“At last,” she wrote in a letter of 18 April 1931, “ Barracoon is ready.”ĭid the “thoughts of the ‘black ivory’, the ‘coin of Africa’”, still have no market value? Once Hurston had written up his story, it resonated with humanity as well as drama.

The officer himself was black, but the story might sound wearyingly familiar to the modern Black Lives Matter movement: “He make out he skeered my boy goin’ shoot him and shootee my boy … My po’ Affican boy dat doan never see Afficky soil.”Īnd yet Cudjo became a respected leader in his community, the sexton of the church they built, the “Uncle Cudjo”, to whom people came seeking wisdom, asking for “a parable”.

His youngest son, also called Cudjo, was shot dead by a police officer. They faced tragedy, too: the loss of all Cudjo’s children but Aleck through illness or accident. Then he lifted his wet face: “Thankee Jesus! Somebody come ast about Cudjo! I want tellee somebody who I is, so maybe dey go in de Afficky soil some day and callee my name and somebody dere say, ‘Yeah, I know Kossula.’”Īt the time, Hurston was becoming part of the “Harlem Renaissance”, an artistic and political movement that took pride, rather than shame, in black America’s African origins. When she told him she wanted to hear his life story, she wrote, “His head was bowed for a time. When Hurston hailed him by his African name, it brought tears of joy to his eyes. That certainly seems to have been what Cudjo wanted. “It is time,” he says, “For America to know who these people were.” Mr Lumbers simply says: “Let’s finally publish the book and let the world know what happened.”įor him Barracoon is a testament to his forefather, to all those who travelled in the hold of the Clotilda and who used their freedom – once they got it – to forge a new life for themselves. A book like Barracoon says, ‘Yeah, black lives matter. Valerie Boyd, the author of the acclaimed Hurston biography Wrapped in Rainbows, has been quoted as saying, “We’ve got an open bigot in the White House.

Zora neale hurston the last black cargo