An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 1/12/2021
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"My name is not Cudjo Lewis. It Kossola." --from Zora Neale Hurston's "Barracoon"
Cudjo Lewis (neé Oluale Kossola) is named as one of the very last recorded slaves to have been brought over to the United States ...in 1860, literally less than a year before the Civil War broke out. While slavery itself had not yet been outlawed, the slave trade most certainly had been (abolished 1808) --however this did not deter slave smugglers. At some point in the spring of 1860, Lewis was rounded up along with 114 other Africans from the Bante region of what is now the Republic of Benin (Dahomey). After a 3-month voyage from Ouidah to Mississippi in the schooner Clotilda, Lewis and his fellow captives were offloaded in secret by employees of the Irish slave trader Timothy Meaher and his brother Burns. Lewis eventually became the property of another Meaher sibling, James, who owned a mill and a shipyard just north of Mobile, AL.
After emancipation Lewis and 32 of his fellow freedmen established a small independent community called Africatown (a uniquely fascinating sociological study in its own right). The community not only thrived but managed to preserve many of the African traditions of its founders, including the Yoruba language. In 1931 Lewis recounted his amazing tale to author Zora Neale Hurston (see Lesson #25 in this series), but, due in no small part to Hurston's deft method of spelling Lewis's words in a manner that conveyed his uniquely African dialect, the memoir found no willing publisher. Hurston's manuscript languished ...until 2018.
As for the Clotilda itself, it had been sent upriver and burned by the Meahers in an attempt to destroy evidence, however the scuttled hulk was only partially destroyed and sank in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, where it remained undiscovered ...until 2018.
Check out Lewis's compelling account and Hurston's personal observations at: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/barracoon-zora-neale-hurston
Listen to the backstory that inspired singer Shemekia Copeland's "Clotilda's On Fire" from her new album Uncivil War: https://www.ijpr.org/jpr-music/2020-11-02/on-uncivil-war-shemekia-copeland-sets-fire-to-a-relic-of-american-slavery
Next page - Reflections: How to teach about Martin Luther King, Jr.?