Barracoon Page 11

  Where conventional slave narratives speak of conversions to Christianity, Kossola’s narrative does also, but it does so while simultaneously expressing the spiritual traditions and customs of his homeland. He hadn’t built up his hope on a future heavenly glory, but rather on a return to his people, a vision that speaks to the centrality of ancestral reverence. Kossola’s nineteen years of life in Africa were more real to him than a declaration of independence in America. His narrative does not recount a journey forward into the American Dream. It is a kind of slave narrative in reverse, journeying backward to barracoons, betrayal, and barbarity. And then even further back, to a period of tranquility, a time of freedom, and a sense of belonging.

  The African diaspora in the Americas represents the largest forced migration of a people in the history of the world. According to Paul Lovejoy, the estimated number of Africans caught in the dragnet of slavery between 1450 and 1900 was 12,817,000.34 The Nobel laureate Toni Morrison dedicated her novel Beloved to “the 60 million and more,” a number inclusive of the “disremembered and unaccounted for” in the Middle Passage.35 Millions suffered capture and survived the passage across the Atlantic, but only a small number of Africans recounted their experiences.

  As Sylviane Diouf points out, “Of the dozen deported Africans who left testimonies of their lives, only [Olaudah] Equiano, [Mahommah Gardo] Baquaqua, and [Ottobah] Cugoano referred to the Middle Passage.”36 Eight of the ten narratives collected in Philip Curtin’s Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans From the Era of the Slave Trade (1967) recount experiences of the Middle Passage. “They give us some notion of the feelings and attitudes of many millions whose feelings and attitudes are unrecorded,” writes Curtin. “Imperfect as the sample may be, it is the only view we can recover of the slave trade as seen by the slaves themselves.”37 Ten years after Curtin’s work, the scholar Terry Alford would exhume from the bowels of oblivion the events of the life of Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima, published as Prince among Slaves: The True Story of an African Prince Sold into Slavery in the American South. His narrative, too, recalls capture and deportation.

  A few enslaved Africans like Olaudah Equiano, who experienced the Passage, acquired the skills to write their own narratives. Others like Kossola, who never learned to read or write, utilized the as-told-to mode of narration. Through this publication, Barracoon extends our knowledge of and understanding about the experiences of Africans prior to their disembarkation into the Americas. Like a relic pulled up from the bottom of the ocean floor, Barracoon speaks to us of survival and persistence. It recalls the disremembered and gives an account for the unaccounted. As an expression of the feelings and attitudes of one who survived the Middle Passage, it is rare in the annals of history.

  THE MAAFA

  “There is a loneliness that can be rocked,” says the narrator in Beloved. “Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smooths and contains the rocker. It’s an inside kind—wrapped tight like skin. Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive, on its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one’s feet going seem to come from a far-off place.”38 It settles into the disjointedness of lives torn asunder by “a sequence of separations”; into the woundedness of a radical and “unbearable dislocation” from home and kin to an estranged place on foreign soil. The loneliness that attends such disruption infuses Kossola’s narrative. It cannot be rocked. “After seventy-five years,” writes Hurston, “he still had that tragic sense of loss. That yearning for blood and cultural ties. That sense of mutilation.”39 It is the existential angst that is consequent to deracination.

  Maafa is a Ki-Swahili term that means disaster and the human response to it.40 The term refers to the disruption and uprooting of the lives of African peoples and the commercial exploitation of the African continent from the fifteenth century to the era of Western globalization in the twenty-first century. Conceptually, the phenomenon of the African Maafa is comprehensive in that it recognizes the extensive and continuous devastation of the African continent and its inhabitants and the continuous plundering that extends the trauma brought about via trans-Atlantic trafficking. For “illegitimate trade” was superseded by the European “scramble for Africa” and colonization of the continent, just as the “Peculiar Institution” of slavery in America was reformulated as the convict-leasing system, an earlier form of the Jail-Industrial Complex. And just as Kossola was ensnared in the institution of slavery in America, his son, Cudjo Lewis Jr., who was sentenced to five years of imprisonment for manslaughter, was handed over to the convict-leasing system in the state of Alabama.

