Written in 1931, unpublished until 2018, "Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black 'Cargo'" was based on Zora Neale Hurston's interviews with Oluale Kossola, who told her about his capture and enslavement.
Hidden in archives for nearly a century, the story of the last known survivor of Middle Passage — the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World — has finally been published for the world to read in Zora Neale Hurston’s posthumous work “Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo.”
In 1927, during the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston, a respected anthropologist and author, journeyed from New York to Alabama to document the spoken words of Oluale Kossola, later given the name Cudjo Lewis. Kossola arrived in the United States on The Clotilda, the final slave ship to traverse the Atlantic Ocean from West Africa to the American South.
Born circa 1841, Kossola lived peacefully with his people, the Takkoi nation, in what is today the Republic of Benin, until he was captured and sold into slavery around the age of 18. Not only did Kossola survive the traumatic conditions of Middle Passage but also years of slavery, the Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, and the enforced racial segregation of Jim Crow.
Given that Kossola had lived through such difficult times, Hurston set out to record his account. With funding provided by a woman named Charlotte Mason, a patron of African-American artists, Hurston made several trips to Alabama to spend time with Kossola and listen to him share what he had endured during in his life. Because of Mason’s generosity of Mason, Hurston’s efforts, and the safeguarding of numerous other custodians of Black folklore, the story, in Kossola’s own words, is printed at last.
Although he was 85 years old when Hurston began interviewing him, Kossola was able to describe, in vivid detail, his memories of his community and culture in West Africa during his youth. Kossola recollected his experiences thereafter — the scenes of his village being invaded, the forced trek on foot to the coast, and the building fear inside the barracoons — the slave sheds — as he and others awaited their fate.
The year was 1859.
Meanwhile, across the ocean, on the docks of the Alabama River, legend has it that a bet was placed. Although the foreign importation of slaves into the U.S. had been banned in 1808, slavery itself was still legal. Three brothers by the name of Meaher along with Captain William Foster wagered with one another about voyaging to Africa, securing a cargo of slaves, and sailing back to U.S. waters undetected. No one can know for certain how the trip originated, only that it was ultimately undertaken.
Hurston wrote, “The Clotilda slipped away from Mobile as secretly as possible so as not to arouse the curiosity of the government.”
Over a period of months, Foster successfully secured and transported the “contraband cargo.” Almost immediately after completing the illegal voyage, the slaver’s concealed their crimes by sinking The Clotilda in the Alabama River, attempting to destroy the evidence and hide the identities of all persons involved.
Yet, the truth of the ordeal has been uncovered over time — and from the unlikely, first-person point of view of one of its captives.
With an ethnographic approach, Hurston transcribed Kossola’s voice, vernacular diction, and even the noticeable accent of his non-native English, spelling words as she heard them pronounced.
The project was completed in 1931 after four years of work. Hurston submitted the manuscript to publishers. However, publishers responded requesting that the account be rewritten “in a language rather than dialect.” Believing that the value of the work was the preservation of Kossola’s colloquial orature, Hurston refused to revise the manuscript.
Hurston went on to write numerous poems, short stories, novels, and plays including her notable book, “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” She passed away in 196, leaving many unpublished works behind.
Her alma mater, Howard University, held the manuscript in safekeeping for years with the help of librarian Joellen ElBashir at the Moorland-Spingard Research Center.
In 2018, Deborah G. Plant, a scholar of African American literature and Africana studies, served as editor for the book, which was published by Amistad Press. Plant’s research focuses on Hurston’s literary works and legacy, making her a dedicated custodian of the account. In the editor’s introduction Plant praised the veracity of the work writing that “Hurston’s methods respect Kossola’s own storytelling sensibility; it is one that is ‘rooted’ in African soil.”
Many have grasped the baton in the relay over time to make known, in Hurston’s words: “The only [last] man on earth who has in his heart the memory of his African home; the horrors of a slave raid; the barracoon.”
There were 177 years between the time that Kossola was born and his story was published. Hurston’s “Barracoon” is an important book for anyone digging for the seeds of racial injustice in our world.
“Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo.’” Zora Neale Hurston, edited by Deborah G. Plant. Amistad, $24.99 (208p) ISBN 978-0-06-274820-1, can be ordered through Napa Bookmine or Copperfield’s Books.
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