OLUALE KOSSOLO 

Reading Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon is a life altering experience. I do not know if you can read this cultural diamond and not be both wounded and wrapped in a healing salve at the same time. The narrative of Oluale Kossolo’s life known by the American Tongue as Cudjo Lewis, is a reflection of Franz Boaz’s, Hurston’s mentor and the “Father of American Anthropology,” theory of “Cultural Relativity.” The theory is rather simple, yet profound, “there [are] no superior or inferior cultures; cultures [are] to be assessed and evaluated on their own terms.  For descendants of Kossolo, American Descendants of Slavery, Boaz’s theory is very important, our culture has rarely been evaluated and allowed to stand on its own terms.  American DOS culture has always been filtered through the lens of whiteness in this country and as immigration continues to ramp up, steadily increasing from the 1970’s to date, the newest Americans share the white gaze devaluing our culture.  We as a nation within a nation must value, protect, and consistently recognize and narrate our culture and experience as it is unique unto the world.

“The interview with Kossolo changed Hurston… This elder, an Isha Yoruba in America, had schooled her in the sociopolitical and cultural complexities of ‘My People.’ In face of Kossola’s recollections, the social constructions ‘My People,’ and ‘Africans’ were deconstructed by the reality of ethnic identifications, which not only distinguished tribes and clans, but also generated the narrative distance and ideological difference that rendered one ethnic group capable of regarding another as ‘stranger’ or ‘enemy,’ and allowed that group to offer up the ‘Other‘ to ‘the trans-Atlantic trade.” American DOS do you hear the power of these words from our Isha Yoruba elder? In America being relegated to “blackness” has always made us somehow less American or Un-American and to be perceived as a stranger, or an enemy, or an other in the only land we have know. This land where our fore-fathers toiled and died. We are America, even the constitution, the founding document to this nation knows it and is threatened by our mere presence.

Hurston writes “one thing impressed me strongly from this three months of association with Cudjo Lewis, the white people had held my people in slavery in America. They had bought us, it is true and exploited us. But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw, was: my people had sold me and the white people had bought me. That did away with the folklore I had been brought up on – that the white people had gone to Africa, waved a red handkerchief at the Africans and lured them aboard ship and sailed away.” In the telling of Kossolo’s capture, it was no small affair. A man wanting “big honors in the army” of Takkoi, went to the King of Dahomey – yes the Wakanda fighting female warriors served a real king with battles manifesting in real consequences, and provided instruction on how to take the Takkoi. The King of Dahomey “got very rich [catching] slaves. He [kept] his army all [the] time making raids to grab people to sell.” The people of Dahomey were so busy raiding, warring, capturing people, they “[don’t] have no time to raise gardens [and] make food for [themselves].” This was the basis of the Takkoi war, the Dohomey wanted rations of food, the King of Takkoi said no, a traitor traded intel with the Dahomey and the Dahomey killed everyone except the fairly young to be sold as slaves, taking the heads of the dead as war trophies, and parading the heads on swords for public display. I walked out of the Black Panther not a fan at all of Wakanda and Barracoon gives reason to pause and for the American Descendants of Slavery to evaluate who we are. We are the survivors of an atrocity consisting of our African People that sold us, and European Whites who purchased us.

Zora Neale Hurston includes a list of the Founders and Original Residents of Africatown Alabama.  Most of the people were Yoruba and of what we would consider Nigerian today. Then there are members of other tribes, the Nupe, the Jabi or Jabar, and the Shamba.  In a recent tweet I told James Holly Jr @PlzSayTheJr American DOS are peacemakers. Please do not take this term to mean meek. The DNA of the average American Descendant of Slavery is a mixture of African Tribes, much like the founders of Africatown Alabama. In Africa the defragmentation of ethnic identification would have been cause for war, but much like the naturalization process of Kossolo, we had to settle our differences and we became one people in America.  To add to that DNA mixture, due to lust and rape, American DOS also have the DNA of European ancestry. We embody people who were at war on the continent that boasts being the cradle of humanity and the people whose savagery is well documented in the inhumanity  written into American legislation, and yet we are at peace. American DOS are survivors of the strongest of people, representing both kingdoms that have fallen and brutal captors of the fallen. There is science that indicates DNA keeps fourteen generations of data. American DOS are like a sleeping dragon and it is time to awaken.  We are a tribe the planet has not seen before and we are the strongest representation of human on this continent because we survived and are free.

