Kossula's Story of Enslavement, Published 87 Years After It Was Written

Kossula's Story of Enslavement, Published 87 Years After It Was Written

Top of Mind with Julie Rose

Baseball Organist, School Suspension, Hadza Diet

Episode: Baseball Organist, School Suspension, Hadza Diet

  • Jun 21, 2019 10:00 pm
  • 23:22 mins

(Originally aired July 20, 2018) Guest: Deborah G. Plant, Literary Critic and Editor of “Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo’” Written by Zora Neale Hurston The last ship to bring enslaved Africans to the United States came after the Atlantic Slave trade had already been banned. So the owners of the Clotilde unloaded their illicit cargo secretly and then sank the ship to hide their crime. The remains of the Clotilde were found last month in Alabama’s Mobile River. It’s a major historical discovery that makes this next conversation worth another listen. One of the enslaved men aboard the Clotilde was Cudjo Lewis. In 1927, when he was 86 years old, he told his story to ethnographer and novelist Zora Neale Hurston, but she couldn’t get it published. That changed last year, when it was published posthumously and became a bestseller. It’s called “Barracoon.”

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