
The Last Slave Ship Survivor Gave an Interview in the 1930s - andrewl
https://www.history.com/news/zora-neale-hurston-barracoon-slave-clotilda-survivor
======
goatherders
It is amazing to realize that in the grand scheme of things we are not far
removed from this. Thanks for posting. Interesting read.

~~~
michaelchisari
Around 9% of our population were grown adults when segregation ended. Our
history is nearer than we prefer to admit.

~~~
rayiner
It’s worse than that. It’s not like segregation ended when Brown v. Board was
handed down in 1954. The President had to send the national guard to
desegregate the University of Alabama in 1963. Court supervised desegregation
continues for decades after Brown. Key desegregation decisions were handed
down from the Supreme Court in the late 1960s and in the early 1970s.

Of course there was lots of attempts to end-run around the Civil Rights Act of
1964 that amounted to de jure segregation.

I think a better benchmark is this: public opposition to interracial marriage
flipped (from being the majority view to the minority view) between when
Yahoo! was founded in 1994 and Google in 1998. Clinton was President, Seinfeld
was on the air, and Quake was out.

~~~
tptacek
Nobody has made this argument better than Ta-Nehisi Coates in _The Case For
Reparations_:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-
cas...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-
reparations/361631/)

~~~
Knufen
The idea of reparations after x years seems insane to me. I can understand it
if the people affected are still alive, because that would just be seeking
damage from unjustly treatment. But when it's a about dead
oppressors/oppressed then you are punishing someone for something they didn't
do.

And then of course there is always the discussion about how to calculate the
fair amount.

~~~
wyattpeak
While I don't know if reparations are the right solution, I think it's a bit
rich to suggest that descendants of slaves aren't "people affected" given the
enormous disparity, in almost all metrics, between black and white wellbeing.

~~~
weberc2
But in calculating reparations, wouldn’t you want to compare the wealth
disparity between descendants of slavery and the average per-capita wealth of
the African countries from which the slaves originally came? As opposed to
average white American wealth? Isn’t the former more indicative of the damage
caused by slavery? After all, had there not been slavery, the descendants of
slaves would certainly have very different economic outcomes, right? But it’s
probably not even so simple since many descendants of slaves also have some
European ancestry by way of mixing with white Americans, so maybe we would
need to figure out the degree to which mixing occurred and weight the
calculation accordingly? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but
surely they must be answered before the reparations conversation could be
advanced.

~~~
jrochkind1
We can talk about reparations for colonialism too.

Did you know Haiti was paying back it's "debt" to France for Haitian bodies
"expropriated" from French slavery until 1947?

~~~
weberc2
That’s pretty sad, but I don’t see what that has to do with my questions.

~~~
tptacek
Interestingly, for you in particular, pretty much all of the evils of European
colonialism throughout the world are in scope.

That's because you downthread hazarded the argument that perhaps (compared,
implicitly, to Africans on the African continent) African Americans were
_better off_ as a result of slavery.

That's a reprehensible argument, but at least it puts you on the hook for
points like these.

~~~
weberc2
African Americans are economically better off as a result of slavery than
their African peers. And without slavery, there would be far, far fewer
African Americans than there are today. These are facts; no serious person
disputes them. It’s not a big jump to suggest that slavery was economically
advantageous for the current generation of African Americans.

This is simple reasoning; nothing reprehensible here. However, it would be
reprehensible if I used this one positive outcome to justify slavery, which
I’m very clearly not doing. Slavery is bad even if it did have a positive
outcome.

Of course, none of this “puts me on the hook” for other other unrelated
arguments, nor do they make Haitian slavery relevant to the subject of US
reparations.

~~~
tptacek
You've missed my point. The comparison you're drawing between African
Americans and Africans in Africa (or, _very obviously_ , for that matter in
Haiti) is confounded by the fact that European colonialism set the course for
all those people. You're comparing the experience of people oppressed by
Europeans and Americans with the experience of people oppressed by Americans.

~~~
weberc2
I certainly don’t understand your point. Where did I compare the experience of
people oppressed by Europeans with anyone? Is your argument something like
“Africans in Africa would be as wealthy as white Americans if not for European
colonialism and therefore reparations should be computed accordingly”? This is
the only interpretation that I can come up with, but it still doesn’t make the
Haiti comment relevant.

~~~
jrochkind1
There is simply no way to know what Africa, or the rest of the world, would be
like in 2018 without hundreds of years of history of European colonialism --
with the settlement of the Americas and mass enslavement of Africans being
part of this. To imagine what things would be like in Africa without, is just
science fiction alternate history. European colonialism changed the planet.
And not for the better for most non-Europeans.

