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Entertainment, It’s Lit

Books You Need to Read This Black History Month

This Black History Month, check out our reading list of essential titles for the whole family.

By

Angela Johnson

Published

February 5, 2026
News

Erased From History: Meet Redoshi, the Last Survivor of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

For years, Cudjo Lewis was recognized as the last survivor of the U.S. slave trade. His life’s story was told in news reports, history books and—most notably—in Zora Neale Hurston’s 2018 bestseller Barracoon. But new research has revealed that the last survivor of American slave trading appears to be an abductee on the same slave…

By

Michael Harriot

Published

April 3, 2019
Entertainment, Television

Common Is Bringing Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon to TV

Lonnie “Common” Lynn is adapting an instant classic, y’all. The Chicago-born rapper reportedly acquired the rights to Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon, the 2018 critically acclaimed account of the last slave ship to bring slaves to the United States, Clotilda. Additionally, the novel explores Hurston’s 1931 interview with Cudjo Lewis, the last known survivor of the…

By

Tonja Renée Stidhum

Published

December 5, 2018
Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon Is an Epic Tale From the Last Known Survivor of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Like gifts from the grave, the words of Zora Neale Hurston, revered mother of black literary and womanist canon, have come back to bless us. In 1931, Viking Press rejected Hurston’s manuscript for Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo,” the not-yet-novelist and folklorist’s first-person account of 89-year-old Oluale Kossula (slave name: Cudjo Lewis),…

By

Angela Helm

Published

May 10, 2018
A Reporter May Have Found the Last American Slave Ship

In 1860, 52 years after the importation of human chattel was outlawed in the United States, the Clotilda, a two-masted schooner, sneaked into Mobile Bay near Mobile, Ala., returning from a secret mission in Benin, Africa. Captained by William Foster, the Clotilda unloaded its precious cargo: 110 kidnapped human beings. When federal authorities discovered that…

By

Michael Harriot

Published

January 23, 2018