Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"

When Hurston returns on a Saturday, Kossola is bothered because he’s busy that day cleaning the church. Hurston expresses that she has come to help him and he doesn’t have to talk if he doesn’t want to. They clean the church together, and afterward she gives him a ride to Mobile and back, as he wants some turnip seeds. When she returns again on Monday, she tells him about Charlotte Osgood Mason, a white woman who is funding Hurston’s research and is interested in Kossola and his story. He’s pleased to hear about her and her interest.

Kossola continues narrating where he last left off. Taken captive and brought to Dahomey, Kossola saw the king’s house in the city of Lomey, appearing to him to be made out of skull bones. The captives were placed in the barracoon and fed very little. After several days, they were marched to the sea and put in another barracoon, where they stayed for three weeks. That was the first time Kossola ever saw white men. After the three weeks, a white man came with a Dahomey chief and his interpreter. The white man inspected each of the captives and purchased 130 people in an even amount of men and women. The selected people were fed well, tied up, and led around a big white house. They were then led to several boats to be taken to a ship called the Clotilda. On the ship, their clothes were taken from them, leaving them naked. Along with the others, Kossola was forced to lie down in the dark hold of the ship. On the 13th day, the captives were brought up to the deck. The ship was surrounded by ocean then, which frightened the young Kossola. The journey continued for 70 more days, and eventually the captives were deboarded. The Clotilda was promptly burned afterward as a precaution because the slave trade was illegal at that point. The captives were then given clothes, transported up the Alabama river, hidden in a swamp, and taken to another place, where they were divided up and sent away with different captains. Sorrowful to be separated, Kossola and the others wept and sang. Grieving his mother, Kossola stops his narration and tells Hurston to return another day.

Kossola and some other captives were taken by Captain Jim Meaher. They weren’t forced to work right away, as they didn’t understand English and had to be taught how to raze crops. On that plantation, the enslaved people worked very hard. Still, when one overseer tried to whip one of the women from Kossola’s village, the men took the whip and lashed the overseer, protecting the woman from ever getting beaten again by that particular man. Kossola was sad to be so far from home and felt strange in this new place. The enslaved people who were there before him didn’t always understand him and those he came with, and sometimes made fun of them.

The women did most of the fieldwork, while Kossola and the men worked to maintain and service Captain Jim’s boats. The men’s labor included hauling wood and freight and pumping out water when the boat leaked. At every landing, the overseer pushed them to work harder. Kossola was enslaved for five years and six months working on the ships. Having a strong memory, he names for Hurston nearly all the different landings they stopped at.

The Civil War went on for a while before Kossola heard about it. He and the other enslaved people sometimes heard gunshots and saw messengers coming around. Kossola recalls how the Union army blocked the importation of many goods—like coffee and sugar—into the South. Worried that they’d all starve, Captain Jim instructed the enslaved people to kill the hogs to eat.

On Sundays, Kossola and his fellow enslaved people weren’t required to work, so they danced as they had back home in Africa. This got them mocked by the Black people there who hadn’t themselves been born in Africa. Kossola recalls a free Black man named Free George, whose wife was also free. George told Kossola and the others not to dance on Sunday because it’s a holy day. On April 12, 1865, Kossola was on a boat in Mobile when some Union soldiers nearby told him and the others that they were free now. They didn’t know what to do or where to go. Kossola and the others bundled what few things they had and slept in the house of someone who offered them room. Still, Kossola was glad to finally be free.

Overjoyed to be free, Kossola and the others played their drum like they had back home in Africa. However, the people faced the challenge of having nowhere to live long-term and no land of their own. He and some other Africans who had come on the same ship met and decided they could work on the boats to save money to return home. They worked hard, but unfortunately the amount of money they needed was just too much, so they decided to stay in the US. Having no king, they chose Gumpa, a former nobleman from Dahomey, to be their leader. Kossola had no ill will against him, knowing that the king of Dahomey was to blame for his captivity. They decided to all live together and work at the sawmill, powder mill, or railroad; sell produce; or work for white people. One day, Kossola went on behalf of his people to ask Captain Tim for some land, feeling that they deserved as much since he’d taken them from their home. Offended, Captain Tim refused, so Kossola and his neighbors worked hard to buy a piece of land together from Captain Meaher. They appointed their own leaders and made rules of conduct among them. They divided the land, and built houses for themselves. Longing for home, they called the area Africa Town. While many African Americans nearby still made fun of the residents of Africa Town, Free George was a friend to the town. He taught them about the Christian religion and encouraged them to go to church. That was eventually how Kossola’s church—the Old Landmark Baptist Church—came to be built. Kossola ends his narration in this chapter by asking Hurston to take him to the bay tomorrow to get some crab.