The Last Slave Ship Survivor Gave an Interview in the 1930s. It Just Surfaced.

[Behind the Aegis]

Roughly 60 years after the abolition of slavery, anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston made an incredible connection: She located the last surviving captive of the last slave ship to bring Africans to the United States.

Hurston, a known figure of the Harlem Renaissance who would later write the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, conducted interviews with the survivor but struggled to publish them as a book in the early 1930s. In fact, they are only now being released to the public in a book called Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” that comes out on May 8, 2018.

Hurston’s book tells the story of Cudjo Lewis, who was born in what is now the West African country of Benin. Originally named Kossula, he was only 19 years old when members of the neighboring Dahomian tribe captured him and took him to the coast. There, he and about 120 others were sold into slavery 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 the early 18th century, but Lewis’ journey is an example of how slave traders went around the law to continue bringing over human cargo.


Author Zora Neale Hurston (1903-1960). (Credit: Corbis/Getty Images)

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[SunSeeker]

1. K & R

[calimary]

2. Truly remarkable.

[grantcart]

3. This is the untold story of a contributing cause for the begining of the Civil War

The importation of slaves from Africa was made illegal in 1808.

After a time there was an effort by various groups in the South to restart the trade and this article is about the last successful importation of slaves into the US.

By the 1850s there was an open movement to restart the trade from Africa

http://abolition.nypl.org/print/revival_of_slave_trade/

n May 1858, the Southern Commercial Convention met in Montgomery, Alabama, and the majority report recommended the adoption of motions in favor of reopening the trade, but the debate was so ferocious that the question was left for further discussion at the following convention in Vicksburg, Mississippi. In the meantime, the Louisiana House of Representatives authorized the introduction of 2,500 "free Africans" who would work as apprentices for at least fifteen years. It was, of course, a figure of speech. In 1859, undaunted by the collapse of this scheme after the State Senate refused to pass the apprentice bill, the revival activists launched the African Labor Supply Association, headquartered at Vicksburg, Virginia.

Some years ago I found online a detailed history detailing the coalition of a small number of South Carolina businessmen who having seen the effort to restart the slave trade fail instead leveraged a relatively small group in South Carolina to compel the state government to secede from the US. Their argument wasn't about the future of slavery eventually being snuffed out as the Union moved west and the anti slavery states would outnumber the slave states.

Their interest was a lot more immediate. They wanted to restart the slave trade so that they could bring in hundreds of thousands of new slaves to create a proletarian base so that the South could compete in not just agriculture but also in industry. The reason that this was becoming so urgent in these businessmen was the realization that almost all new immigration was going to the North

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War

The fact that seven immigrants out of eight settled in the North (and the fact that most immigrants viewed slavery with disfavor), compounded by the fact that twice as many whites left the South for the North as vice versa, contributed to the South’s defensive-aggressive political behavior

News of this effort to restart the slave trade as a strategy to counter immigration into the North spread through out the North and this help solidify the North against the South and increase support for Lincoln in the election of 1960. Seeing their opportunity to make a fortune fade this relatively small group was able to push the government in South Carolina to secede and force the other states into seceding from the Union.

This group fans the flames of secession in South Carolina who secedes December 24th 1960

While Mississippi and other states agree to secede relatively quickly voters in North Carolina, who are aware that South Carolina has an interest in not just keeping slavery but reintroducing the slave trade DEFEAT an attempt to secede by ballot on February 28 with a vote that is very close but has an astounding 93,000 votes.

Even though a rump Confederate government is formed Virginia does not secede and attempts to establish a peace conference throughout February.

Even though Tennessee, Texas and areas in the west like Arizona and Colorado are attempted to form into states for the Confederacy Virginia and North Carolina still hold out.

On April 4th Virginia again rejects a move to secede.

South Carolina forces attack Fort Sumter on April 15th.

North Carolina, still in the Union refuse to provide troops to assist Fort Sumter

Virginia moves to join the Confederacy on May 7th, the Western Counties (now West Virginia) move to stay in the Union.

North Carolina votes to join the Confederacy May 20th


So I always wondered why Virginia and North Carolina were so resistant to join the Confederacy taking 6 months from the time South Carolina first announced their secession and after actual war broke out. When I found this material about the effort by the group in South Carolina to restart the slave trade it answered a lot of questions of why South Carolina was in such a hurry and why their neighbors seemed to not trust SC.

When I uncovered this material, including original source material from South Carolina dating in 1858-9 I made a mental note to return to it but sadly I have never been able to find it again. There is still concrete evidence that the illicit trade had returned but I haven't been able to find the material that referred to specific efforts by South Carolinian businessmen to make the trade legal and restart it on a mass basis:

https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/4506

A dramatic increase of illicit traffic and actual importations of slaves took place in the decade 1850-1860. The fitting out of slavers became a prosperous business in the United States, one centered in New York City. Vessels leaving New York were in close alliance with legitimate trade. Downtown merchants of wealth and respectability engaged in buying and selling African slaves throughout the 1850s with little interference from the government.

In any event the effort to restart the transatlantic trade was eventually defeated by Southern slave holders who didn't want to see their investment lose value with a large influx of new slaves. In a great stroke of irony the Confederacy outlawed the importation of new slaves from Africa

In February 1861, Jefferson Davis became president of the Confederacy, and on March 11, the Constitution of the Confederate States of America stipulated in its article I, section IX, "The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slave-holding States or territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden."

This effort to restart transatlantic slave trade is one of the great areas that has escaped in depth research by US Historians and would make a great subject for a Ph'd thesis.

Thanks for posting this, I was not aware of Cudjo Lewis

[Nitram]

8. Is that supposed to be a joke, monmouth? As captioned, the woman pictured above is author

and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote the book based on her interviews with Cudjo Lewis.

[monmouth4]

9. Did not mean as a joke, but looks like photos I've seen of Pearl Bailey..n/t

[Nitram]

10. Try a reverse image search on google.

Your comment smacks of certain stereotypes that we dumb white people are trying to outgrow.

[ejbr]

5. Very interesting, Grantcart

Thanks for this post.

[ejbr]

6. k & r

Thanks for the post 👍🏾

[underpants]

7. Cudjo Lewis and Clotilda

Bookmarking

[raven mad]

11. I'm going to hit my favorite indy bookstore tonight.

I hope the book is available for reservation.

I can't help but think someone should provide a copy to Kanye....

[Blue_Tires]

12. epic kick

I don't have the link anymore but some years ago the Washington Post re-published some of the last known interviews of surviving slaves, most of which were done in the 1930s with audio/video...

[Rhiannon12866]

13. Incredibly important article, everyone needs to read it.

This is a part of our history, painful as it is, that we cannot forget.

[Alethia Merritt]

14. Thank you for posting.

I will be searching for this book.