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Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"

Zora Neale Hurston

Start date: July 25, 2022

Finish date: August 15, 2022

Why we're reading this: Baraccon is East Side Book Discussion's August selection! This book club will be held in person at East S…more
[close] Baraccon is East Side Book Discussion's August selection! This book club will be held in person at East Side Library on Monday, 8/15 at 2:00 PM. Visit our website or call 515-283-4152 for more details, including current COVID-19 guidelines and restrictions.

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Aug 03, 2022 Karna Converse rated it really liked it

Slave narrative documenting Oluale Kossola's life from pre-capture to freedom

The importation of African slaves to the United States had been abolished in 1807 and in 1820, those found guilty of trafficking woud also be charged with piracy but those laws didn't stop Timothy Meaher and William Foster from sailing the Clotilda to West Africa in 1860.

Oluale Kossola was nineteen years old when he was captured by a warring tribe in West Africa and held in a barracoon (stockade) until Meaher and Foste Slave narrative documenting Oluale Kossola's life from pre-capture to freedom

The importation of African slaves to the United States had been abolished in 1807 and in 1820, those found guilty of trafficking woud also be charged with piracy but those laws didn't stop Timothy Meaher and William Foster from sailing the Clotilda to West Africa in 1860.

Oluale Kossola was nineteen years old when he was captured by a warring tribe in West Africa and held in a barracoon (stockade) until Meaher and Foster purchased and transported him across the Atlantic Ocean to Alabama. He never understood why "they bring us ’way from our soil and workee us hard de five year and six months.'” and then "we work for money and gittee in de ship and go back to our country. We think Cap’n Meaher and Cap’n Foster dey ought take us back home. But we think we save money and buy de ticket ourselves. . . . We work hard and try save our money. But it too much money we need. So we think we stay here."

In 1931, folklorist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston spent three months with Kossola, the last survivor of the Clotilda. His stories, written as he told them and words spelled as she understood them must be read slowly—not only to understand the diction but to also fully appreciate the depth of the story and the impact of the illegal slave trade. (It is said that Meaher and Foster sailed on a bet that they couldn't be caught.)

Kossola, known as Cudjo Lewis in Alabama, was one of thirty-two who founded Africatown in 1866 from parcels of land the freed slaves purchased from Meaher. It is now called Plateau. He died in 1935 at age 86. His story however, was not published until 2018—in 1931, Hurston refused the publisher's request to change the dialect and then focused her attention on other projects. Commentary by editor Deborah Plant and a 1975 essay by Alice Walker ("Looking for Zora Neale Hurston") add context to Hurston's life and her pursuit of documenting and telling the stories of black Southerners. ...more

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Jan 12, 2021 Jaclyn Bales rated it really liked it

This is the story of Oluale Kossala or Cudjo Lewis, as he was called after being ripped from Africa and taken to America. Kossala’s account of his capture in Africa at the age of 19 by a neighboring tribe, his weeks in the barracoon or stocakade prior to being bought by white Americans, his trip through the middle passage on the last slave ship to make the journey, his 5 years in slavery, and his “release” after the civil war is truly one of a kind because it depicts one mans journey that spanne ...more

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