#barracoon

[reasoningdaily]

Real Slaves Speak To Us from the 1930s. Should Be Played In Schools

Armed guards watch a slave being whipped outside a slave enclosure in this 1850 drawing.

Writer Zora Neale Hurston could have had her account of Oluale Kossola, believed to be the last known survivor of the Atlantic slave trade, published 87 years ago. But Hurston’s refusal to change the first-person narrative from Kossola’s dialect into traditional American English led publishers to pass on her manuscript.

Nearly nine decades later, and long after the deaths of both Kossola and Hurston, the book is out. “Barracoon,” released this week, is the story of a teenager who was stolen, shipped and sold into slavery in the U.S., who lived to see freedom and started a proud community of African-Americans that still exists today in Alabama. It’s a testament to Hurston’s journalistic and anthropological prowess — and a continuation of her powerful legacy as a writer.

The history of the slave trade and its effects are often mischaracterized and poorly taught. Can this book bring about a better understanding of the experience of people who were enslaved in America?

Recommended reading for this episode

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 by Edward E. Baptist

12 Years A Slave by Solomon Northup

Zora Neale Hurston: Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings : Mules and Men, Tell My Horse, Dust Tracks on a Road, Selected Articles

Zora Neale Hurston: Recordings, Manuscripts, Photographs, and Ephemera

[semper-legens]

26. Barracoon: The Story of the Last Slave, by Zora Neale Hurston

Owned: No, library Page count: 164 My summary: The story of one of the last survivors of the last slave ship that came to the Americas, as told to Zora Neale Hurston in the 1920s. My rating: 3.5/5 My commentary:

At work a couple of months ago, I did an author spotlight display focusing on Zora Neale Hurston. She's an interesting figure. A black American writer in the early parts of the 20th century, focused on collecting black American stories and folktales alongside some fiction writing. This is a work that went unpublished in her time, the stories collected by her from a man named Cudjoe Lewis, or Oluale Kossola, at the time thought to be the last survivor of the last slave ship that came to America, the Clotilda. It finally got a publisher in 2018, the manuscript having lain in Howard University all the while. So how was it? ...odd.

Let me explain. There is more preface and explanation in this book than actual text, at least in my version of it. The pages written by Hurston are actually relatively short, and give more of an overview than an in-depth discussion of Kossola's life. Which makes sense, don't get me wrong - I completely understand why Kossola wouldn't want to discuss the more traumatic things that happened to him, especially as Hurston was a relative stranger and needed to gain his trust before he would open up to her. Nevertheless, the story is more about Hurston visiting Kossola at times than Kossola's actual life and story, which was a little disappointing. One thing I have to praise, however, is that Kossola's words seem to be recorded as he would have spoken them; Hurston uses the vernacular for Kossola's dialogue, rather than transliterating his words into standard English, which is partially the reason this was not published in her lifetime. It's an admirable effort to preserve a piece of American history, but I'm afraid it made for some pretty light reading.

Next up, a question that can be answered in one word.

[madamemarmot]

Watermelon, like too many other gorgeous things in life, is much too fleeting. 🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉 Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston

[blackwoolncrown]

Reading list for Afro-Herbalism:

A Healing Grove: African Tree Remedies and Rituals for the Body and Spirit by Stephanie Rose Bird

Affrilachia: Poems by Frank X Walker

African American Medicine in Washington, D.C.: Healing the Capital During the Civil War Era by Heather Butts

African American Midwifery in the South: Dialogues of Birth, Race, and Memory by Gertrude Jacinta Fraser

African American Slave Medicine: Herbal and Non-Herbal Treatments by Herbert Covey

African Ethnobotany in the Americas edited by Robert Voeks and John Rashford

Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect by Lorenzo Dow Turner

Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples by Jack Forbes

African Medicine: A Complete Guide to Yoruba Healing Science and African Herbal Remedies by Dr. Tariq M. Sawandi, PhD

Afro-Vegan: Farm-Fresh, African, Caribbean, and Southern Flavors Remixed by Bryant Terry

