MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) — People in Africatown are trying to get a better idea of their own history, starting with the cemetery. They’re asking others to join them to help map the nearly 150-year-old burial grounds. This cemetery dates back to 1876, hundreds are buried here but they don’t have records for everyone.

Some plots are for the original descendants of the Clotilda and they go all the way up to recent passings of the last decade. This weekend a group is trying to map the cemetery–taking pictures of every plot to have a record of who is here and what stories may go with them. With recent documentaries and new attention on Africatown from a nationwide audience, the area founded by the survivors of the last US slave ship still lacks complete data on its story.

“It gives a number of individuals an opportunity to find out information that they did not know before, and also for individuals to share information that we may not know that needs to be shared with other individuals as well,” said Anderson Flen with the Africatown Preservation Foundation. “In order to really make the community whole, you really have to focus on the cemetery to give due respect to those individuals like Cudjoe Lewis, and all of those descendants from the Clotilda, along with other individuals who made it possible for their community to be the striving community that it is.” That mapping event will be this Saturday, September 16 starting at 10 They’ll meet at the Robert Hope Community Center and head out to the cemetery from there. For more information click here or contact Mr. Flen at 404-219-7890.