Barracoon (12 page)

AFRICATOWN

At the end of the Civil War, once they learned they were free, Kossola and his compatriots began to plan their repatriation. They soon realized that their meager earnings would not be adequate to live on and allow them to save enough money to fulfill their dreams of returning to Africa. Also unaware of the activities of the American
Colonization Society, they resolved to re-create Africa in America. Toward that end, the community of Africans elected Kossola to approach Timothy Meaher about granting them some land on which to rebuild their lives as a free people.

“You made us slave,” Kossola told Meaher. “Now dey make us free but we ain' got no country and we ain' got no lan'. Why doan you give us piece dis land so we kin buildee ourself a home?”
⁴³
Meaher's response was one of indignation. “Fool do you think I goin' give you property on top of property? I tookee good keer my slaves in slavery and derefo' I doan owe dem nothing? You doan belong to me now, why must I give you my lan'?”
⁴⁴
Kossola and the others rented the land until they were able to buy it from the Meahers and other landowners. The parcels they bought became Africatown, which was established by 1866.

Their African Dream was inextricably bound up with Timothy Meaher's American Dream, and their dream of return would be forever deferred. But the survivors of the
Clotilda
would work together to create a community that embodied the ethos and traditions of their homeland. In its founding and government, Africatown was similar to other black towns, writes Sylviane Diouf. But it was distinguished by the fact of its ethnicity. Although some African Americans were numbered among them as spouses and founders, Africatown “was not conceived of as a settlement for “‘blacks,' but for Africans.”
⁴⁵

Africatown was their statement about who they were, and it was a haven from white supremacy and the ostracism
of black Americans. The bonds the Africans created in the barracoons, on the ships, and in servitude were the source of their survival and resilience, and the foundation of their community.
⁴⁶

Africatown is more than a historic site. It is a place expressive of African ingenuity and a prime model of the processes of African acculturation in the American South.

As Africatown is more than a cultural legacy, Oluale Kossola was not just a repository of black genius, tapped for a few stories, tales, and colorful phrases, and Zora Neale Hurston knew this. She did not perceive
Barracoon
as another cultural artifact illustrating the theoretical characteristics of Negro expression but as one, singular, portrait of black humanity. “Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh,” as Ta-Nehisi Coates writes.
⁴⁷
It is a particular and specific woman or man. It is Kossola, and his wife, Abilé, their six children, the host of Africans who founded Africatown, and their shipmates who survived the
Clotilda
.

We must courageously embrace this history because it is, as James Baldwin understood, “literally
present
in all that we do,” and the power of this history, when we are unconscious of it, is tyrannical.
⁴⁸
The history of Kossola's life elucidated, for Zora Neale Hurston, “the universal nature of greed and glory” as an “inescapable fact” of our common humanity. It is this common humanity that Hurston struggled to make the world understand.

If we view
Barracoon
as just another brilliant example of Hurston's anthropological genius, we are gravely mis
taken and we do not fathom the full import of her objectives as a social scientist. In her endeavor to collect, preserve, and celebrate black folk genius, she was realizing her dream of presenting to the world “the greatest cultural wealth on the continent,” while simultaneously contradicting social Darwinism, scientific racism, and the American pseudoscience of eugenics. She was refuting the tenets of biological determinism that were at the heart of the Great Race theory. The body of lore Hurston gathered was an argument against such notions of cultural inferiority and white supremacy, and it defied the idea of European cultural hegemony as it also questioned the narrative of white nationalism.

Barracoon
is a counternarrative that invites us to break our collective silence about slaves and slavery, about slaveholders and the American Dream. Completed in 1931, the narrative of Oluale Kossola has finally found its audience, and Zora Neale Hurston's first book-length work has found a taker and is now finally published. Though nearly a century has passed between the completion of the final draft of her manuscript and the publication of
Barracoon
, the questions it raises about slavery and freedom, greed and glory, personal sovereignty and our common humanity are as important today as they were during Kossola's lifetime.

FROM THE ZORA NEALE HURSTON TRUST

The trustees of the Zora Neale Hurston Trust wish to thank those who contributed to the publication of Zora Neale Hurston's never-published work,
Barracoon
. We have no claim as the authors of this work; however, we are the custodians of Zora Neale Hurston's legacy, and, as such, we are committed to preserving her standing in the world as a literary icon and an anthropological giant. We gratefully acknowledge our agent, editors, and publishers, as well as the academics and devotees whose shared love of Zora's
Barracoon
led them to embrace publication of this work.

