Cudjo Lewis

1841 – 1935

Born Oluale Kossola in West Africa, Cudjo Lewis was among 110 people kidnapped and illegally smuggled into Mobile Bay aboard the Clotilda in 1860, more than fifty years after the U.S. banned the importation of enslaved Africans. After emancipation, he helped found Africatown with other Clotilda survivors, preserving West African language and customs, and in the 1930s he recounted his life story to Zora Neale Hurston, whose manuscript was published decades later as "Barracoon: The Story of the Last 'Black Cargo.'"