The short book-length manuscript Hurston produced in 1931 was called Barracoon, named after those structures - like holding pens or stockades - where captured Africans were confined before being loaded onto ships. That's where Hurston interviewed him over a three-month period, coaxing Cudjo into talking about the past with gifts of peaches, ham and watermelon. He was the last known living person who could recount first-hand the experience of having been taken captive in Africa and transported on a slave ship to the United States.Ĭudjo spent years in slavery and after the Civil War helped found a settlement called Africatown near Mobile. Cudjo Lewis was already known to those who cared about black history. "I want to know who you are and how you came to be a slave." That was one of the first questions that Zora Neale Hurston asked 86-year-old Cudjo Lewis when she traveled from New York to Mobile, Ala., to interview him in the summer of 1927.īack then, Hurston was studying anthropology at Columbia University and doing fieldwork, collecting black folklore and historical data. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Barracoon Subtitle The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" Author Zora Neale Hurston and Deborah G.
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