Barracoon

The Story of the Last Black Cargo

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Barracoon (2018, HarperCollins Publishers)

English language

Published Jan. 13, 2018 by HarperCollins Publishers.

ISBN:
9780062748225

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In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. 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. 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. In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. 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 …

10 editions

Subjects

  • Slaves, united states
  • Slave trade
  • Slavery, united states, history
  • Alabama, history