~~~
weberc2
I agree about it being impossible to make reasonable determinations about
alternate histories. This is one of the more compelling arguments against
reparations.

~~~
jrochkind1
ridiculous. It is not difficult to make a determination that enslaving
millions of Africans for hundreds of years, and the continued history of
oppression against their descendents, has caused real harm which requires
reparation.

What is ridiculous is you trying to detract from this history by pointing to
an Africa that has _also_ been obviously and inarguably harmed by imperialism.
It is absolutely indefensible.

~~~
weberc2
Thanks for sharing your opinion. Since you didn't put forth an actual
argument, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. Have a good day.

------
wthsx5
> Our grief so heavy look lak we cain stand it. I think maybe I die in my
> sleep when I dream about my mama.

This is haunting.

~~~
Joeboy
Go here and scroll down for lots more amazing Cudjo words:
[http://www.vulture.com/2018/04/zora-neale-hurston-
barracoon-...](http://www.vulture.com/2018/04/zora-neale-hurston-barracoon-
excerpt.html)

~~~
incadenza
I thought the part about the dialect was so interesting. It’s tough for me to
make out what the dialect would have sounded like. I wonder if there are any
remaining parts of the US that use it.

~~~
evincarofautumn
(Disclaimer: I’m into phonetics but not a dialect expert.)

I imagine it would be a blend of his probable native language in Benin,
Yoruba, with the English of 1860s Alabama, Older Southern American English[1].
My best guess for the sound would be to listen to a Beninese speaker of
English[2] and imagine it with more of what’s now considered an old-fashioned
sophisticated Southern accent, and perhaps less French influence. The closest
living relative would probably be African American Vernacular English[3].

It’s important to note that the features of the transcription hint at both his
and her accent: she was transcribing the sounds as best she knew how to make
someone with _her accent_ pronounce them as he did.

Transcribing his pronunciation of “what” as “whut”, for example, points to the
fact that “what” was likely pronounced with [ɑ] in her accent, rhyming with
“cot”, but he pronounced it more or less as we do now, rhyming with “cut”.
Transcribing “like” as “lak” implies he had /aɪ/ glide weakening (to “ah”, as
in “ah do declayuh”) where she didn’t, at least in some contexts—“my” is still
transcribed as such, not “ma”. It’s also likely that he didn’t diphthongise
vowels, so he’d pronounce “maybe” as something like /meːbi/ instead of
/meɪbi/. “Can’t” as “cain” suggests he rhymed it with “cane”, like some AAVE
speakers now. And so on.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Older_Southern_American_Englis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Older_Southern_American_English#Phonology)

[2]:
[http://www.dialectsarchive.com/benin-1](http://www.dialectsarchive.com/benin-1)

[3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-
American_Vernacular_En...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-
American_Vernacular_English)

~~~
incadenza
Awesome, thanks for the info, super interesting.

------
lukewrites
The current issue of The New Yorker also covers the publication of Zora Neale
Hurston's _Barracoon_[1], and what I found most interesting was that Mr.
Kossola was not the last survivor of that slave ship.

> “Oh!” she exclaimed toward the end [of a letter to Langston Hughes], “almost
> forgot”: she had found another survivor of the Clotilda living on the
> Tombigbee River, two hundred miles north of Africatown. The woman was older
> than Kossola, and, according to Hurston, a better storyteller. But there
> can’t be two lasts or more than one only, so Hurston, perhaps believing that
> Kossola’s story would be more valuable if people thought it was unique, told
> Hughes that she planned to keep this other survivor secret: “No one will
> ever know about her but us.”

> Tragically, that proved true. Abandoning her training by Boas, and ignoring
> the dictates of both honesty and history, Hurston forsook the opportunity to
> record the story of another survivor. Later scholars have determined that
> the person Hurston “almost forgot” was most likely a woman named Allie
> Beren, but no film footage records her face, no known photographs document
> her home, no oral histories capture her memories.

The loss of Ms. Beren's story is tragic; that its loss occurred through
Hurston's intentional neglect is infuriating.

