2022 Hardcover Reprint of the 1927 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Roughly 60 years after the abolition of slavery, anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston made an incredible connection: She located one of the last surviving captives 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, they 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. Reprinted here is the original article outlining Hurston's discovery. It is also, perhaps, Hurston's first published work. Originally published in The Journal of Negro History, Volume 12, Number 4 October 1, 1927.

2020 Reprint of the 1927 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Roughly 60 years after the abolition of slavery, anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston made an incredible connection: She located one of the last surviving captives 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, they 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. Reprinted here is the original article outlining Hurston's discovery. It is also, perhaps, Hurston's first published work. Originally published in The Journal of Negro History, Volume 12, Number 4 October 1, 1927.

2020 Reprint of the 1927 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Roughly 60 years after the abolition of slavery, anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston made an incredible connection: She located one of the last surviving captives 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, they 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. Reprinted here is the original article outlining Hurston's discovery. It is also, perhaps, Hurston's first published work. Originally published in The Journal of Negro History, Volume 12, Number 4 October 1, 1927.

New York Times Bestseller • TIME Magazine’s Best Nonfiction Book of 2018 • New York Public Library’s Best Book of 2018 • NPR’s Book Concierge Best Book of 2018 • Economist Book of the Year • SELF.com’s Best Books of 2018 • Audible’s Best of the Year • BookRiot’s Best Audio Books of 2018 • The Atlantic’s Books Briefing: History, Reconsidered • Atlanta Journal Constitution, Best Southern Books 2018 • The Christian Science Monitor’s Best Books 2018 • “A profound impact on Hurston’s literary legacy.”—New York Times “One of the greatest writers of our time.”—Toni Morrison “Zora Neale Hurston’s genius has once again produced a Maestrapiece.”—Alice Walker A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade—abducted from Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States. In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo’s firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States. In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo’s past—memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War. Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo’s unique vernacular, and written from Hurston’s perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.

The “enlightening” (The Guardian) true story of the last ship to carry enslaved people to America, the remarkable town its survivors’ founded after emancipation, and the complicated legacy their descendants carry with them to this day—by the journalist who discovered the ship’s remains. Fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed, the Clotilda became the last ship in history to bring enslaved Africans to the United States. The ship was scuttled and burned on arrival to hide the wealthy perpetrators to escape prosecution. Despite numerous efforts to find the sunken wreck, Clotilda remained hidden for the next 160 years. But in 2019, journalist Ben Raines made international news when he successfully concluded his obsessive quest through the swamps of Alabama to uncover one of our nation’s most important historical artifacts. Traveling from Alabama to the ancient African kingdom of Dahomey in modern-day Benin, Raines recounts the ship’s perilous journey, the story of its rediscovery, and its complex legacy. Against all odds, Africatown, the Alabama community founded by the captives of the Clotilda, prospered in the Jim Crow South. Zora Neale Hurston visited in 1927 to interview Cudjo Lewis, telling the story of his enslavement in the New York Times bestseller Barracoon. And yet the haunting memory of bondage has been passed on through generations. Clotilda is a ghost haunting three communities—the descendants of those transported into slavery, the descendants of their fellow Africans who sold them, and the descendants of their fellow American enslavers. This connection binds these groups together to this day. At the turn of the century, descendants of the captain who financed the Clotilda’s journey lived nearby—where, as significant players in the local real estate market, they disenfranchised and impoverished residents of Africatown. From these parallel stories emerges a profound depiction of America as it struggles to grapple with the traumatic past of slavery and the ways in which racial oppression continues to this day. And yet, at its heart, The Last Slave Ship remains optimistic—an epic tale of one community’s triumphs over great adversity and a celebration of the power of human curiosity to uncover the truth about our past and heal its wounds.