Barraccon speak’s briefly to a book I read in college, Prince Among Slaves – The True Story of an African Prince Sold into Slavery in the American South, Prince Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima.  I tried to option this book, written by Professor Terry Alfred, back around 1999.  I sent the book to Sherry Lansing when she was a client and still CEO of Paramount and she passed on the telling of the story – I thought it would have been a powerful and visually beautiful period piece.  She passed because she thought it was too historical in context. PBS aired a historical documentary and you can read more information here at Unity Productions Foundation. This incredible story is woven into government at the highest level involving President John Quincy Adams. Like Kossolo he was captured in his prime as a teenager. He studied school abroad, spoke and wrote Arabic – he was a warrior. He too fell in a tribal war and was captured and sold. His luck, as a slave and the details may be fuzzy, but I believe he knew Henry Clay or Henry Clay’s father in Africa and bumped into him on American soil – if it was not Henry Clay it was a white man that was part of the slave trade that he had known. What struck me hard and what I could not understand was that after being freed and at 67 years of age after the death of his wife Isabella, and making a choice to leave his children behind to return to his home, he died enroute one mile from the Royal Convoy that was to meet the American Convoy.  The American Convoy sent a messenger with the news – the Royal Convoy turned away and never received the body of the dead prince.

Kossolo knew the laws of governance in Tokkoi. He also understood America was a different place with a different rule of law. The Founders of Africatown Alabama with the freedom that was returned to them in 1865 formed their own government body. Kossolo was keenly aware that freedom came with nothing, no land, no house, no money – they wanted to return to their homeland, to their native soil, to the place where they understood the rules. It did not matter that this group was what was a remnant of his original tribe. The price for such a return was beyond their means. These Founders also realized they had “no ruler; no king; no chief; nobody to be [the] father of the rest.” The Founders chose “[the] head,” Gumpa, a nobleman from Dahomey whom they held no ill will towards because it was the King of Dahomey that sold them to the white man. American DOS this is very important in how we must move in 2018 and beyond. We must choose our heads, we must forgive an individual association based on the merit of the individual and based on whether or not his life experiences and circumstance are the same as ours. In the words of Yvette Carnell we also have the right to ask “who you?” The Founders worked together, purchased their own land, built their own houses, married their women, raised their own food, raised their own children – they selected their own judges to solve issues between them and when they needed to deal with the white man how they dealt, what they said had already been decided – the head had the support of the body. They moved as a collective and if this is not a blueprint for modern governance I do not know what is.

In discussing this piece with my husband, he shared two interesting insights. First he thought the American Convoy possibly killed Prince Ibrahim as his living and creating a link between America and Africa could have been problematic politically, particularly if America could not control the narrative. He also said melaninated people are the original people and are everywhere, and that if you are the strongest people, why would you have a need to build ships and steal a nation of people to build your nation.  He said Europeans did not have the numbers or the physical ability or know how to build America. This is consistent with Indians having to teach Europeans how to survive, because they knew nothing. The article Native Americans Played Crucial Role in Settlers’ Survival gives good insight on what that meant exactly – the mortality rate of the settlers was 50%. We were a people with skill and knowledge that could transcend continents look at the Shinnecock or the Cherokee do they not look like the Berber or the Khoisan? It is fatalist to believe you are anything less than you are because someone told you so or thinks it so – that is why the removal of the head, the dying of an idea is a prize of war, winning thoughts prevail and rule the land. In the words of Zora Neale Hurston “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it. I highly recommend Barracoon, awaken American Descendants of Slavery, know who you are.

Unapologetically,

Friday Jones