1\. [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/14/zora-neale-
hur...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/14/zora-neale-hurstons-
story-of-a-former-slave-finally-comes-to-print)

~~~
cm2012
It wasn't her responsibility just because she was there. There are billions of
unrecorded stories, it's not like she left her under a rock to die or
something.

~~~
SiempreViernes
Well sure, but this is only true if the author is not making any claims about
the accuracy of the first story. If you are selling the story as a ”true”
account, then willfully neglecting such important supporting evidence is
really the closest you can come to writing fiction outright.

~~~
cm2012
I'm responding to the above paragraph, which editorializes:

> "The loss of Ms. Beren's story is tragic; that its loss occurred through
> Hurston's intentional neglect is infuriating."

The comment is about the tragedy of the loss of the 2nd survivor's story
itself.

------
DEFCON28
Not to detract one bit from the evil horror of Americans who purchased him and
brought him to the US but what of the neighboring tribe who captured and sold
him? (As is described in this article, and was news to me.) That’s a story
I’ve never heard told.

~~~
telltruth
You have to also understand that many neighbors hate each other _far far_ more
than a distant enemies regardless of evilness scale. Iran vs Saudi Arabia,
China vs Japan, S Korea vs N Korea, India vs Pakistan, Scotland vs England,
Alabama vs New York :). Many people in these groups will happily sale people
on other side as slave to green aliens in exchange for wealth and dominance.

After you understand this, its not hard to imagine that white slave traders
would naturally leverage African tribes at constant wars with each other to
capture other party's members for money. What's better than killing your
enemy? Make them disappear permanently while becoming rich and powerful!

I also doubt if African tribes actually understood this as part of war against
their own race. The white salve traders would have surely treated their
helpers very nicely and respectfully while introducing themselves as service
providers to take their enemies away in exchange of money. People in Africa
would at that time have little means to know what these white slave owners in
Western world really thought about them and how they treated them because of
their skin color.

So the slave traders systematically exploited same trick that colonials used
to dominate vast populations with extremely small number of their own people:
identify factions, take sides, wait till one faction gets weakened in economic
and military strength from wars, load them up with debts and fear, and finally
submit them to obedience. The classic divide and conquer strategy works every
time through out the history in all kind of different problems.

~~~
aaron-lebo
They may have been ignorant of the extent of slavery, but I'd be surprised if
they weren't aware on some level of what was going on.

There were fairly notorious slave trading outposts up and down the African
coast. Eg.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Coast_Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Coast_Castle)

David Livingstone came across Arab slave traders in the 1870s deep in the
interior:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Livingstone#Livingstone_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Livingstone#Livingstone_and_slavery)

We often talk about slavery in the West, but many don't realize how endemic
slavery was to the Arab world and how late it lasted:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade)

 _Slavery in the Ottoman Empire was abolished in 1924 when the new Turkish
Constitution disbanded the Imperial Harem and made the last concubines and
eunuchs free citizens of the newly proclaimed republic.[17] Slavery in Iran
was abolished in 1929. Among the last states to abolish slavery were Saudi
Arabia and Yemen, which abolished slavery in 1962 under pressure from Britain;
Oman in 1970, and Mauritania in 1905, 1981, and again in August 2007.[18]_

Finally, the reach of slavery is pretty incredible. During the Great Game
period between Russia and Britain in Central Asia, both sides would come
across Russian slaves who had been taken by Turkic raiders. This was at least
1840 or so.

But again, to circle back around to the point, nobody was really unaware of
this stuff going on. Slavery unfortunately has been a pretty common feature of
history. We all played divide and conquer. The West weren't the only people
smart enough to figure out that strategy.

It takes some agency from those peoples when we see them as unknowing,
ignorant victims who were tricked by outsiders. They in reality made brutal
and tactical decisions about their local enemies. They weren't dumb, they knew
what they were doing.

