In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama – an Africa-centered community three miles from Mobile – to interview its surviving 86-year-old patriarch Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person 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 50 years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States.

In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau. Spending more than three months there, she talked in more depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the formerly enslaved elder ate peaches and watermelon that grew in his backyard and talked about Cudjo’s past―memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War.

Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo’s unique vernacular, and written from Hurston’s perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the 20th century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all – Black and White – this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.

About the Author

Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist.

She authored four novels (Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934; Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937; Moses, Man of the Mountain, 1939; and Seraph on the Suwanee, 1948); two books of folklore (Mules and Men, 1935, and Tell My Horse, 1938); an autobiography (Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942); and over fifty short stories, essays, and plays.

Hurston was born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Eatonville, Florida.

She attended Howard University, Barnard College and Columbia University, and was a graduate of Barnard College in 1927.

She died in Fort Pierce, in 1960.

In 1973, author Alice Walker had a headstone placed at her gravesite with this epitaph: “Zora Neale Hurston: A Genius of the South.”

About the Editor

Deborah G. Plant is an African American and Africana Studies independent scholar and writer, specializing in the life and works of Zora Neale Hurston.

She is the editor of Hurston’s posthumous New York Times bestseller Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” and The Inside Light: New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston, and is the author of Zora Neale Hurston: A Biography of the Spirit; Every Tub Must Sit on Its Own Bottom: The Philosophy and Politics of Zora Neale Hurston; and Alice Walker: A Woman for Our Times.