Letitia Huckaby: Bitter Waters Sweet

78 Pages

Hardbound

In her exhibition as the ALH, 2022 Texas Artist of the Year, Letitia Huckaby explores the legacy of Africatown, the historic community near Mobile, Alabama, that was founded by a group of West African people who were trafficked to the U.S. as slaves shortly before Emancipation, and long after the Atlantic slave trade was banned. The ship that brought them, the Clotilda, was scuttled in Mobile Bay shortly after delivering its cargo in 1860 to conceal its illegal activity. The wreckage was rediscovered in 2018 and is currently the subject of active archaeological research.

Huckaby’s photographs, printed on cotton fabric, bring together the legacy of Africatown, its founders and their descendants, with the history of the ship Clotilda and its persistent physical proximity to the community. Through her imagery and materials, her work ties the past to the present as she examines history and its contemporary connection to the black experience. This catalog of the exhibition, published by ALH and designed by Shefon N. Taylor, includes works from the project and a critical essay by Christopher Blay, writer and Chief Curator at the Houston Museum of African American Culture in Houston, Texas.