  Oluale Kossola could never fathom why he was in “de Americky soil.” “Dey bring us ’way from our soil and workee us hard de five year and six months.” And once free, he says, “we ain’ got no country and we ain’ got no lan’.”41 And in postbellum America he was subject to the exploitation of his labor and the vagaries of the law, just as he was in antebellum America. He remained confounded by this cruel treatment for the rest of his life. Kossola’s experience was not anomalous. It is representative of the reality of African American people who have been grappling for a sense of sovereignty over their own bodies ever since slavery was institutionalized.

  THE AMERICAN DREAM/DREAMS DEFERRED

  The American Dream is a major theme in the narrative of racial difference. The shadow side of that dream, which is not talked about, entails the plundering of racial “Others.”

  It was this dreaming that inspired both William Foster and Tim Meaher to flout the law of the US Constitution, steal 110 Africans from their homes, and smuggle them up the Mobile River and into bondage. Though Foster and Meaher were charged with piracy, neither was convicted of any crime. No one was held responsible for the theft of Kossola and his companions and their exploitation in America. Of the thousands of Africans smuggled into America after 1808, only one man was held accountable and hanged, and even he died proclaiming his innocence.

  Folklore had it that Tim Meaher decided to smuggle Africans into Alabama on a bet. In April of 1858, while traveling aboard the Roger B. Taney, Meaher boasted to fellow passengers that he could bring Africans into the country in spite of the ban against trans-Atlantic trafficking. He bet “any amount of money that he would ‘import a cargo in less than two years, and no one be hanged for it.’”42 It was Meaher’s dream to own land and become wealthy and to use slave labor to do it. He believed it was his birthright.

  AFRICATOWN

  At the end of the Civil War, once they learned they were free, Kossola and his compatriots began to plan their repatriation. They soon realized that their meager earnings would not be adequate to live on and allow them to save enough money to fulfill their dreams of returning to Africa. Also unaware of the activities of the American Colonization Society, they resolved to re-create Africa in America. Toward that end, the community of Africans elected Kossola to approach Timothy Meaher about granting them some land on which to rebuild their lives as a free people.

  “You made us slave,” Kossola told Meaher. “Now dey make us free but we ain’ got no country and we ain’ got no lan’. Why doan you give us piece dis land so we kin buildee ourself a home?”43 Meaher’s response was one of indignation. “Fool do you think I goin’ give you property on top of property? I tookee good keer my slaves in slavery and derefo’ I doan owe dem nothing? You doan belong to me now, why must I give you my lan’?”44 Kossola and the others rented the land until they were able to buy it from the Meahers and other landowners. The parcels they bought became Africatown, which was established by 1866.

  Their African Dream was inextricably bound up with Timothy Meaher’s American Dream, and their dream of return would be forever deferred. But the survivors of the Clotilda would work together to create a community that embodied the ethos and traditions of their homeland. In its founding and government, Africatown was similar to other black towns, writes Sylviane Diouf. But it was distinguished
by the fact of its ethnicity. Although some African Americans were numbered among them as spouses and founders, Africatown “was not conceived of as a settlement for “‘blacks,’ but for Africans.”45

  Africatown was their statement about who they were, and it was a haven from white supremacy and the ostracism of black Americans. The bonds the Africans created in the barracoons, on the ships, and in servitude were the source of their survival and resilience, and the foundation of their community.46

  Africatown is more than a historic site. It is a place expressive of African ingenuity and a prime model of the processes of African acculturation in the American South.

