Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"

The practice of naming had a fraught history for African Americans following the violence and erasure of the Middle Passage. For Kossola, slavery severed ties between millions of Black people and their African heritage. For many who were born in the Americas, common practices like selling loved ones separately often estranged people from their own parents, siblings, and spouses. Naming and renaming holds significance because it can strip people of their identities. Conversely, however, naming can hold the power of reaffirming one’s own identity and heritage. In Barracoon, Kossola’s life story demonstrates both destructive and reaffirming relationships to naming.

Kossola had multiple names, and slavery was the main cause of this. In Chapter 1, he tells Hurston:

My name is not Cudjo Lewis. It Kossula. When I gitter in Americky soil, Mr. Jim Meaher he try callee my name, but it too long, you unnerstand me, so I say, “Well, I yo’ property?” He say, “Yeah.” Den I say, “You callee me Cudjo. Dat do.” But in Afficky soil my mama she name me Kossula (49).

He explains that he changed his name to the one he’s known by in the US—”Cudjo Lewis”—for the ease of Jim Meaher and other white people who had difficulty pronouncing his African name.