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston

Big Mama’s Back in the Kitchen by Charlene Johnson

Big Mama’s Old Black Pot by Ethel Dixon

Black Belief: Folk Beliefs of Blacks in America and West Africa by Henry H. Mitchell

Black Diamonds, Vol. 1 No. 1 and Vol. 1 Nos. 2–3 edited by Edward J. Cabbell

Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors by Carolyn Finney

Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C. by Ashanté M. Reese

Black Indian Slave Narratives edited by Patrick Minges

Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition by Yvonne P. Chireau

Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry edited by Camille T. Dungy

Blacks in Appalachia edited by William Turner and Edward J. Cabbell

Caribbean Vegan: Meat-Free, Egg-Free, Dairy-Free Authentic Island Cuisine for Every Occasion by Taymer Mason

Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America by Sylviane Diouf

Faith, Health, and Healing in African American Life by Emilie Townes and Stephanie Y. Mitchem

Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman

Folk Wisdom and Mother Wit: John Lee – An African American Herbal Healer by John Lee and Arvilla Payne-Jackson

Four Seasons of Mojo: An Herbal Guide to Natural Living by Stephanie Rose Bird

Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement by Monica White

Fruits of the Harvest: Recipes to Celebrate Kwanzaa and Other Holidays by Eric Copage

George Washington Carver by Tonya Bolden

George Washington Carver: In His Own Words edited by Gary Kremer

God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks About Life on Sapelo Island, Georgia by Cornelia Bailey

Gone Home: Race and Roots through Appalachia by Karida Brown

Ethno-Botany of the Black Americans by William Ed Grime

Gullah Cuisine: By Land and by Sea by Charlotte Jenkins and William Baldwin

Gullah Culture in America by Emory Shaw Campbell and Wilbur Cross

Gullah/Geechee: Africa’s Seeds in the Winds of the Diaspora-St. Helena’s Serenity by Queen Quet Marquetta Goodwine

High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America by Jessica Harris and Maya Angelou

Homecoming: The Story of African-American Farmers by Charlene Gilbert

Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies by Faith Mitchell

Jambalaya: The Natural Woman’s Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals by Luisah Teish

Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care by Dayna Bowen Matthew

Leaves of Green: A Handbook of Herbal Remedies by Maude E. Scott

Like a Weaving: References and Resources on Black Appalachians by Edward J. Cabbell

Listen to Me Good: The Story of an Alabama Midwife by Margaret Charles Smith and Linda Janet Holmes

Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination by Melissa Cooper

Mandy’s Favorite Louisiana Recipes by Natalie V. Scott

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington

Mojo Workin’: The Old African American Hoodoo System by Katrina Hazzard-Donald

Motherwit: An Alabama Midwife’s Story by Onnie Lee Logan as told to Katherine Clark

My Bag Was Always Packed: The Life and Times of a Virginia Midwife by Claudine Curry Smith and Mildred Hopkins Baker Roberson

My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations by Mary Frances Berry

My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem

On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker by A'Lelia Bundles

Papa Jim’s Herbal Magic Workbook by Papa Jim

Places for the Spirit: Traditional African American Gardens by Vaughn Sills (Photographer), Hilton Als (Foreword), Lowry Pei (Introduction)

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Dr. Joy DeGruy

Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Environmental Heritage by Diane Glave

Rufus Estes’ Good Things to Eat: The First Cookbook by an African-American Chef by Rufus Estes

Secret Doctors: Ethnomedicine of African Americans by Wonda Fontenot

Sex, Sickness, and Slavery: Illness in the Antebellum South by Marli Weiner with Mayzie Hough

Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons by Sylviane Diouf

Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time by Adrian Miller

Spirituality and the Black Helping Tradition in Social Work by Elmer P. Martin Jr. and Joanne Mitchell Martin

Sticks, Stones, Roots & Bones: Hoodoo, Mojo & Conjuring with Herbs by Stephanie Rose Bird