  As Africatown is more than a cultural legacy, Oluale Kossola was not just a repository of black genius, tapped for a few stories, tales, and colorful phrases, and Zora Neale Hurston knew this. She did not perceive Barracoon as another cultural artifact illustrating the theoretical characteristics of Negro expression but as one, singular, portrait of black humanity. “Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh,” as Ta-Nehisi Coates writes.47 It is a particular and specific woman or man. It is Kossola, and his wife, Abilé, their six children, the host of Africans who founded Africatown, and their shipmates who survived the Clotilda.

  We must courageously embrace this history because it is, as James Baldwin understood, “literally present in all that we do,” and the power of this history, when we are unconscious of it, is tyrannical.48 The history of Kossola’s life elucidated, for Zora Neale Hurston, “the universal nature of greed and glory” as an “inescapable fact” of our common humanity. It is this common humanity that Hurston struggled to make the world understand.

  If we view Barracoon as just another brilliant example of Hurston’s anthropological genius, we are gravely mistaken and we do not fathom the full import of her objectives as a social scientist. In her endeavor to collect, preserve, and celebrate black folk genius, she was realizing her dream of presenting to the world “the greatest cultural wealth on the continent,” while simultaneously contradicting social Darwinism, scientific racism, and the American pseudoscience of eugenics. She was refuting the tenets of biological determinism that were at the heart of the Great Race theory. The body of lore Hurston gathered was an argument against such notions of cultural inferiority and white supremacy, and it defied the idea of European cultural hegemony as it also questioned the narrative of white nationalism.

  Barracoon is a counternarrative that invites us to break our collective silence about slaves and slavery, about slaveholders and the American Dream. Completed in 1931, the narrative of Oluale Kossola has finally found its audience, and Zora Neale Hurston’s first book-length work has found a taker and is now finally published. Though nearly a century has passed between the completion of the final draft of her manuscript and the publication of Barracoon, the questions it raises about slavery and freedom, greed and glory, personal sovereignty and our common humanity are as important today as they were during Kossola’s lifetime.

  Acknowledgments

  FROM THE ZORA NEALE HURSTON TRUST

  The trustees of the Zora Neale Hurston Trust wish to thank those who contributed to the publication of Zora Neale Hurston’s never-published work, Barracoon. We have no claim as the authors of this work; however, we are the custodians of Zora Neale Hurston’s legacy, and, as such, we are committed to preserving her standing in the world as a literary icon and an anthropological giant. We gratefully acknowledge our agent, editors, and publishers, as well as the academics and devotees whose shared love of Zora’s Barracoon led them to embrace publication of this work.

  We are thankful for the efforts of the Joy Harris Literary Agency staff and for those of Joy Harris, our agent, who worked tirelessly to promote this work. Joy provided us with the guidance and the steady hand we needed to supply her with a publishable manuscript. Despite our sometimes moving in different directions, she was able to corral our activities so we could deliver the story. Joy loved Cudjo Lewis from the start and shared our faith that Cudjo’s story was meant to be published. We also acknowledge Adam Reed, Joy’s valued associate. He was a force in our effort to prepare a completed manuscript worthy of review by Joy and publishers. No job was too small for his attention.

  For their recognition of Barracoon as an invaluable contribution to the story of slavery in America, we want to express our gratitude to our publishers at HarperCollins: Tracy Sherrod, the editorial director of Amistad; Jonathan Burnham, the publisher of HarperCollins; and Amy Baker, the associate publisher of Harper Perennial and Harper Paperbacks. All of them determined that Cudjo Lewis’s story had to be told, and they helped make it possible for Barracoon to be born. Additionally, we extend our appreciation to Diane Burrowes, senior director of academic and library markets, and to Virginia Stanley, the director of academic and library markets, who contributed their expertise to this publication.

  To Deborah G. Plant, PhD, we extend our most heartfelt appreciation for her editorial work. Deborah brought her love of all things Zora to this project. We are grateful for her diligence in researching issues related to the manuscript and for providing answers to questions that could be posed. We are also grateful for Deborah’s appreciation and explanation of Zora’s use of ethnographic methodology in telling Cudjo’s story. She was in tune with Zora’s energy throughout.