~~~
telltruth
I don't have proof but I think around 15th and 16th centuries, slavery wasn't
considered as abhorrent crime by most of the populations. It was just the way
of life and no one blinked twice when looking at slave children laboring away
their lives. For example, if you failed to pay your debt in many culturally
sophisticated places, you get to become slave for rest of your life and it was
considered perfectly acceptable that slavery gets inherited by your offspring.
There were even laws that slaves can buy off their freedom if they somehow
save enough over time to pay off the debt. During Roman times, it was expected
that winners in the war will take surviving looser in their wars as slaves,
including their family. The Roman laws maintained elaborate registration
system for slaves and there were stiff penalties for slaves running off.
Salves were huge part of economy (and most of them perhaps weren't Africans).
There were few powerful at the top needed massive cheap labor to maintain
their large estates and build elaborate structures that are mind boggling to
even today's generations. Somewhere along the history, freedom and compassion
for the common man suddenly became important and the concept of slavery become
repulsive. So it would be wrong to look at people in that time with how we
feel about slavery now. I highly doubt the African tribes and even white
traders looked at slavery the way we look at it now.

------
vinayms
I have a tangential question, and hope someone can help find an answer to it.
I searched a bit but didn't find anything.

It seems this man was still in early twenties when he was freed after the
civil war. Further, he was a new arrival and not descendant of generations of
slaves who had been Americanized and had made the new place their home just as
their owners had.

So my question is: why he and other new arrivals like him didn't try to return
home? Wasn't there any support and means for new arrivals to return? FYI, I
know about Liberia, and I specifically want to know about new arrivals like
Cudjo.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
It is a little difficult to travel back home when you have no money, and I'm
guessing doubly difficult doing so while living as an oppressed person in a
nation of racists, who most definitely do not want you to be seen with their
white passengers. I'm pretty sure this was a major reason for more folks not
returning "home" \- no money, no help from the government (freedom was enough
to the government at the time).

He was lucky enough to be accepted since he was from Africa. Many more weren't
from Africa. They. like their parents, were American. Slaves, but still
American - complete with conversion to Christianity and the English language.
Even if you were lucky enough to have money, this would have made it a tougher
decision.

~~~
not_kurt_godel
Not to mention, home is where he was kidnapped by slavers in the first place.
Doesn't seem like the kind of place one would want to go back to after being
freed from slavery.

------
Joeboy
Questlove of The Roots is a descendant of people who were brought to the US on
the same ship.

------
MrsPeaches
There are also a couple of recordings of people who were born into slavery and
were then freed.

This one in particular still sends shivers down my spine whenever I listen to
it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IfIDrQxI0o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IfIDrQxI0o)

------
tomohawk
This is the account of a man who was a slave in the US decades after the Civil
War:

[https://www.amazon.com/Emancipation-Robert-Powerful-
Twentiet...](https://www.amazon.com/Emancipation-Robert-Powerful-Twentieth-
Century-Plantation-ebook/dp/B006K1MWCC)

~~~
SaintGhurka
The library of congress has two thousand interviews with former slaves.

[http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/n...](http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/narratives-
slavery/file.html)

------
pizza
The book is just now being published but the author died 58 years ago. Thank
goodness someone knew about it.

------
Pxtl
...I was kind of cringing reading the patois-ified spelling of his words until
I read it was the insistence of the original interviewer. That's an... awkward
decision.

~~~
pessimizer
I personally hate it. It's the conversion of an accent to another language for
the purpose of atmosphere. It's fine when Scottish poets do it to themselves,
but when it's done by someone else it's intentionally alienating. Black
Southern accents aren't very different from White lower- to lower-middle-class
Scots-Irish dialects, but the choice to transcribe "like" as "lak" for an
average Southern white person would strike most people as bizarre.

~~~
GordonS
> Black Southern accents aren't very different from White lower- to lower-
> middle-class Scots-Irish dialects

As a Scot who has been to southern US, I strongly disagree. There are a number
of accents and dialects in Scotland, and not one of them is even remotely
reminiscent of a southern US accent or dialect.

------
dominotw
Apparently a large number of Thai are enslaved on fishing boats, being worked
to death. Large portion US fish is being fished by Thai/vitetnamise children.

~~~
curun1r
Close, but the slaves are primarily Cambodian and Myanmarese who flee to
Thailand and end up on those fishing vessels. There was a great series of
nautical-themed long-form journalism by the NYT a few years ago and one of the
stories [0] dealt specifically with this. It's a tough, but great read, as are
the other stories from the series.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/world/outlaw-ocean-
thaila...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/world/outlaw-ocean-thailand-
fishing-sea-slaves-pets.html)

------
fiatjaf
Very nice indeed, I can't access the article because I'm automatically
redirected to [https://www.seuhistory.com/](https://www.seuhistory.com/) when
I click.

------
devnull791101
He was captured by a rival tribe, smuggled into the country illegally, freed
by the victorious force and the first thing he can think of is compensation.
not from his owners, or original tribe, but the now government that fought for
his freedom?