We are thankful for the efforts of the Joy Harris Literary Agency staff and for those of Joy Harris, our agent, who worked tirelessly to promote this work. Joy provided
us with the guidance and the steady hand we needed to supply her with a publishable manuscript. Despite our sometimes moving in different directions, she was able to corral our activities so we could deliver the story. Joy loved Cudjo Lewis from the start and shared our faith that Cudjo's story was meant to be published. We also acknowledge Adam Reed, Joy's valued associate. He was a force in our effort to prepare a completed manuscript worthy of review by Joy and publishers. No job was too small for his attention.

For their recognition of
Barracoon
as an invaluable contribution to the story of slavery in America, we want to express our gratitude to our publishers at HarperCollins: Tracy Sherrod, the editorial director of Amistad; Jonathan Burnham, the publisher of HarperCollins; and Amy Baker, the associate publisher of Harper Perennial and Harper Paperbacks. All of them determined that Cudjo Lewis's story had to be told, and they helped make it possible for
Barracoon
to be born. Additionally, we extend our appreciation to Diane Burrowes, senior director of academic and library markets, and to Virginia Stanley, the director of academic and library markets, who contributed their expertise to this publication.

To Deborah G. Plant, PhD, we extend our most heartfelt appreciation for her editorial work. Deborah brought her love of all things Zora to this project. We are grateful for her diligence in researching issues related to the manuscript and for providing answers to questions that could be posed. We are also grateful for Deborah's
appreciation and explanation of Zora's use of ethnographic methodology in telling Cudjo's story. She was in tune with Zora's energy throughout.

We extend our continuing gratitude to the many scholars who have been champions of Zora Neale Hurston. Without their love and advocacy, Zora's works and her personal vitality may have been lost to generations. We are grateful to Alice Walker, who became a crusader for Zora and pronounced her “a Genius of the South.” We are grateful to Cheryl Wall, who knows so much about Zora and has generously shared her findings with others. We are grateful to Valerie Boyd, who helped us know, understand, and love Zora through her biography of Zora's life. We are grateful to Kristy Andersen, who introduced so many to Zora through her documentary work on Zora's life.

We owe a debt of gratitude to Howard University's Moorland-Spingarn Research Center and its curator, Joellen ElBashir, for serving as the custodian of the manuscript of
Barracoon
for so many years. We are also grateful to the Mobile Historical Society for providing historical documents that certify the life of Cudjo Lewis in America.

We can never repay those who have loved and supported Zora in her quest to leave us with a cultural legacy on many levels, but we can rejoice with them in celebrating Zora's acceptance today as one of the world's foremost folklorists as well as a literary genius.
Barracoon
is a perfect example of Zora's talent in many genres. It is a late publication, but it is timely in its instruction.

FROM DEBORAH G. PLANT

I am forever appreciative of the legacy of Zora Neale Hurston and grateful for her magnanimous spirit. I am thankful for the direction of Dr. Linda Ray Pratt, of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, who was there at the beginning of things with me and my investigations into the life and works of Zora Neale Hurston. It is with an abundance of gratitude that I thank the members of the Zora Neale Hurston Trust (Lois Gaston, Lucy Ann Hurston, and Nicole Green) for the opportunity to be of service in the publication of Hurston's narrative.

For her support and assistance, I thank my sister, Gloria Jean Plant Gilbert, who traveled with me to Africatown and captured some of the spirit of the place in the photos she took. For their expertise, direction, patience, and kindness, I offer thanks and deep appreciation to Joy Harris of the Joy Harris Literary Agency and her associate, Adam Reed; and to HarperCollins editorial director Tracy Sherrod and her assistant, Amber Oliver.

