The unpunished crimes of the Clotilda — and Alabama

  The Clotilda isn’t the most important part of the Clotilda story.

  That’s not to say Alabama shouldn’t do everything in its power to preserve the rotting remains of that ship, the last known to have brought enslaved people to the United States.

  Since the Alabama Historical Commission announced the discovery of the Clotilda in 2019, there has been talk about raising the ship off the banks of the Mobile River and putting it on display as a memorial to the 110 men and women kidnapped from Africa in 1860, forced onto the ship, and sent into slavery in Alabama.

Our Stand: Jim Zeigler, please remove your tin foil hat

  Yesterday Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler dragged one of Alabama's constitutional offices into the sewer of conspiracy theories and shameless race-baiting, made worse by the fact that Zeigler is little more than a glorified accountant.

  Channeling those who dish tales of Big Foot, vaccines causing autism, and Elvis Presley currently working as a gas station attendant in Tuberculosis Springs, Wyoming, Zeigler claimed to Montgomery news outlet WSFA that the routine rotation of governors' portraits in the Capital Building - this time including George and Lurleen Wallace - amounted to a conspiracy being afoot to "revise" history, somehow spear-headed by a major motion picture and Oprah Winfrey.