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
