The Africatown Middle Passage Port Marker emerged from a broader, community-led effort to reclaim, interpret, and protect Africatown’s historical and cultural relationship to water. That effort formally began in 2016, when Mobile Environmental Justice Action Coalition leaders Joe Womack, Teresa Bettis, and Ramsey Sprague attended the River Network's national River Rally conference in Mobile, Alabama at the strong encouragement of Derrick Evans with the Biloxi, MS community group Turkey Creek Community Initiatives. Derrick was being awarded a Paddle by the River Network, their highest honor, and in a workshop panel which included National Park Service Rivers, Trails & Conservation Assistance Program (RTCA) Ranger Liz Smith-Incer, he impressed upon the MEJAC attendees the opportunities afforded his community after working with the RTCA. Liz and Derrick's workshop panel focused on developing "greenway" walking trails and water-based “blueway” trails for the benefit of communities that lack such amenities. Given that Africatown is surrounded by water on three sides, participants recognized the community’s unique potential to use its waterways as a framework for history, healing, education, and environmental stewardship.

This vision aligned directly with the Africatown Neighborhood Plan – Build Mobile, completed in 2015 through funding provided by the City of Mobile’s City Council. That plan, rooted in the voices and priorities of Africatown residents, called for the development of both walking trails and water trails to benefit the community. Over the next several years, with technical assistance provided through a RTCA planning grant won by the Mobile County Training School Alumni Association and broad community participation, the project evolved into a multi-jurisdictional planning effort. The Africatown Connections Blueway concept provided a powerful way to activate those recommendations by reconnecting residents and visitors to the creeks, rivers, and landings that shaped Africatown’s founding and survival as well as reconnecting Africatown's waters with those of other nearby communities.

On August 24, 2017, Ann Chinn, Theodore Lush, and others representing the Middle Passage Port Marker Project met in Mobile at the Ben May Main Library Mobile County Training School Alumni Association President Anderson Flen, MCTSAA member James Hope, as well as MEJAC and Africatown~CHESS representatives. After two subsequent meetings at Union Missionary Baptist Church in 2017, the MCTSAA agreed to host the work to bring a Middle Passage Port Marker to Africatown as a key interpretive element of the emerging Africatown Connections Blueway. 

After the RTCA planning grant's technical assistance expired in 2019, all the partners working together on the Africatown Connections Blueway planning team agreed to formally house the Africatown Connections Blueway under a new organization—the Africatown Heritage Preservation Foundation (AHPF)—which officially launched in January 2020.

Guided by the principles later codified in the Africatown Connections Blueway Collaborative Charter, the project emphasized collaboration, shared governance, historical accuracy, and community healing. With the support of Ann Chinn, Dr. Natalie Robertson, Liz Smith-Incer, and numerous community and institutional partners, the Middle Passage Port Marker was designed and fabricated in 2020 as part of the Africatown Connections Blueway educational and historical infrastructure.

The first revelatory vision of the Africatown Connections Blueway point of interest Lewis Landing was developed through collaborative planning led by the Mississippi State University School of Landscape Architecture students working alongside Africatown residents. Long used informally by local fishermen, the site became the symbolic and physical starting point of the Africatown Connections Blueway. While the community had a clear vision, funding remained a challenge. In 2020, the Mobile County Commission—led by Commissioner Merceria Ludgood—purchased the Lewis Landing property for $40,000 using Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (GOMESA) funding. In 2023, through coordinated advocacy by Commissioner Ludgood and state legislators, Governor Kay Ivey allocated approximately $3.5 million for the site’s transformation into a fully developed fishing pier and public waterfront space, again using GOMESA funds.

With the completion of the Lewis Landing improvements and the design of the UNESCO-recognized Middle Passage Port Marker, Commissioner Ludgood offered to place the marker at Lewis Landing. This decision anchored the marker within the broader Africatown Connections Blueway, reinforcing the Charter’s vision of water as a unifying force—linking history, healing, health, and habitat—while honoring Africatown’s ancestors and affirming the community’s rightful place in national and global history.