The African-American Heritage Cookbook: Traditional Recipes and Fond Remembrances from Alabama’s Renowned Tuskegee Institute by Carolyn Quick Tillery

The Black Family Reunion Cookbook (Recipes and Food Memories from the National Council of Negro Women) edited by Libby Clark

The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales by Charles Chesnutt

The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham

The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks by Toni Tipton-Martin

The President’s Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas by Adrian Miller

The Taste of Country Cooking: The 30th Anniversary Edition of a Great Classic Southern Cookbook by Edna Lewis

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: An Insiders’ Account of the Shocking Medical Experiment Conducted by Government Doctors Against African American Men by Fred D. Gray

Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape by Lauret E. Savoy

Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine by Bryant Terry

Vibration Cooking: Or, The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl by Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor

Voodoo and Hoodoo: The Craft as Revealed by Traditional Practitioners by Jim Haskins

When Roots Die: Endangered Traditions on the Sea Islands by Patricia Jones-Jackson

Working Conjure: A Guide to Hoodoo Folk Magic by Hoodoo Sen Moise

Working the Roots: Over 400 Years of Traditional African American Healing by Michelle Lee

Wurkn Dem Rootz: Ancestral Hoodoo by Medicine Man

Zora Neale Hurston: Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings: Mules and Men, Tell My Horse, Dust Tracks on a Road, Selected Articles by Zora Neale Hurston

The Ways of Herbalism in the African World with Olatokunboh Obasi MSc, RH (webinar via The American Herbalists Guild)

[southernmermaidsgrotto]

Hoodoo, Rootwork and Conjure sources by Black Authors

Because you should only ever be learning your ancestral ways from kinfolk. Here's a compilation of some books, videos and podcast episodes I recommend reading and listening to, on customs, traditions, folk tales, songs, spirits and history. As always, use your own critical thinking and spiritual discernment when approaching these sources as with any others.

Hoodoo in America by Zora Neale Hurston (1931)

Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston (1936)

Tell my horse by Zora Neale Hurston (1938)

Let Nobody Turn Us Around: An African American Anthology by Manning Marable and Leith Mullings, editors (2003)

Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition by Yvonne P. Chireau (2006)

African American Folk Healing by Stephanie Mitchem (2007)

Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies by Faith Mitchell (2011)

Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo System by Katrina Hazzard-Donald (2012)

Rootwork: Using the Folk Magick of Black America for Love, Money and Success by Tayannah Lee McQuillar (2012)

Talking to the Dead: Religion, Music, and Lived Memory among Gullah/Geechee Women by LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant (2014)

Working the Roots: Over 400 Years Of Traditional African American Healing by Michele Elizabeth Lee (2017)

Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston (2018)

Jambalaya: The Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals by Luisa Teish (2021)

African American Herbalism: A Practical Guide to Healing Plants and Folk Traditions by Lucretia VanDyke (2022)

These are just some suggestions but there's many many more!! This is by no means a complete list.

I recommend to avoid authors who downplay the importance of black history or straight out deny how blackness is central to hoodoo. The magic, power and ashé is in the culture and bloodline. You can't separate it from the people. I also recommend avoiding or at the very least taking with a huge grain of salt authors with ties to known appropriators and marketeers, and anyone who propagates revisionist history or rather denies historical facts and spreads harmful conspiracy theories. Sadly, that includes some black authors, particularly those who learnt from, and even praise, white appropriators undermining hoodoo and other african and african diasporic traditions. Be careful who you get your information from. Keeping things traditional means honoring real history and truth.

Let me also give you a last but very important reminder: the best teachings you'll ever get are going to come from the mouths of your own blood. Not a book or anything on the internet. They may choose to put certain people and things in your path to help you or point you in the right direction, but each lineage is different and you have to honor your own. Talk to your family members, to the Elders in your community, learn your genealogy, divine before moving forwards, talk to your dead, acknowledge your people and they'll acknowledge you and guide you to where you need to be.

