us believe.