From Magistrate Judge Gray Borden's opinion Friday in Studiorotan LLC v. Howell (N.D. Ala.):
A team of researchers discovered the wreckage of the Clotilda, the last known slave ship in the United States, in 2018. The Clotilda "illegally brought enslaved individuals from Africa into Alabama around 1860, where the ship was scuttled and burned to hide evidence of illegal slave trading." Many of these slaves returned after the Civil War and founded Africatown near Mobile, Alabama….
Renee Kemp-Rotan, "an internationally regarded urban designer and master planner," operates Studiorotan. Defendant M.O.V.E. Gulf Coast CDC ("M.O.V.E.") "invited Studiorotan to Africatown and asked Studiorotan to be involved in a project that would bring many community-based, non-coordinated projects into a comprehensive plan, design and development for Africatown." In that vein, Studiorotan, M.O.V.E., and Defendant Vickii Howell developed a competition—the Africatown International Design Competition—"for professional architects to submit design boards and essays" related to the "Clotilda Discovery and furthering preservation and revitalization of the Africatown community."