May this be of service and may your ancestors and spirits bless you and yours 🕯️💀

[cartermagazine]

Today We Honor Oluale Kossola, Renamed Cudjo Lewis

Zora Neale Hurston tells the story of Cudjo Lewis, who was born Oluale Kossola in what is now the West African country of Benin in her book “Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo.”

A member of the Yoruba people, he was only 19 years old when members of the neighboring Dahomian tribe invaded his village, captured him along with others, and marched them to the coast.

There, he and about 120 others were sold into slavery, after the “Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves" took effect in 1808 slavery was abolished, and crammed onto the Clotilda, the “last” slave ship to reach the continental United States.

The Clotilda brought its captives to Alabama in 1860, just a year before the outbreak of the Civil War. Even though slavery was legal at that time in the U.S., the international slave trade was not, and hadn’t been for over 50 years. Along with many European nations, the U.S. had outlawed the practice in 1808.

After being abducted from his home, Lewis was forced onto a ship with strangers. The abductees spent several months together during the treacherous passage to the United States, but were then separated in Alabama to go to different owners.

“We very sorry to be parted from one ’nother,” Lewis told Hurston. “We seventy days cross de water from de Affica soil, and now dey part us from one ’nother.”

“Derefore we cry. Our grief so heavy look lak we cain stand it. I think maybe I die in my sleep when I dream about my mama.”

“We doan know why we be bring ’way from our country to work lak dis,” he told Hurston. “Everybody lookee at us strange. We want to talk wid de udder colored folkses but dey doan know whut we say.”

Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered in April 1865, Lewis says that a group of Union soldiers stopped by a boat on which he and other enslaved people were working and told them they were free.

He and a group of 31 other freepeople saved up money to buy land near Mobile, which they called Africatown.

CARTER™️ Magazine

[dutzervonmezzenbrau]

a study for barracoon (Helga Testore)

by A͓̽n͓̽d͓̽r͓̽e͓̽w͓̽ ͓̽W͓̽y͓̽e͓̽t͓̽h͓̽ (1976)

[mogai-sunflowers]

MOGAI BHM- Day 11!

happy BHM! today i’m going to be talking about music and literature during the Harlem Renaissance!

Literature During the Harlem Renaissance-

[Image ID: A black-and-white photograph of Langston Hughes, a Black man with short hair. In the photograph, he’s sitting with his arm resting on the back of a chair in front of a table and a bookshelf. He’s smiling widely and wearing a light-colored long-sleeved collared shirt with thin, vertical white stripes. End ID.]

One of the spheres most influenced and prominent during the Harlem Renaissance was that of Black literature. Black writers began to publish works about being Black in America, about Black pride and stories, about forging a racial and cultural identity, and as Black stories began to become more told on stages, they also began to be told more through literature. 

Magazines were a huge part of literature during the Harlem Renaissance- they were opportunities for Black writers to collaborate and reach larger audiences. Some of the most influential magazines of the era include the NAACP-published The Crisis, and Marcus Garvey’s and the UNIA’s N*gro’s World. Publications such as these boldly discussed racial topics and allowed readers to connect with their own racial identities.

The most famous writer of the Harlem Renaissance, indeed one of the most famous and influential American writers ever, is Langston Hughes. Langston was many things- he was a poet, an essayist, a novelist, and an activist. He is most known for his poetry, but all his genres of writing revolved around racial identity. Hughes is known for saying that Black artists rejecting their racial identity stood in the way of them truly creating Black art. 

Langston’s most famous works include The Weary Blues, a poetry collection about Black jazz and blues musicians and Black life in America, famous for incorporating blues and jazz into his writing as well as Black American dialects. He also collaborated with other famous artists like Aaron Douglas and Zora Neale Hurston on the magazine Fire!!, a bold magazine for Black artists focusing on race, sex, intersections, and more. Hughes wrote about and memorialized the Harlem Renaissance in his autobiography The Big Sea.

