Only a single lifetime removed
The transatlantic slave trade had been illegal for more than 50 years when slavers took this man, Cudjo Lewis, from Africa and sold him in America. He died in 1935. He walked the earth the same time as my grandpa — maybe even the same time as you.
Zora Neale Hurston interviewed him, and her manuscript sat in an archive at Howard University until a couple of years ago. It’s being published next month.
Buried for decades but written about a man who died in 1935. Cudjo Lewis tells Hurston: “We glad we free, but we cain stay wid de folks what own us no mo’. Where we goin’ live, we doan know.
We want buildee de houses for ourselves, but we ain’ got no lan’. We meet together and we talk. We say we from cross de water so we go back where we come from. So we say we work in slavery five year and de six months for nothin’, now we work for money and gittee in de ship and go back to our country. [W]e think we save money and buy de ticket ourselves. So we tell de women, ‘Now we all want go back home. Derefo’ we got to work hard and save de money. You see fine clothes, you must not wish for dem.’ De women tell us dey do all dey kin to get back, and dey tellee us, ‘You see fine clothes, don’t you wish for dem neither.’”
Stolen away, sold as property, and wanting to go home. They owned him, they beat him, and then they stranded him. He made a life for himself and his family, and he was treated as subhuman for daring to.
“All de time de chillun growin’ de American folks dey picks at dem. Dey callee my chillun ig’nant savage and make out dey kin to monkey,” he told Hurston. “Derefo’, my boys dey fight. Dey got to fight all de time.”
It’s astounding, but we’re only a single lifetime removed from this man. It’s not that America’s sins linger; they’re still very much alive. This ugly history impacts people’s lives right now, every day — not just when they’re made out to be “kin to monkey” but when we protect a political and economic system that boxes them out of their full rights as Americans.
We can build a world where Cudjo Lewis’ family doesn’t have to fight all the time. But we have to want to, and we have to admit that we need to.
