# The Last Slave Ship Survivor Gave An Interview In The 1930s. It Just Surfaced



## Leeda.the.Paladin (Feb 27, 2020)

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, were only released to the public in a book called _Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”_ that came out on May 8, 2018.

The Harlem Renaissance

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 1807, but Lewis’ journey is an example of how slave traders went around the law to continue bringing over human cargo.

uncovered in January 2018).

READ MORE: Is This the Wreck of the Last U.S. Slave Ship?

Most poignantly, Lewis’ narrative provides a first-hand account of the disorienting trauma of slavery. 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 plantations.



“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.”

Lewis also describes what it was like to arrive on a plantation where no one spoke his language, and could explain to him where he was or what was going on. “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.”

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.

READ MORE: Enslaved Couples Faced Wrenching Separations, or Even Choosing Family over Freedom



Erik Overbey Collection, The Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of South Alabama

Lewis expected to receive compensation for being kidnapped and forced into slavery, and was angry to discover that emancipation didn’t come with the promise of “forty acres and a mule,” or any other kind of reparations. Frustrated by the refusal of the government to provide him with land to live on after stealing him away from his homeland, he and a group of 31 other freepeople saved up money to buy land near Mobile, which they called Africatown.

Hurston’s use of vernacular dialogue in both her novels and her anthropological interviews was often controversial, as some black American thinkers at the time argued that this played to black caricatures in the minds of white people. Hurston disagreed, and refused to change Lewis’ dialect—which was one of the reasons a publisher turned her manuscript down back in the 1930s.

Many decades later, her principled stance means that modern readers will get to hear Lewis’ story the way that he told it.


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## Leeda.the.Paladin (Feb 27, 2020)

This story copied so oddly. Here is the link

https://www.history.com/news/zora-n...79KHQmdmoKpHvug8xo4LJmEHNefENr_EGo0AGUUnb6kjM


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## discodumpling (Feb 29, 2020)

I have read this and other "slave" narratives. Breaks my heart every time. Yet instills a sense of pride and purpose. Our people are so strong. Mentally, physically and spiritually. How else to explain why we are still standing and moving forward despite the African Holocaust.


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## MizzBFly (Mar 1, 2020)

I still have to purchase this book


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## Chicoro (Mar 1, 2020)

In September 2019 I was at a function near Paris. A gentleman there decided that he needed to impart information to me. I was standing with a friend and she served as an interpreter for me.The man was from continental Africa, elderly and spoke with extremely accented French. My friend was retelling me what he said using Parisian French, which I understood. She does not speak English.

He told me this very thing. He said the last slave ship sailed from  Benin. He said the ship was called the Chlotilde and it landed near small islands in the Southern part of the US. Perhaps he read this book. I don't know. But my friend told me he was  a Griot and African royalty. She said that he speaks extemporaneously and when moved by Spirit. She told me that he said his message was important for me to know. I immediately wrote down this information and put the date on his message to me.

Until this post and thread, I did not know that it was Zora who had written and communicated this. I did not know of this book.

How painful to read this man's experience. But to have lived it, I can't even imagine.

 But imagine this my magnificent, black sisters: for those of us with a legacy of slavery in our bloodlines, look at how far so many of us have come in such a short time. 

While our people were newly released from slavery, others had access to education, jobs and wealth. Our people were blocked and stopped with laws and abuse and threats. Yet, today here so many of us stand educated, free, with the same access and in even better positions in life than those who were given privileges.

If that is not an incredible testament to the magic and power of who we are, I don't know what is.


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## Chicoro (Mar 1, 2020)

Zora looks like Queen Latifah!


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## Chicoro (Mar 1, 2020)

The name of the ship is the *Clotilda*.
(I spelled it incorrectly up above.)


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## Chicoro (Mar 1, 2020)

They state that the voyage was part of a bet. The men were already rich and they went to go get slaves, after the illegal ban, just to see if they could do it.


Cudjo Lewis was the last surviving kidnapped, human being.