Zora Neale Hurston was another very famous writer during the Harlem Renaissance. She wasn’t afraid to write in an explicitly Black way- she wrote in Southern Black dialects, about Black pride and autonomy, and didn’t worry about appealing to a white audience, which earned her criticism for being “too black”- a label she wore with pride. She was also known for writing about colorism within Black communities. Zora wrote famous works like “Their Eyes Are Watching God” and “Barracoon”.

The Harlem Renaissance saw the growing popularity of many, many writers. Other famous Harlem Renaissance writers include Countee Cullen, whose poetry chronicled Black lives in America, Claude McKay, whose famous story ‘Home to Harlem’ detailed the life of a Black soldier, James Weldon Johnson, whose famous poem ‘Lift Every Voice And Sing’ has been set to music, and many, many others.

The Harlem Renaissance left a huge legacy on Black literature.

Music During the Harlem Renaissance-

[Image ID: A black-and-white photograph of Louis Armstrong, a Black man with short hair. In the photo, he’s wearing a white, button up, collared undershirt beneath a light-colored suit jacket and a black bowtie, and he’s playing a trumpet. End ID.]

If there’s one aspect of the Harlem Renaissance that has had the most lasting impact on the world, it is music. Two of the world’s most popular, well-known, and influential genres, jazz and blues, were developed by Black musicians around and during the Harlem Renaissance. Developed in New Orleans, jazz music became an international music phenomenon.

Jazz was fast-paced, exciting, and had a focus on musical improvisation, allowing musicians to come up with their own music on the spot. Blues, a post-war musical genre that focused on slowly, passionately expressing deep emotions and difficult truths, became a staple of music in the Harlem musical scene and the Black musical scene across the country. 

One of the staples of the Harlem Renaissance was a vibrant night life- this included many night clubs where Black musicians played music- as time went on, these night clubs became extremely popular, attracting huge crowds every night. They were a beautiful celebration of Black music, culture, and unity, and clubs like this are what led to the rising popularity of many Black musicians during the Harlem Renaissance.

Some of the most famous musicians of the Harlem Renaissance were Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Gladys Bentley, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, among many others! Louis Armstrong is famous for songs like ‘What A Wonderful World’, ‘Hey Dolly’, and ‘La Vie En Rose’. Songs like these are still famous today, as are songs by the likes of Bessie Smith and Duke Ellington.

Jazz and blues music were the beating heart of the Harlem Renaissance, and to this day they are some of the hugest genres in the world, cementing the influence of Black people on the world of music.

Summary-

Literature during the Harlem Renaissance heavily focused on Black identity, pride, experiences, and exploring Black life in America

Famous Harlem Renaissance writers include Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, County Cullen, and Claude McKay

Music during the Harlem Renaissance was largely jazz and blues, two Black music styles

Music performances at night clubs sustained the energy and popularity of the Harlem Renaissance

Famous musicians of the Harlem Renaissance include Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Gladys Bentley, and Cab Calloway

tagging @intersexfairy​ @metalheadsforblacklivesmatter​ @neopronouns​ @justlgbtthings​ @genderkoolaid​ @spacelazarwolf​ 

Sources-

https://macaulay.cuny.edu/seminars/henken08/articles/h/a/r/Harlem_Renaissance_and_Literature_fb80.html#:~:text=The%20Harlem%20Renaissance%20brought%20along,to%20signify%20their%20cultural%20identity. 

https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/langston-hughes-harlem-renaissance 

https://www.zoranealehurston.com/

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/harlem-renaissance-literature-guide 

https://www.history.com/news/harlem-renaissance-writers

https://www.biography.com/musicians/louis-armstrong

https://www.biography.com/musicians/bessie-smith

https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/harlem-renaissance#louis-armstrong 

[trascapades]

📚#ArtIsAWeapon Remembering author, anthropologist, southern Black life storyteller, trailblazer #ZoraNealeHurston, who was born January 7, 1891.

#ZoraNealeHurstonDay

📷 photograph by #CarlVanVechten .

