Zora Neale Hurston and the 'Barracoon' Manuscript

When you explore Barracoon, you'll discover one of literature's most remarkable stories of suppression and perseverance. Zora Neale Hurston, trained by anthropologist Franz Boas, spent two months with Cudjo Lewis — the last known survivor of the Clotilda slave ship — capturing his testimony in authentic phonetic dialect. Publishers rejected the manuscript for decades, citing the dialect and economic risk. It wasn't released until 2018, nearly 90 years later. There's far more to this extraordinary story than you'd expect.

Key Takeaways

• Hurston studied under Franz Boas at Barnard College, whose emphasis on folklore collection shaped her rigorous fieldwork methods.
• She spent two months with Kossula, sharing meals and building trust through consistent visits and financial support.
• Hurston produced a rare five-minute silent film of Kossula in 1928, titled Kossula: Last of the Takkoi Slaves.
• Viking Press rejected the manuscript over Hurston's insistence on preserving Kossula's authentic phonetic dialect.
• *Barracoon* remained unpublished for decades, finally released in 2018 through an annotated edition by Amistad Press.

How Hurston's Anthropology Career Led Her to Cudjo Lewis

Zora Neale Hurston's path to Cudjo Lewis began in the classroom. As a graduate student at Barnard College, she studied under Franz Boas, the "father of anthropology," who pushed her toward collecting folklore and preserving African-American cultural remnants. His Boas mentorship shaped her approach to strict, accurate field methods, ensuring she captured Black culture without distortion.

In 1927, Boas recommended her for a $1,400 fellowship through the American Folklore Society, funding a six-month expedition through the South. Her planned itinerary prioritized Mobile, Alabama, because Kossola — also known as Cudjo Lewis — was aging. She interviewed him that same year, publishing his account in The Journal of Negro History. That first encounter planted the seed for what would eventually become the Barracoon manuscript. Hurston also captured her time with Lewis on film, producing a five-minute silent film titled Kossula: Last of the Takkoi Slaves in 1928.

The manuscript itself was not published during Hurston's lifetime, but Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo was finally released in an annotated edition in 2018, bringing Lewis's firsthand account of capture, enslavement, and life in Africatown to a wide audience for the first time. Publishers had long resisted releasing the work because Hurston insisted on preserving Lewis's phonetic dialect rather than converting his speech to standard English, a decision that became the primary barrier to publication.

How Hurston Found *Barracoon*'s Last Slave Ship Survivor

When Hurston arrived, she didn't just conduct interviews—she embedded herself in Lewis's community memory, building trust through consistent visits. Charlotte Mason's monthly allowance for Lewis's fruit and tobacco helped open those conversations further.

What Hurston uncovered went beyond Lewis; she also secretly located another surviving African 200 miles upstate on the Tombigbee River, describing him as an even better talker. Her 1926 commission from Carter G. Woodson first brought her to Lewis as a subject for The Journal of Negro History. Trained under Franz Boas, Hurston approached her fieldwork as part of an anthropological movement aimed at debunking scientific racism. This spirit of unflinching inquiry into race and identity echoes the work of writers like James Baldwin, who similarly believed that honest examination of painful social truths required both courage and deliberate distance from convention.

Inside the Barracoon Interviews: What Cudjo Lewis Actually Said

Memory, for Cudjo Lewis, wasn't abstract—it was visceral, specific, and immediate. His oral testimony to Hurston revealed details you'd never expect someone to retain after decades of trauma and displacement.

His linguistic retention surfaced in striking ways. He remembered:

• His birth name, Kossula, and his mother's full name
• The exact structure of his father's nine-child first family
• The sensory details of the slave raid—burning homes, scattered kin
• The physical reality of barracoon confinement with 100+ captives

Cudjo didn't soften anything. He described the raid, the selection process, and the Middle Passage with blunt, emotional precision. Hurston captured his voice authentically, dialect intact. What you're reading in Barracoon isn't a reconstruction—it's a man's living memory, delivered directly. Hurston spent two months with Kossula, sharing meals of clingstone peaches, sitting through silences, and being chased away on days when memory was simply too heavy to carry.

After surviving slavery, Cudjo and other Clotilda survivors went on to found Africatown in Plateau, a community located just three miles from Mobile, Alabama, where his legacy is honored today with a commemorative marker and bust. Much like Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, which remains a definitive text on the Black experience in America, Barracoon endures as an irreplaceable record of racial injustice told through an authentic individual voice.

Why Hurston's Barracoon Stayed Unpublished for Decades?

Decades of silence surrounded Barracoon for reasons that were structural, editorial, and racial all at once. You'll find that publishing barriers emerged from multiple directions simultaneously. Viking Press rejected the manuscript because Hurston refused to abandon Cudjo Lewis's dialect, prioritizing authorial ethics over commercial convenience.

Publishers during the Great Depression wouldn't risk "Negro material" in a collapsed economy, and ownership disputes with Carter Woodson further paralyzed independent publication efforts. The manuscript's unflinching examination of African complicity in the slave trade made publishers nervous about public backlash.

Even after Hurston's reputation grew, scholars overlooked Barracoon, partly due to its conflation with a plagiarized 1927 article. It took the Zora Neale Hurston Trust's 2016 intervention and Amistad's courage to finally release it in 2018. Robert Hemenway's 1977 biography further compounded the manuscript's neglect by grouping it alongside the disgraced plagiarized article, reinforcing the mistaken perception that the work lacked scholarly credibility. For readers seeking deeper engagement with the text today, study resources such as eNotes offer tools including 48-hour free trials and premium PDF downloads to support comprehensive analysis.

What Kossola's Words in Barracoon Reveal That No Other Source Does

• His birth name, Kossola, roots identity in African soil rather than bondage
• His phrase "word-changer" for interpreter reflects linguistic preservation of Bantè speech patterns
• His description of tears running inside conveys grief no census box contains
• His account of Dahomean warriors gives you the raid through a victim's eyes

You're not reading about slavery—you're hearing it, directly, in Kossola's own voice. His testimony survives as one of the only firsthand accounts of the Middle Passage from someone who was actually captured in West Africa and transported to America.

He and other survivors deliberately named their settlement Africa Town to symbolically recreate African soil within the United States and preserve the traditions they had been forced to leave behind.