Book Review: Barracoon
The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”
CW: Human trafficking and enslavement
Back in February, I was scrolling through book titles under the category “Black History,” and I read came across a book titled “Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo’,” written by Zora Neale Hurston and published posthumously in 2018 (decades after her death). After reading the summary, I checked my library to discover that all copies were checked out. I added it to my Wishlist and moved on to read the “March” (graphic novel) series by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin.
Shortly thereafter, kismet (or probably scary-smart algorithms) recommended a film about Zora Neale Hurston that was available for rental or purchase on Amazon Prime. Again, I made a mental note of it, planning to return to her work (or works) later.
One evening not long after that, while looking through the documentaries section on Disney+, I came across one about the Clotilda, the last known (and very illegal) transatlantic slave ship. I had read about an article about the discovery of this ship’s remains sometime last year, it having been set ablaze and sunk by its captain off the coast of Alabama to destroy evidence of the capital crime — after delivering it’s human “cargo,” of course. My mental notes filed away, I hadn’t put two and two together when I clicked “play” on the documentary (perhaps you have already).
It turned out that the aforementioned book by Hurston played a role in the documentary’s telling the story of the Clotilda since her interviewed subject had been (one of) the last known survivors of this illegal human trafficking in the transatlantic slave trade — brought to America on that very ship, which has been documented as the last known slave ship.
Another sign that I should check out this book? Checking my library again, I found that a copy was available and began reading.
It seems that as part of a fellowship, Hurston had interviewed Cudjo Lewis (aka Kazoola, originally named Kossula by his parents), completing a report as assigned. She later returned to speak with him on her own multiple times in 1927 to more fully document his life story. It was early in her career, and she collected and transcribed his story in Cudjo’s original dialect.
Let’s pause briefly to provide some background context. While slavery flourished well into the 1860s in the United States, laws had been put in place prior to and after the turn of the century (18th to 19th) to prohibit the importation of slaves. The Slave Trade Act of 1794 made it illegal to trade slaves between nations, while the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 was intended to stop the purchase and importation of people for use as slaves.
The 1819 Act to Protect the Commerce of the United States and Punish the Crime of Piracy made the importing of individuals for slavery a capital offense starting in 1820, death by hanging usually. Of course, like many laws from the dawn of time, this didn’t stop the human trafficking, it only moved it further “underground” and made the international trade riskier with greater punishments if caught (a big IF).
The Clotilda was originally a lumber ship, smaller than traditional slave ships and built for speed. For unconfirmed reasons, though some speculation suggests a bet (or at least bragging rights), a wealthy family and the Clotilda’s captain (William Foster) colluded to make an illegal slave run. The Clotilda’s hold was retrofitted to handle human “cargo” and set off in 1859 for West African to purchase human beings.
In the country of Benin, a king from the town of Dahomey was known to make war on neighboring villages and tribes (for trumped up reasons) specifically to fill his barracoon (barracks or storehouse) with men, women, and children to sell. Cudjo, 19, was one of those young men captured at “war” who was sold to the Clotilda’s captain along with 124 others. In the end, the ship had loaded 115 men and women before a hasty departure, setting sail back to America.
While the book talks about this ship, its captain, and the Meahers — the wealthy brothers, Timothy and James, who had backed the purchased and were responsible for enslaving the Africans that the ship carried to Mobile, Alabama — it is truly about the life of Cudjo (Kossula, of the Yoruba peoples) more than his enslavers.
So many stories of enslaved peoples have been told based on the accounts captured in the diaries or journals of slave owners and/or ships captains or from oral histories passed down through generations and later recorded. Few are told in the enslaved individual’s own words. Further, most (nearly all) who were alive to be interviewed and even recorded in 20th century (primarily done in the 1930s and 1940s) were born into slavery in America, given the above-referenced laws, so firsthand accounts of capture and sale from their home countries in Africa don’t exist or are at least so extremely rare as to be non-existent.
Hurston recorded the story of this man, born in 1840, and his family (parents and 5 full siblings and 12 half-siblings) from his roots in the village of Bantè in Benin, details of his capture and arduous journey to America aboard the Clotilda, his years of enslavement, and the life he lived following his emancipation. The book is written in the dialect Cudjo developed, learning English in the South. This takes a little time to get used to but doesn’t prove to be too much of a challenge once you’re accustomed to it.
Yet…it is that very fact that kept the book from being published when Hurston shopped it around in the first half of the 20th century. Editors wanted her to “correct” his language to make the work more “readable,” but she refused to change his words, and so it languished unpublished for decades while the author went on to write many other, successful books.
At the time she interviewed him, Cudjo was in his late 80s but still active, considering he was literally hit by a train in 1902 and sustained permanent injuries that would make it difficult for him to work throughout the remainder of his life. His memory also remained sharp, but he could be moody in deciding when and how he would parse out bits of his life story. Sometimes he would fall into a memory, often tragic or traumatic ones, that ended the interview session.
