Our Roots: Africatown

Tending Futures was born in Africatown, Alabama, a community shaped by survival, resistance and the long afterlife of colonization. Africatown is the home of the descendants of the Clotilda, the last known ship to bring enslaved Africans to the United States. It is a place where land, memory and kinship carry histories that institutions often ignore but communities never forget.

Our work exists because systems stripped Black and Indigenous people of care practices that once sustained us. Birth knowledge, land-based medicine, intergenerational caregiving and communal responsibility were not lost by accident. They were deliberately disrupted through slavery, displacement, environmental racism and criminalization. Tending Futures was created to help restore what was taken and to build alternatives where institutions have failed our people.

Cultural revitalization is not symbolic to us. It is practical, necessary work. In Africatown, cultural knowledge has always been how people survived when formal systems refused care. Our programs are grounded in this reality. We do not separate culture from health, justice or organizing because our community never had that luxury.

While Tending Futures now operates across the Gulf South and navigates institutional funding systems, Africatown remains our anchor. Our accountability is rooted here. The relationships, elders, practitioners and families of this place inform how we define care, dignity and impact.

We believe that honoring our roots strengthens our future. Cultural grounding is not a retreat from legitimacy. It is the foundation that makes our work credible, trusted and enduring.