Zora Neale Hurston, Rosenwald Fellow and author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, has a book being published eight decades after it was written.
Barracoon: The story of the last “Black Cargo” tells the story of Cudjo Lewis, one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade. Hurston interviewed 86-year old Lewis in 1927 in Alabama and recorded his account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the trans-Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the U.S. In 1931 publishers wanted her to rewrite it in a language other than “dialect” and she refused.
The book includes a forward by author Alice Walker. Hurston earned an AA degree from Howard University in 1920, a BA from Barnard College in 1928.
One of the Rosenwald DVD Bonus Features, Rosenwald Fund Writers tells the story of African American writers like Zora Neale Hurston.
You can read more about Barracoon here:
Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Barracoon’ Tells the Story of the Slave Trade’s Last Survivor