Slave descendants gathering in Ala.

shipped to the U.S. on a bet and sold into slavery are organizing a get-together called the “Spirit of Our Ancestors” festival, set for Saturday. Five families were involved in the initial planning, and organizer Joycelyn Davis said interest mushroomed once word got out.

She said people who once were ashamed to say their ancestors were sold into slavery are finding new pride in their heritage that could breathe new life into Africatown.

“I am so proud to say I am a descendant. That wasn’t a word that I used maybe 10, 15 years ago,” said Davis, 42, a sixth-generation granddaughter of African captive Charlie Lewis. “It was shameful as a child.”

Africatown’s founders were shipped to the United States on a wager rooted in antebellum obstinacy.

A U.S. law banning the importation of slaves had taken effect in 1808 — nearly two centuries after the enslavement of Africans began in North America — but smugglers continued plying the Atlantic with wooden ships full of people in chains. Cotton was booming in the South, and wealthy plantation owners needed hands to work the fields.

e schooner Clotilda sailed from Mobile to what is now Benin in western Africa, where it picked up tives and returned them to Alabama, evading authorities during a tortuous, weekslong voyage.

Julie Bennett The Associated Press A chimney, the last remaining original structure from the days when survivors of the last known slave ship brought into the United States inhabited the area, stands abandoned in Mobile, Ala.