Caption and images reposted from @thefreeblackwomenslibrary It’s Zora Neale Hurston Day ⭐️🖤⭐️

Are you familiar with the life and writing of this legendary free thinking world traveling rule breaking culture defining Black woman icon?

Which one of her novels have you read and enjoyed?

Today we celebrate the birth of a chosen ancestor, spirit guide and muse of The Free Black Women’s Library, also a quintessential Capricorn and role model for Black girl scholars researchers historians anthropologists story tellers and mean muggers world wide!!

Cheers to the goat!!

🖤🖤🖤 🎂🎂🎂🐐🐐🐐🥂🥂🥂

BTW!!!

for those doing The Free Black Women’s Library Reading Challenge feel free to read

THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD for - a book where the characters speak Geechee, Gullah, Creole, patois or AAVE

BARRACOON - a book of history , historical fiction or slave narrative

HITTING A STRAIGHT LICK WITH A CROOKED STICK - collection of stories, poems, letters or prose

DUST TRACKS ON THE ROAD - a memoir

#zoranealehurston

#freeblackwoman

#TFBWL

#tfbwlreads

#tfbwlreadingchallenge

#thefreeblackwomenslibrary #TheirEyesWereWatchingGod #Barracoon #FreeBlackWomensLibrary #HarlemRenaissance #BlackWomenAuthors #BlackGenius

[notchainedtotrauma]

Could they ever understand the dreams of another world that didn't trouble the distinction between state, law, settler, and master ? Or recount the struggle against servitude, captivity, property, and enclosure that began in the barracoon and continued on the ship, where some fought, some jumped, some refused to eat. Others set the plantation on fire, poisoned the master. They had never listened to Lucy Parsons; they had never read Ida B. Wells. Or envisioned the riot as a rally cry and refusal of fungible life. Only a misreading of the key texts of anarchism could ever imagine a place for wayward colored girls.

from Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman

[beardedmrbean]

Hey you can answer this tomorrow, but why women king was made…remember roots? I heard the og mc kunta kenta (Is that a real fucking African name?) didn’t understand what the Europeans was doing on the ports with slaves…even though he would have actually known-ooooh

But as you know that left a (bad) impact onto my community….but I keep realize one huge issue Africans have with my community is we try to keep the sanitize version of the slave trade we were taught even as middle age adults

Expect meee, god this pan Africa hurt us

Also people tried to compare women king to 300 and braveheart…haven’t seen braveheartt…but 300 was meant to be a glorified retelling of the battle of themployae

Women king have to twisted the entire course of history to write it

Roots managed to serve its purpose, at least the original one, suffered from extreme historical inaccuracies in places never saw the remake.

But as you know that left a (bad) impact onto my community….but I keep realize one huge issue Africans have with my community is we try to keep the sanitize version of the slave trade we were taught even as middle age adults

This is Oluale Kossola, his American name is Cudjoe Kazoola Lewis (he chose all but Lewis himself), he's the last known slave with distinct memories of life in Africa before being sold by the dahomey and put on a ship and smuggled into the US, human cargo was illegal by then but greedy and evil people on both sides of the Atlantic kept on doing it anyhow.

You can do some of your own reading if you like, but some highlights from his wiki page are.

In April or May 1860, his village was attacked and Lewis was taken prisoner by female warriors led by King Glele of Dahomey, during an annual dry-season raid for slaves. Along with other captives, he was taken to the slaving port of Ouidah and sold to Captain William Foster of the Clotilda, an American ship recently built in Mobile, Alabama, and owned by businessman Timothy Meaher. The importation of slaves into the United States had been illegal since 1808, but slaves were still routinely smuggled in from Spanish Cuba.

And this is from a article about a book about him

The pathos of the African American experience, told with such tenderness in Barracoon, is matched by its complexity. Hurston herself remarked that in writing Kossola’s harrowing account of how the king of Dahomey profited from raiding and selling members of neighbouring kingdoms, she was deeply affected by the question of African complicity in the slave trade. “The inescapable fact that stuck in my craw,” Hurston wrote, “was my people had sold me and the white people had bought me. That did away with the folklore I had been brought up on – that white people had gone to Africa, waved a red handkerchief at the Africans and lured them aboard ship and sailed away.”