  We extend our continuing gratitude to the many scholars who have been champions of Zora Neale Hurston. Without their love and advocacy, Zora’s works and her personal vitality may have been lost to generations. We are grateful to Alice Walker, who became a crusader for Zora and pronounced her “a Genius of the South.” We are grateful to Cheryl Wall, who knows so much about Zora and has generously shared her findings with others. We are grateful to Valerie Boyd, who helped us know, understand, and love Zora through her biography of Zora’s life. We are grateful to Kristy Andersen, who introduced so many to Zora through her documentary work on Zora’s life.

  We owe a debt of gratitude to Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center and its curator, Joellen ElBashir, for serving as the custodian of the manuscript of Barracoon for so many years. We are also grateful to the Mobile Historical Society for providing historical documents that certify the life of Cudjo Lewis in America.

  We can never repay those who have loved and supported Zora in her quest to leave us with a cultural legacy on many levels, but we can rejoice with them in celebrating Zora’s acceptance today as one of the world’s foremost folklorists as well as a literary genius. Barracoon is a perfect example of Zora’s talent in many genres. It is a late publication, but it is timely in its instruction.

  FROM DEBORAH G. PLANT

  I am forever appreciative of the legacy of Zora Neale Hurston and grateful for her magnanimous spirit. I am thankful for the direction of Dr. Linda Ray Pratt, of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, who was there at the beginning of things with me and my investigations into the life and works of Zora Neale Hurston. It is with an abundance of gratitude that I thank the members of the Zora Neale Hurston Trust (Lois Gaston, Lucy Ann Hurston, and Nicole Green) for the opportunity to be of service in the publication of Hurston’s narrative.

  For her support and assistance, I thank my sister, Gloria Jean Plant Gilbert, who traveled with me to Africatown and captured some of the spirit of the place in the photos she took. For their expertise, direction, patience, and kindness, I offer thanks and deep appreciation to Joy Harris of the Joy Harris Literary Agency and her associate, Adam Reed; and to HarperCollins editorial director Tracy Sherrod and her assistant, Amber Oliver.

  I wish to thank those writers whose works have contributed to our knowledge about the Africans who were smuggled into the United States aboard the Clotilda, enslaved in Alabama, and who, in freedom, founded a town and left a rich heritage. I appreciate the generous spirit of Ms. Mary Ellis McClean, Kossola’s great-granddaughter who spoke with us at the Union Missionary Baptist Church (organized originally as the Old Landmark Baptist Church in 1872), of which Kossola was a
founding member. I offer especial thanks to Sylviane A. Diouf and Natalie S. Robertson for their groundbreaking research and publications on “the Clotilda Africans”; and to Lynda Marion Hill for her perceptive analysis of Hurston’s efforts in writing the Barracoon narrative. I extend immense thanks and gratitude to Ms. Patrice Thybulle, my dedicated research assistant and collaborator on the Maafa Project, initiated during my tenure at the University of South Florida. I thank Howard University librarian and curator Joellen ElBashir for her assistance. And I express appreciation to my parents, Alfred and Elouise Porter Plant, and Roseann and Henry Carter for their inspiration; and I thank Phyllis McEwen, Gwendolyn Lucy Bailey Evans, Joanne Braxton, Virginia Lynn Moylan, Valerie Boyd, Cathy Daniels, Marvin Hobson, Lois Plaag, and Sam Rosales for their ongoing friendship and support.

  I honor the ancestral spirit of Oluale Kossola (Cudjo Lewis) and thank him for his poignant life story.

  Founders and Original Residents of Africatown*

  “AFRICAN” NAME

  AMERICAN NAME

  ORIGIN

  Pollee/Kupollee

  Allen, Pollee (Pollyon)

  Allen, Lucy

  Allen, Rosalie (Rose)

  Yoruba

  Monabee (Omolabi)

  Cooper, Katie (Kattie)

  Dennison, James

  Yoruba

  South