“Kossula was no longer on the porch with me,” Hurston wrote. “He was squatting about that fire in Dahomey. His face was twitching in abysmal pain. It was a horror mask,” Hurston wrote. “He had forgotten that I was there. He was thinking aloud and gazing into the dead faces in the smoke. His agony was so acute that he became inarticulate. He never noticed my preparation to leave him. So I slipped away as quietly as possible and left him with his smoke pictures.”
Hurston, who would become one of the foremost collectors of Black folklore generally approached Cudjo as (and felt that she had indeed become) a friend coming to visit, often bringing gifts or treats to express her gratitude for his time and jumpstart their conversation. Cudjo’s story, including a preface that sets up some basic information about his life, runs 138 pages.
The latter portion of the book includes definitions, analysis and debate, a story by Alice Walker about finding and marking Hurston’s grave years after her passing, and endnotes (though some of the debate included is whether Hurston gave credit where credit was due, specifically questioning her slighting of Emma Langdon Roche who wrote “Historic Sketches of the South,” 1914). Obviously, this extra content was added after her death, and I found some of it far more awkward or confusing to read (repetitively debating who said or wrote what and when) than Cudjo’s dialect or the folk tales he shared about lions who became women who became lions again.
Cudjo’s life story is filled with tragedy, from the attack on his village and his capture, through the loss of some of his own children and his wife at early ages. And yet it is also a story of resilience and finding or creating goodness where he could. It struck me that he kept moving through life with an attitude that if he did what was asked of him, somehow things would work out. He would definitely lament his struggles, but his words didn’t demonstrate bottled up rage or hatred, except perhaps (slight spoiler) at the off-duty white law enforcement officer who shot his son. After suffering so much, his words and Hurston’s description told of a man at peace, taking comfort in the routine of daily life and finding joy in his surviving descendants.
In his life’s story, this recounting of a conversation with his former “master” after the army had told the enslaved Africans that they were free is definitely one of several moments that struck me hard and will stay with me. (Cap’n Tim is his former master Timothy Meaher.) In it, Cudjo seems frustrated and sad more than angry or spiteful.
“Cap’n Tim, you brought us from our country where we had lan’. You made us slave. Now dey make us free but we ain’ got no country and we ain’ got no lan’! Why doan you give us piece dis land so we kin buildee ourself a home?’ ‘Cap’n jump on his feet and say, ‘Fool do you think I goin’ give you property on top of property? I tookee good keer my slaves in slavery and derefo’ I doan owe dem nothin? You doan belong to me now, why must I give you my lan’?’”
(It should go without saying, but I will, since this passage included a similar endnote, that “property on top of property” referred to the fact that he had to give up his “property” — the Africans he had enslaved — and he wasn’t about to give up his land too.)
Although he and the other freed men and women on the Meaher brothers’ properties were disappointed at their former masters lack of support and heartsick that they couldn’t afford to return to Africa, they didn’t attack the man who had enslaved them. Instead, they worked and saved money to buy the land from Timothy Meaher and rename it Africatown.
They knew they couldn’t raise enough money for return passage to their homeland, but they could bring a bit of their homeland to their new country, and that’s just what they did. Hurston’s portion of the book was completed before Cudjo’s death, so it is not addressed in her story, but Kossula “Cudjo Lewis” died on July 17, 1935. He was buried at the Plateau Cemetery in Africatown.
While this (too long?) review contains broad strokes of Cudjo’s life, it doesn’t hold a candle to reading his own detailed telling of what happened to him. I felt privileged to read Kossula’s story in his own words, or as best as Hurston could record them presumably making notes by hand while working to keep the conversation going. The work Hurston did to capture not only this man’s life story but other Black folklore was and is important. It is critical that we learn history, and learn from history.
Africatown in Mobile (Plateau), Alabama, has struggled in recent decades, but efforts are being made by many, including the Africatown Heritage Preservation Society, to collect, retain, preserve, and share the legacy and cultural landmarks of the freed Africans who founded this African village on U.S. coil. Included in these efforts is the nearly completed Africatown Heritage House (museum) and Memorial Garden, adjacent to the Robert L. Hope Community Center.
There have been a myriad of articles in recent years, especially following the discovery of the Clotilda and the publication of this book. Far too many to list here, it is a rabbit hole that is definitely worth jumping into for reasons both educational and humanitarian.
I will recommend taking time to visit, read, and listen to “Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories” by the Library of Congress (see also the 1999 episode of ABC Nightline entitled “Found Voices : Slave Narratives”). In addition to Disney+ documentary mentioned in the review, Netflix has produced one entitled “Descendant.”
Finally, you may wish to take a moment to read this BBC article about Matilda McCrear, who died in Selma, Alabama, in January 1940. Like Cudjo, she was captured in Benin, transported to the United States illegally, and enslaved until Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Based on what I’ve seen and read, the Clotilda carried only purchased women and men, but the article mentions Africatown and suggests 2-year-old Matilda was brought over on the same ship as the slaves who settled there.