I wish to thank those writers whose works have contributed to our knowledge about the Africans who were smuggled into the United States aboard the
Clotilda
, enslaved in Alabama, and who, in freedom, founded a town and left a rich heritage. I appreciate the generous spirit of Ms. Mary Ellis McClean, Kossola's great-granddaughter who spoke with us at the Union Missionary Baptist Church (organized originally as the Old Landmark Baptist Church in 1872), of which Kossola was a founding member. I offer especial thanks to Sylviane A. Diouf and
Natalie S. Robertson for their groundbreaking research and publications on “the
Clotilda
Africans”; and to Lynda Marion Hill for her perceptive analysis of Hurston's efforts in writing the
Barracoon
narrative. I extend immense thanks and gratitude to Ms. Patrice Thybulle, my dedicated research assistant and collaborator on the Maafa Project, initiated during my tenure at the University of South Florida. I thank Howard University librarian and curator Joellen ElBashir for her assistance. And I express appreciation to my parents, Alfred and Elouise Porter Plant, and Roseann and Henry Carter for their inspiration; and I thank Phyllis McEwen, Gwendolyn Lucy Bailey Evans, Joanne Braxton, Virginia Lynn Moylan, Valerie Boyd, Cathy Daniels, Marvin Hobson, Lois Plaag, and Sam Rosales for their ongoing friendship and support.

I honor the ancestral spirit of Oluale Kossola (Cudjo Lewis) and thank him for his poignant life story.

Clotilda
, The
: A 120 81/91-ton schooner built by William Foster in Mobile, Alabama, in 1855. It was 86 feet long, 23 feet wide, and 6
11
/
12
feet deep. Two-masted, with one deck, it was built for speed. These types of ships were designed during the years of suppression of the traffic, in order to outmaneuver those ships that were policing the waters. The US Constitution declared those engaged in the illegal importation of Africans into America to be pirates and declared that those apprehended would be charged with piracy—and hanged. In collaboration with Timothy Meaher, William Foster refitted the
Clotilda
as a “slaver.” Its journey to Africa represented their first smuggling venture, and it would be their last. In March 1860, Foster set sail for Ouidah on the coast of West Africa, where he illegally bought 125 Africans who were held in the barracoons of Dahomey. Fearful of being captured by two approaching steamers, Foster weighed anchor and left fifteen Africans on the beach. After about forty-five days on the Atlantic, Foster docked near Twelve-Mile Island off the Mobile River. After disembarkation of the Africans, Foster burned and scuttled the
Clotilda
at Big Bayou Canot, in an effort to cover up his piracy. The
Wanderer
, which transported more than four hundred Congolese captives to Jekyll Island, Georgia, in November 1858, had long been
considered the last vessel to import Africans illegally into the United States. With its documented 1860 arrival into Mobile Bay, the
Clotilda
now holds that unfortunate distinction.

Illegitimate Trade
: A series of constitutional acts transformed trans-Atlantic trafficking from a “legitimate” to an “illegitimate” activity. American participation in trans-Atlantic trafficking can be traced to the colonial era. As the largest trafficking enterprises in the colonies at that time were run out of Rhode Island, the D'Wolf family, headed by James and Charles D'Wolf, ran the largest trafficking enterprise in Bristol, Rhode Island, after the American Revolution. By the end of the eighteenth century, American vessels, along with the British and the Portuguese, would dominate the Atlantic traffic in human beings. In 1794, the US Congress passed legislation that outlawed the building of or fitting out of ships for the purpose of importing Africans into America or for trafficking enterprises in other countries. Penalties ranged from fines of $200 to $2,000. The March 1807 Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves declared all participation in international trafficking to be illegal and abolished the importation of Africans into the United States. Fines for violation were increased to upwards of $20,000 and imprisonment of at least five but not more than ten years. The act was to take effect on January 1, 1808. The 1820 act charged participants in the traffic with piracy, which carried a penalty of death. Although international trafficking had been deemed illegal or “illegitimate,” proslavery adherents continued to engage in it. The United Kingdom also abolished trans-Atlantic trafficking in 1807. In its efforts to suppress the traffic in humans, it encouraged and promoted “legitimate trade” with Africa. Such trade entailed the exchange of “legitimate” commodities from Africa, such as the agricultural exports of palm oil, palm kernels, kola nuts, and ground nuts.

Jim Crow
:
Jim Crow
refers to the social system that developed in the United States following the Civil War. The name “Jim
Crow” is based on a character developed by “the Father of American minstrelsy,” Thomas Rice, who performed in blackface. Rice appropriated the song about Jim Crow from black folklore and created a stereotypical character of blacks as lazy, ridiculous, worthless subhumans. Rice's derogatory depictions of black people were popular with his white audiences. The name “Jim Crow” then became synonymous with the system of racial segregation that cast blacks as inferior beings while elevating whites as superior. In 1896, the US Supreme Court's decision in
Plessy v. Ferguson
would sanction Jim Crow. The decision upheld the doctrine of separate but equal, which segregated the races in public spheres and effectively ushered in de jure segregation in American society.

