Spirit of Our Ancestors 2024: Dr. Mary N. Elliott

The Clotilda Descendants are pleased to announce Mary N. Elliott as the 2024 Spirit of Our Ancestors Festival’s keynote speaker. As a museum specialist and curator of American slavery with the Smithsonian Institute, Ms. Elliott helped to research, conceptualize, and design the “Slavery and Freedom” inaugural exhibition for Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, located on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

Her 2018 seminar in Africatown, given around the time of the initial Clotilda discovery, inspired Davis’ personal journey by Ms. Elliott sharing her own story as the torchbearer of her family’s history in Tusla, OK, before the 1921 race riot destroyed Black-owned properties. Ms. Elliott was also featured in Descendant, the documentary directed by Mobile-native Margaret Brown, who began filming descendants and Africatown activists as news about Clotilda spread.