NEARY: It's a national treasure that has spent more than 60 years in Howard University's library where only scholars had access to it. It makes 'Barracoon' a national treasure. Deborah Plant, who edited 'Barracoon,' says that makes the book special because most slave narratives focus on life in this country.ĭEBORAH PLANT: It is so unusual.

As one of the last slaves to be brought to this country aboard an illegal vessel, Lewis still had many memories of his life in Africa. Though he was an old man, he was thrilled to hear it again. LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: When Zora Neale Hurston first met Cudjo Lewis at his home in Alabama, she called him by his African name, Kossola. Lewis came to this country aboard the last ship that brought slaves across the Atlantic. It's called 'Barracoon,' and it's based on a series of conversations that she had with Cudjo Lewis. Actually, it's an old book that's only now being published. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.Zora Neale Hurston, the legendary writer from the Harlem Renaissance, has a new book. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo’s past-memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War.īased on those interviews, featuring Cudjo’s unique vernacular, and written from Hurston’s perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Hurston was there to record Cudjo’s firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history.

In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis.

Zora neale hurston's barracoon