Krooboys
: Krooboys and Kroomen were a group of seafarers and ship laborers who settled along the West African coastline. They originate from the Kru (or Kroo) peoples of the Liberian hinterlands who migrated to the west coast. During the eighteenth century, they worked as sailors and laborers for the British and Europeans in their maritime commerce with West Africa. They worked aboard trafficking vessels and operated as dealers, brokers, and middlemen for those looking to purchase Africans. They were known for their skills in maneuvering canoes filled with people or merchandise through the rough surf, onto the beach, or out to ships.

Maafa
: Marimba Ani defines
Maafa
as a Ki-Swahili term that means disaster and the human response to it. The term refers to the disruption and uprooting of the lives of African peoples and the continuous commercial exploitation of the African continent—from the fifteenth century to the era of Western globalization. The African Maafa entails the multidirectional, violent, and catastrophic phenomenon that pervaded the entire African continent, not just its western coast. Thus the concept also encompasses the trafficking of Africans across the Sahara, the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean,
which occurred centuries before the commencement of trans-Atlantic trafficking.

Middle Passage
: The Middle Passage describes the transoceanic route taken by trafficking vessels from the west coast of Africa to the Americas. It also refers to the middle leg of what is called “the triangular slave trade”: Ships originating in England or Europe would sail to the African coast to exchange manufactured goods for African captives; Africans were then sold or exchanged in the Americas for raw materials (cotton, sugar, coffee, tobacco); ships laden with these materials would then make the return journey from the Americas to Europe. The length of the voyage from African shores to ports in the Caribbean and the Americas varied. The voyage from Africa to Brazil would take at least a month. From Africa to the Caribbean or North America could take two or three months. Other variables such as wind, inclement weather, mutiny, rebellion, or escape from other vessels would hasten or retard a ship's passage.

Mosé, Fort
: In the late 1600s, Africans escaping enslavement in the British colonies settled in Spanish territory near Saint Augustine, Florida. In 1738, the Spanish governor, Manuel de Montiano, fortified the settlement with the construction of Fort Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mosé, granting the settlers citizenship and sanctuary and thereby establishing the first free black town in North America. The fort would become the northernmost point of Spanish defense against the British, and the townsmen would become members of the Fort Mosé militia. Captain Francisco Menendez, who had escaped enslavement in South Carolina, was appointed as the “chief” of the town. Under his leadership, the Fort Mosé militia, along with Native Americans and the European residents of Saint Augustine, defended the fort against a British attack in 1740. Fort Mosé remained a haven for Africans, African Americans, and Native Americans until the Peace of Paris agreement of 1763 that ceded Florida to the British.

Orì
á¹£
à
: In
the spiritual traditions of the Yoruba people of West Africa, the supreme deity is manifested as the trinity of Olodumaré, Olofi, and Olorun. The Orìs.à are a reflection of these divine expressions. They represent a pantheon of deities who embody specific qualities of the cosmos. Among the pantheon are Obatalá, Oshún, Yemayá, Changó, Oyá, and Ogún. Traditional ceremonies serve to unite humans with the spirit realm and restore balance between humans and nature. Ancestral reverence is an integral aspect of the tradition. In the Americas, African spirituality was a source of resilience and resistance to the bleak and absurd reality into which African peoples had been forced. The Orìs.à tradition, along with other spiritual traditions of West African peoples, merged with the religious traditions of European Christianity and those of indigenous Amerindians to create new belief systems such as Vodun, Hoodoo, Obeah, Santería, and Candomblé. Zora Neale Hurston investigated and documented these syncretic religions in
Mules and Men
(1935) and
Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica
(1938).

Roche, Emma Langdon
: Emma Roche was born on March 26, 1878, in Mobile, Alabama. She was the daughter of Thomas T. and Annie Laura (James) Roche. Emma Roche was an artist, writer, housekeeper, and farmer. She wrote
Historic Sketches of the South
in 1914 and illustrated the book with her own drawings and photographs of the residents of Africatown.

