Real Story Went Unpublished Almost a Century Because Author Refused to Bend the Truth
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) author, philanthropist and filmmaker exposed racial struggles of black people specifically in the South. We are all familiar with many of the great writings of Author Zora Neale Hurston, but did you know Hurston wrote a book about the last "Black Cargo" survivor Cudjoe Kazoola Lewis entitled Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"? The book was not published until 2018 because originally not one publishing house it was sent to would publish the true story in its raw detail, and Hurston refused to compromise. She cared more about the truth than notoriety. Sadly, it took 87 years before the literary world and publishers would catch on and realize this story was a piece of history that needed to be told. Hurston did not live to see the day her book would be published.
The book was created and based on the interviews that Hurston did with Cudjo Lewis. She spent more three months in African Town (Plateau) to get an in-depth knowledge about Lewis’s life trials and the start of African Town. During the time Hurston spent with Lewis they ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard of his home while talking of Cudjo’s past; including memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the traumatic 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. Hurston was able to get Cudjo Lewis on film. Lewis is the only known slave to every be filmed in this manner.
This masterpiece work is available in bookstores everywhere.
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