The slavers were

Captain William Foster
Captain Tim Meaher
On May 22, 2019, the Alabama Historical Commission announced that the wreckage of the _Clotilda_ had been found in the Mobile River.[16][17][18]


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## yamilee21 (Mar 1, 2020)

The story of another Clotilda victim/survivor, Redoshi, called Sally Smith.
https://www.history.com/news/last-slave-ship-survivor-redoshi-clotilda



> Like many African people forced into American slavery, Redoshi was only a child when slave traders chained her to their boat. Kidnapped at age 12 in what is now Benin, she became a prisoner on the _Clotilda_, the last known slave ship to smuggle people into the United States. And, as one scholar in the United Kingdom has discovered, she became the last known surviving member of that ship: Redoshi lived until 1937, a full 72 years after slavery’s abolition.
> ...
> Slave traders forced the 12-year-old Redoshi to be the “wife” of an adult enslaved man who spoke a different language. The traders then sold Redoshi and the man as a couple to Washington Smith, founder of Alabama’s Bank of Selma. Later, Redoshi described this forced child marriage to the civil rights activist Amelia Boynton Robinson.
> 
> ...


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## Chicoro (Mar 2, 2020)

yamilee21 said:


> The story of another Clotilda victim/survivor, Redoshi, called Sally Smith.
> https://www.history.com/news/last-slave-ship-survivor-redoshi-clotilda



Sally died in 1937, so the record is being corrected to say she was the last known slave brought to America, on that ship instead of Cudjo Lewis, the subject and speaker of Zora's book.


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## Chicoro (Mar 2, 2020)

Here's Sally Smith:


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## Chicoro (Mar 2, 2020)

Redoshi (Sally Smith) and her husband


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## Chicoro (Mar 2, 2020)

Sally Smith, Redoshi from the film, The Negro Farmer.


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## Chicoro (Mar 2, 2020)

Here is the film with Sally. There is no sound. To me, she is *RADIANT!*


@1:30 

https://www.c-span.org/video/?462245-1/hannah-durkin-the-negro-farmer


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## Chicoro (Mar 2, 2020)

Original film on Youtube. If I am not mistaken,  I believe the narrator said that she is *110 *years old? 

Is this true? 

This woman not only survived a transatlantic crossing and parented herself, she lived through slavery AND thrived  to reach 110 AND looks RADIANT?!!!!!

Absolutely. Amazing. I thought she was about 75 to 80 in the film. That is an incredible woman.


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## Chicoro (Mar 2, 2020)

Side note... her hair is so pretty and white. It looks cottony and soft.

This woman was taken from Benin.

And, my understanding is that the highest quality cotton is not EGYPTIAN. The highest quality is from BENIN!

Benin is the origin of what we call Voodoo. The original spelling in French is "Vaudou"!

The majority of slaves in Haiti came from Benin.

Every year, on January 10th, in the capital city of Ouidah in Benin, there is a huge voodoo related gathering to celebrate voodoo in Benin.


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## LadyBugsy (Mar 3, 2020)

Serious question:

For the people that think the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was a hoax, how does this information fit into that theory? 
Wouldn’t the fact that there are two personal accounts mean that SOMETHING happened?


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## Chicoro (Mar 5, 2020)

errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! That's the sound of brakes in skidding. I was excited to see this video and then she said this:

She said *389,000* slaves were brought to America. 


NOT TRUE!!!!!! 


Millions of Africans were taken.  

If sharks could talk...they'd tell you why they used to trail after slave ships: fresh, dead meat daily.  If we are not careful of our history, eventually, slavery is going to be about two boats and 50 Africans on a cruise. 


Excuse me? 


We are not counting how many were taken? 


Comments under the video are not allowed.


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## naturalgyrl5199 (Mar 11, 2020)

Chicoro said:


> errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! That's the sound of brakes in skidding. I was excited to see this video and then she said this:
> 
> She said *389,000* slaves were brought to America.
> 
> ...


I'm not surprised to hear an underestimation of the numbers.


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