“Slaver”
: Trafficking vessels were called “slavers,” because those involved in the trafficking did not see the Africans they transported as human beings, but instead as
slaves
(i.e., chattel, commodities, cargo, merchandise). And they treated them accordingly. Aboard these vessels Africans experienced shock or melancholia, knowing neither their destiny nor their fate. The holds were dark and fetid. In the beginning of these oceanic voyages, the mortality rate for Africans could be as high as 50 percent. During this period, “tight packing” was a common method
of loading Africans into the ships. In order to minimize loss due to high mortality rates, captains had their crew cram as many people as possible into a hold, allowing little room to turn or sit up. On some ships, Africans were laid one on top of the other, stacked like logs. In later centuries, changes in the design of the ships, regulations, and the desire for greater profit would modify the methods used to transport Africans.

“Slavery”
: The term
slave
originally meant
captive
, and it was historically associated with the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe, who were conquered by western Europeans in the ninth century and forced into conditions of servitude. The same term has been used in reference to African peoples whom western Europeans pressed into servitude in the Caribbean and the Americas. It has also been used to refer to the condition of servitude practiced in Africa prior to Arab-Islamic and European encroachments into Africa.

Characteristic features of slavery are that people perceived to be different from the larger society can be subjugated and exploited for their labor; that these people have no rights and are considered property, a thing owned; and that they and their offspring inherit this condition for life.

In the United States, slavery has been called the Peculiar Institution. As it was elsewhere in the Americas, this institution was violent, inhumane, and racialized.

“Slavery” (African “Internal Slavery”)
: Forms of servitude existed in Africa prior to the invasions of Arab Muslims and Europeans—but it was not slavery. Slavery was but one form of servitude or labor practiced in various civilizations from antiquity to the modern day. Serfdom, clientage, wage-labor, pawnship, and communal work represent other kinds and conditions of labor that were practiced. The conditions of labor in ancient or early African society were more characteristic of conditions associated with feudalism, not slavery, and were more aptly described as relationships of dependency.

Africans in conditions of servitude could be subject to labor others refused to perform, labor that was considered degrading, tedious, or dangerous. They could be subjected to maltreatment and even be used as living sacrifices. But for the most part, Africans in relationships of dependency had rights and maintained their human dignity. After the mid-fifteenth century, the systems of servitude among West Africans were transformed, as trans-Atlantic trafficking became integral to the politics and economy of African societies.

Trans-Atlantic trafficking also transformed the identity of people on the African continent and their relationship to one another. As people were now perceived as slaves, those outside a particular group—in terms of ethnicity, ideology, or lineage—became subject to capture and deportation. In spite of the ethnic and cultural diversity of the people on the continent, Europeans and Americans referred to them, collectively, as “Africans.” This resulted in the belief that “‘Africans' sold their own sisters and brothers.” This tendency to generalize the varied ethnic groups as “Africans” has been a continuous source of conflict for the people of Africa and the African diaspora.

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
: The business of ferrying captive Africans across the Atlantic to other lands for the cultivation of cash crops was initiated by the Portuguese in the mid-fifteenth century. Prince Henrique of Portugal (1394–1460), known throughout Europe as “Henry the Navigator,” knew well of the vast wealth of Africa and Asia. No longer content with negotiating with Moors, Berbers, and Arab middlemen for the goods and people of sub-Saharan Africa, he sought direct access to these continents—not over land, but by sea. Before trade for African bodies was established and regularized, European seafarers engaged in the typical “smash and grab” approach of acquiring Africans for use as slaves. In 1441, the Portuguese seized twelve Africans from the west coast of Africa. Subsequent actions of that sort resulted in retaliation. The Portuguese then established formal compacts with
African officials. Portuguese colonists, settled in the island of Madeira, had begun experimentation with the cultivation of sugarcane. Initially, they imported eastern Europeans and Africans to perform this labor. However, Constantinople's fall to the Turks in 1453 closed the “slave ports” of the Black Sea to western Europeans seeking eastern European slaves. In the aftermath of this turn of events, the majority of the laborers in the cane fields of Madeira came from the African continent. The Portuguese replicated this model of cultivating sugarcane with the labor of Africans in the plantations of the Caribbean and the Americas. Other European nations, England, and the English colonies in North America emulated the Portuguese. Well after the abolition of trans-Atlantic trafficking by most European nations and the United States, the Portuguese would persist in their trafficking enterprises until 1870.