~~~
toxicFork
What makes you assume that the first thing he can think of is compensation?

It looks like what they first thought of was to find a place to live, and to
try to go back home.

Regarding compensation:

What makes you think that he did not ask for compensation from his owners?

If you read a bit more you will see that they did ask their former owners for
compensation indeed.

"Because Cudjo “always talkee good,” the Africans selected him to approach
their former owners and ask for land in exchange for their years of free
labor."

The quote is from another site linked by Joeboy further down in the comments:
[https://www.vulture.com/2018/04/zora-neale-hurston-
barracoon...](https://www.vulture.com/2018/04/zora-neale-hurston-barracoon-
excerpt.html)

------
lizardskull
For a group of futurists, ya’ll really spend a lot of time looking backwards.

------
mistrial9
the land that is now the United States of America, started in fractured parts
by many, very different, groups of people. Please do not throw the entire USA
into the history of slavery -- many abhorred the practice at every stage,
while others did not, and used it to varying extents. A whitewash of history
is unfair, but to tar all peoples with the stain of slavery is, as well.

~~~
clay_the_ripper
What exactly is your point? To me, statements like this are like “all lives
matter”. Yes. We know. But we don’t need to point this out, because it’s just
an undercover way of diminishing the point being made.

~~~
MadSudaca
What about a statement such as "whites are responsible for slavery". It's
true, but not all "whites" were responsible. I think a lot of people wouldn't
bat an eye at this comment. However, at an individual level it seems unfair to
me, since obviously not everyone that was qualified by the label "white"
during slavery is responsible.

~~~
krapp
>However, at an individual level it seems unfair to me, since obviously not
everyone that was qualified by the label "white" during slavery is
responsible.

All white people as individuals were not responsible for slavery, and some
even opposed it, but all still benefited from slavery by virtue of being born
into the race, society and class that the slave system was designed to
benefit. That is unfair, but nonetheless true.

~~~
MadSudaca
> but all still benefited from slavery by virtue of being born into the race,
> society and class that the slave system was designed to benefit.

This is false. Many benefited, true, but not all. And even if it was true, I
don't see why people should be made responsible for the actions of others that
under some definition are from their same "group", even if they benefited from
them. This is collectivism/racism at its finest, it bothers me tremendously
and I'm not even white.

~~~
krapp
>This is false. Many benefited, true, but not all.

There are indirect benefits and direct benefits to an unjust system - implicit
as well as explicit power that comes from membership in a privileged class.
Having legal rights and protections that other classes don't enjoy is a
benefit. Being allowed to read, having autonomy over your own children, being
able to walk freely, being allowed to maintain a connection to one's
ancestors, religion and emigrant homeland... these are all benefits granted to
white people as a group during slavery.

> I don't see why people should be made responsible for the actions of others
> that under some definition are from their same "group", even if they
> benefited from them.

Well... I did concede that they shouldn't, and weren't. But if one group of
people are considered property, and another group of people are legally
capable of owning the first, then the latter group benefits from that system
if only because they aren't the former.

It just happens that, at that time and place, the necessary selector for
privilege was "whiteness." In another time, it might have been religion, or
ethnicity or culture or following the wrong King. There were plenty of
societies that practiced slavery that discriminated along many lines.

~~~
aaron-lebo
But these rights were not granted to entire groups of people during slavery.
See how the Irish were treated both by the British and as immigrants to the
US. They were seen as lesser.

Irish Catholics and many other groups had no special place as immigrants, they
didn't get positive points for not being African. That's the unfortunate truth
with all forms of discrimination, it's hardly something limited by class, race
or time.

~~~
vhudud
Irish american here. My ancestors came after slavery waa abolished in the us.
They faced much discrimination when they arrived. Yet i still indirectly
benefit from slavery and its repercussions. My family fled a decaying crime
filled city to the suburbs. Their black neighbors could not, thanks to
redlining and restrictive conevants. But by then, irish Americans were more
likely to be seen as white. I grew up in a nice town with good schools as a
result.

Sure, slavery didnt literally benefit every white person. But youd be hard
pressed to find a white person today who never experienced any form of white
privellage

