Twenty years ago, when Dora Franklin Finley approached the historians at local historic preservation societies about her plans to create an African American heritage trail in her hometown, they asked, “What have Black people done in Mobile?”

“That just fueled her fire,” says Dora’s brother Karlos Finley, President of the Dora Franklin Finley African American Heritage Trail. “She was very focused on ensuring that African Americans were recognized for the significant contributions that they’ve made to the city of Mobile because unfortunately, that part of our history was not being told.”

The idea for a trail was born when City Councilman William Carroll experienced Boston’s Black heritage trail. Recognizing that individuals in Mobile had accomplished things as great if not greater than what he was seeing along the Massachusetts trail, Carroll returned home on a mission to find someone to bring his idea to life.

Dora was a natural fit. Raised by Civil Rights activists (and jailed with her mother for protesting at the age of 15), she wrote that her parents instilled in her “a conviction to contribute to the physical and spiritual health of my community” and her grandfather “endowed me with a humanitarian legacy of service to community”. Her professional career included positions in accounting, business development and teaching before working in managerial logistics for Kimberly-Clark Corporation for 25 years. She considered her community contributions during retirement to be her second career, as she spent hundreds of hours researching Mobile’s history.

From the Dinner Table to the Archives

Karlos and Dora’s mother, Joycelyn Franklin Finley, was the first person to teach Black history in the Mobile County school system. “History was always a topic of conversation for us at the dinner table and when Dora was working on the trail, she started with the stories that had been shared with us and she researched to quantify and substantiate all of them at places like the Mobile Archives, Alabama Historical Commission, Emory University, University of South Alabama and the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Karlos says.

Dora’s first focus was the city’s founders, French Canadian brothers Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville. As a lady medalist—an honor bestowed upon her by the Pope—Dora had access to all the records of the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. Established in 1703, a year after Mobile’s founding, it was the first Catholic parish on the Gulf Coast, housing some of the oldest records in the region, including the earliest documentation of a person of African descent in Mobile. In a notation by the Cathedral’s pastor dated June 11, 1707, he acknowledges the baptism of Jean Baptiste, “a negro belonging to [the city’s founder] Mr. Bienville of about five years of age.” This boy of African and French descent was also the first known child—Black or white—to be baptized in the city.

“When you peel back the layers, it doesn’t take a great imagination to conclude that he was likely Bienville’s child, but the founder of Mobile couldn’t put that on paper because it would give the child the right to take in heirship from his father’s assets,” Karlos says.

Through her research, Dora learned more about Stone Street Baptist Church, the state’s first Baptist church, which was founded by freed slaves in 1806. She learned that the five Black masons who helped build Fort Condé in the 1720s were among the first free persons of color to work along the Gulf Coast. She got to know the history of notable African Americans such as ex-slave Betty Hunter House, who owned and managed an extremely profitable horse and carriage taxi service in the 1870s; Christopher First Johnson, who opened the first Black-owned insurance company in Mobile, becoming a multimillionaire in the heart of Jim Crow South by the late nineteenth century; Dave Patton, a successful real estate entrepreneur who laid the foundation of the Saenger Theater, Murphy High School and many roads in the early twentieth century; and Andrew N. Johnson, who published the Mobile Weekly Press and, as a member of the Alabama Republican Executive committee, was instrumental in attracting two sitting presidents—Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson—to visit Mobile.

“She took all of these things and more to the historic society and they were flabbergasted because they were supposed to be the historians, yet they had no idea about the Black people who did these amazing things,” Karlos says of his sister.

Blazing a Historic Trail

In addition to her passion for Mobile’s diverse history and her thorough research skills, Dora’s ability to develop partnerships was pivotal in turning her dreams into reality. Backed by the support and resources she garnered from alliances with University of South Alabama, Mobile County School Board, Southern Poverty Law Center, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Mobile County Commission, the city of Mobile, historic societies and others, the first African American Heritage Trail marker was unveiled in 2006, and was quickly followed by many others.

Dora closed each unveiling ceremony by saying, “You can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.” It became the rallying cry for the trail, which now features 40 stops. Dora oversaw the Mobile African American Heritage Trail until she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2011. When she passed away the following year, Mayor Sam Jones honored her by renaming the trail The Dora Franklin Finley African American Heritage Trail of Mobile.

The mission of the trail is to educate, preserve and mark the historic contributions of African Americans in Mobile by linking notable contributions and events with significant locations. “A lot of people know about Hank Aaron, John LeFlore, Satchel Paige—and their stories are immensely important, but we really like to expose the stories that people had done away with, individuals that have been forgotten,” says Karlos.

The biggest story they’ve resurrected is that of the schooner Clotilda—the last slave ship to enter the U.S. It landed in Mobile Bay in 1860, 50 years after the importation of slaves had been outlawed. To settle a bet that he could outsmart federal authorities, the ship’s owner, Timothy Meaher, sponsored the smuggling of 110 Africans across the Atlantic Ocean on a two-month voyage.

Although the ship has gained international attention since its remains were discovered just north of the Mobile Bay delta in 2019, the story had previously been suppressed until The Order of Myths came out in 2008. “Dora was interviewed for that film documentary and in it she tells the story of the Clotilda in Africatown for the first time in modern age. She told it courageously… you could get lynched in the ‘30s, ‘40s or ‘50s if you mentioned it and the Meaher family is still very prominent in the area,” Karlos notes.

Trail organizers have seen the community embrace their efforts, especially in the last five years. Before the pandemic, motor coach tours of the trail were booked almost every day and they’ve seen groups as large as 150 people. School tours were also offered to local fourth grade classes to coincide with the year students first learn Alabama history. While guided walking tours are now being offered in a socially distanced manner, self-guided and virtual tours are also available with detailed maps and online narration.

Shaping the Future through History

Two more markers will be erected this summer including Sandtown, the oldest African American settlement in Springhill. “History is continuing to grow and there are many stories we have to continue to tell,” says Karlos, who believes that textbook history is often dulled down and taught in a manner that oppresses some and elevates others.

“Stories of our founding fathers and mothers are left out so we only learn the parts that make them seem God-like. If we taught students about Thomas Jefferson’s second wife, Sally Hemings, who was a slave, and that he had children with her that remained slaves until his death, and that she was the half-sister of his first wife because they had the same father—that’s a much more interesting story,” he says.

Telling the whole story can also instill hope in people that have otherwise been oppressed. “The byproduct of that hopelessness has to be remedied. If you’re just told you’re a descendent of slaves, that will mess with your self-esteem. But if you know Thomas Edison couldn’t figure out how to make a light bulb that lasted longer than 15 hours until a Black man—Howard Latimer—invented a bulb with a carbon filament that made it affordable and practical… then you think, he’s like me and I’m capable of greatness too.”

Karlos and his siblings were raised in a family that led positive change and celebrated the area’s rich gumbo of ethnicity. In a life that ended too soon, their father, James H. Finley, helped end segregation in Mobile, opened the first chain of Black-owned drug stores in the state and was jailed for 13 months in a prison on the other side of the country for not paying social security taxes on their house keeper’s wages. As the principal partner at the K. Fitzgerald Finley Firm and a municipal judge, Karlos reflects, “The irony is now I serve on the bench that looked to jail my own father. You can’t deny that when you know the history and know that you’re equal to every person on this planet, then you’re not as likely to take things criminally. You’re more apt to gain an education like those great people who came before you. That’s the true story of our trail.”

For more information on the Dora Franklin Finley African American Heritage Trail, visit dffaaht.org or call 251-725-2236.

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