Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"

In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama to interview eighty—six—year—old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo’s firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States.

In 1931, Hurston returned to P...