MOBILE, Ala. — Juneteenth has long had special meaning for the descendants of the last slave ship known to come to the United States, the Clotilda. People like Vernetta Henson and Darron Patterson of Mobile, Ala.
They're descendants of Polee and Rose Allen, who were among the more than 100 kidnapped Africans a wealthy Alabama plantation owner smuggled into Mobile aboard the Clotilda 50 years after the Atlantic slave trade was abolished, and then sunk the ship to bury evidence of the crime.