One hell of a reality check right there

Also people tried to compare women king to 300 and braveheart…haven’t seen braveheartt…but 300 was meant to be a glorified retelling of the battle of themployae

ya if they wanted to do a Braveheart comparison they'd need to set it up so that the areas that the dahomey raided set up to fight againt the dahomey

Women king have to twisted the entire course of history to write it

Based on historical events, but we're not going to tell you that we did a 180 on who was doing what.

Could you imagine the fallout if someone made a accurate movie about that, painting all the perpetrators as what they were.

Wonder if finding out that if their ancestors hadn't been forced onto a boat there's a good chance they would have either been worked until they died or used as a human sacrifice might shift some viewpoints a little.

None of that is me expressing anything other than just curiosity, since this is tumblr and we piss on the poor who just want to read here I figure disclaimer is needed.

[olameni]

It occurs to me that books i love the most are also the books that have ruined my life.

I spend a lot of time studying black history and as much as I appreciate knowing the history of my people both in their victories and their suffering, that awareness is largely traumatizing.

For example, reading Patterson discuss missing nuance in the discussions about manumission used to valorize the humanity of a slave owner and learning even a freed slave is still a slave. Because that “freedom” is guaranteed not by an acknowledgment of the humanity of the slave but by prestige of former owner. Freedom as reward and dangled carrot to the still enslaved. Freedom as a flex tantamount to making it rain at the strip club.

Or in Hurston’s Barracoon reading Oluale Kossola describe the raid on his home and subsequent trafficking into slavery.

Such things demand unpacking and processing. Instead it just sits in journal pages and in the back of your mind in an attempt not to come off weird to people.

It changes you and blowing the world up starts making a modicum of sense.

[blackscifimatters]

hey. how ya'll doing? it's been a while.

the kindred tv series is coming in december and it will be my entire world for a while. octavia e. butler is my literary hero (plus, she kinda looks like my late grandmother)

currently watching: andor even though it has a disposable black man problem

currently reading: the city we became, redwood and wildfire, barracoon, call us what we carry, black panther and philosophy, the monsters we defy

past viewings: wakanda forever, interview with the vampire

[shochet]

Tagged by @bawnjourno thank u :3

last song:

As i type this i am actively listening to Ain't No Rest for the Wicked Cage the Elephant

favorite color:

Green :-)

currently watching:

Houusee MD 🦧 (that's wilson)

last movie:

STALKER 1979, showed my pal :3

currently reading:

Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" - Zora Neale Hurston

sweet/spicy/savoury:

Savoury👍

relationship status:

Single and ready to settle 🤰🧑‍🍼😊🙌

current obsession:

Looking at every single individual moment in life from a cultural anth point of view and then exploding :(

last thing i googled:

"Can praying mantis hurt me" cause of this guy

currently working on:

My got-damn site reporrrtt 😭😭😭😭

[blueiight]

I love the brunt of zora neale hurston’s work but she so wrong for lying about the dahomey & lying on cudjoe lewis like dat .

and idk how much of it is hurston& moreso the presumption ppl have made about barracoon being some sort of history… bc it was published at the time in new ebony mag as fictional. and theres this remark on her work (which definitely maps onto barracoon’s prose.. passages about heathens and all)

[tostudyadragonfly]

Yesterday I watched the documentary Descendant (Netflix) and I won’t make a whole post (bc I need to sleep) but I think it’s one of those stories that need to be heard. Thank God for Zora Neale Hurston for capturing so much of that story. In much of the film they read from Barracoon, and this tied the story of Cudjo Lewis, to his lineage, to the current struggle and work of Africatown in Alabama quite beautifully. It really made me want to know so much more about what else has been done since it’s release