Alva Review-Courier -

MOBILE, Ala. (AP) — The years have been hard on Africatown USA.

Established by the last boatload of Africans abducted into slavery and shipped to the United States just before the Civil War, the coastal Alabama community now shows scarcely a trace of its founders.

Industrial development choked off access to the Mobile River and Chickasaw Creek, where generations caught crabs and fish. Factories now occupy land that once held modest homes surrounded by gardens, fruit trees and clucking chickens. The population has plummeted; many of the remaining homes are boarded up and rotting.

But after year...