I am a native of a place most maps call “Plateau, Alabama.” The true name of my hometown, however, is Africatown. I am the great-great-grandson of Kupollee Allen, one of 110 Africans who disembarked from the Clotilda in Mobile Bay in 1860: the last known survivors of the Middle Passage to reach the United States.

I have walked many paths, and Kupollee has walked every one of them with me. These days, I spend my time honoring his life and the lives of all my ancestors.