Mitch Jeserich is in conversation with Hurston scholar Deborah Plant to talk about the tragedy of slavery and its pernicious legacy that continues to haunt America.
Guest: Deborah Plant is a Hurston scholar at the University of South Florida. She is the editor of the book Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston.
About Barracoon
It took more than 90 years for Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” to be published. In 1927, anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston began to interview octogenarian Cudjo Lewis in Plateau, Alabama. His first person story begins as a free teenager in Africa, follows his capture by Dahomian women warriors, his journey through the Middle Passage, his life as a slave, his subsequent emancipation, and his part in the founding of Africatown in Alabama, the first town established by and controlled by Africans.