Black cargo

Previous articleNext article FreeLectureBlack cargo 2019 Lewis H. Morgan LectureLaurence RalphLaurence RalphPrinceton University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThis lecture is about why we need stories.1 We, in one sense, are the people who were not allowed to read so that we could be made to toil. I am referring, of course, to the 600,000 enslaved Africans brought to the United States against their will over the course of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Since the US government forbade Blacks to read, write, and learn, we told our stories orally. Many of the anti-literacy laws enforced in slave states before and during the Civil War, in fact, sounded a lot like Virginia's. "Every assemblage of negroes for the purpose of instruction in reading or writing," it stated, "shall be an unlawful assembly" (Virginia 1849: 747). The prevailing logic went something like this: If Black people could read they would learn about the revolution in Haiti in 1804, and the Vesey revolt in 1822, and Turner's rebellion in 1831, and White people would be in danger.Many guilt-riddled Whites imagined that Black folks' world revolved around attacking them. Undeterred by immoral laws, slave abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Ann Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, and William Wells Brown enlightened themselves-though our first generation of Black writers to be educated in the United States of America's colleges and universities would not emerge in critical mass until the early 1900s.One of those early pioneers, Zora Neale Hurston, recognized that we needed to somehow hear the unwritten record of Black folklore to understand the history of the United States. In one of her most influential books, Mules and men, Hurston traveled across Florida with the intent to collect, document, and analyze the tales of her childhood. As an older generation of African Americans who had lived through slavery were beginning to pass away, Hurston embarked on a journey to rescue the precious vessel of Black oral tradition before it sank into the abyss. She wanted to prove that Black people were not subhuman, that they were not less-than, that they had systems of rationality and traditions of spirituality all their own, and thus that it had been immoral to subjugate them.* * *Hurston was among a new wave of African American scholars who were writing in the voice of everyday Black folk. In the preface to Mules and men, Franz Boas, Hurston's advisor at Columbia University, where she studied anthropology, wrote, "It is the great merit of Miss Hurston's work that she entered into the homely life of the southern Negro 'with the charm of a lovable personality and of a revealing style.'" But unlike her contemporaries, such as Jean Toomer, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay, Hurston was not just writing poems and short stories and novels. She was attempting to bridge the divide between literary and social scientific writing. To be sure, there were systematic studies of Black life written by African Americans before Hurston came on the scene, like The Philadelphia Negro by W.E.B. Du Bois. Du Bois, though, was not trying to do away with the notion of the disciplined, rational, and distanced observer. "More than any other leading American sociologist during the decade after 1898," wrote historian David Levering Lewis, "Du Bois undertook for a time the working out of an authentic objectivity" (1993: 202).2But if Du Bois, determined to be more objective than the most objective White scholar, believed that the social scientist must not "dally with the truth to humor the whims of the day" (Du Bois 1968: 200), Hurston bellowed forth with laughter, while sitting on an old friend's porch as they traded tall tales of mules and horses and cows and enslaved people engaging in supernatural feats. By revealing the "inner life" of Black people, Hurston sought to convince the world of their humanity through emotion as well as sound argumentation. Her approach was not merely to employ the enduring anthropological "trick" of using seemingly exotic tales of "Negro magic" and "voodoo" to reveal the shared values between the White and Black worlds. Rather, she believed that to understand a person's life, one had to historically situate it. Applying the culture-historical method, characteristic of Boas' students, Hurston thought it more productive to examine how and when the boundaries of a group were formed in the first place. Rooted in a temporal understanding of difference as opposed to a cultural understanding, Hurston thought 'how a group of people came to be who they are today' was the critical ethnographic question. Unlike other leading ethnographers of her day (including Du Bois), Hurston would suspend her moral judgements about Black people's behavior and values in favor of closely scrutinizing the historical epochs that molded women and men (Bunzl 2004).You only have to picture Zora Neale Hurston, draped in a colorful chemise, suede fedora tilted to the side while telling folktales to a table full of White patrons like Charlotte Mason (the self-described "guardian of black folklore"), to see why some people believed that there was a problem with Hurston's persona-not to mention her literary style and scholarship, which were both extensions of herself. Delving into the fables that Black people in the rural South organized their lives around, Hurston was representing her subject matter in a way that, some Black scholars felt, crossed the line into caricature. More to the point, she was commenting on social issues that they felt would undermine the cause of Black equality by allowing Whites to participate in that time-honored American pastime: blaming Black people for their own oppression.* * *Case in point was Hurston's groundbreaking study of the last known survivor of that deadly journey across the Atlantic known as the Middle Passage. She called the book Barracoon after the enclosure in which enslaved people were confined before boarding slave ships. The book was published in 2018, fifty-eight years after Hurston's death, in large measure because its content was so controversial for Black intellectuals and political leaders in her day. Alice Walker describes the sticking point: "It resolutely records the atrocities African people inflicted on each other, long before shackled Africans, traumatized, ill, disoriented, starved, arrived on ships as 'black cargo' in the hellish West" (2018: xv).More concretely, Hurston sat down with Cudjo Lewis, previously known as Kossula, to record the life history of a man who had been born in Africa, and had experienced slavery and then freedom against the backdrop of World War I and the Great Depression. A remarkable man, Kossula outlasted all of the social calamities that threatened to tear him asunder. Over the course of many visits to Kossula's home, he tells Hurston of how he was captured by a neighboring "kingdom," Dahomey. Kossula's village was confronted by Dahomey's warriors, who slaughtered many of them before they had risen from their slumber. Some of Kossula's tribespeople escaped and even made it to the town gates, but another group of warriors captured and swiftly beheaded them before they could abscond. The King of Dahomey, a man named Glele, sold Kossula and his other tribespeople to a White man from the United States named William Foster, who owned the slave ship Clotilda. Kossula was among the 22,500 captives illegally smuggled from the African continent during the period from 1851 to 1860, at least four decades after the practice of selling and transporting enslaved people overseas had been legally outlawed.3 There were approximately 110 people in chains with Kossula aboard the Clotilda, which set sail from the Bight of Benin, the port controlled by Dahomey (Plant 2018: xxiv). In telling his story to Hurston, Kossula relives a past that would have been erased were it not for their exchange. And so it is that in Barracoon, we come to see the conversations between Hurston and Kossula as an attempt to showcase the humanity that stems from longing and having lost the ones you've loved as a consequence of state-sanctioned violence.Along these lines, Hurston's ethnographic work was inspired by the time-honored tradition of folklorists carrying survival stories with them like African griots. Embracing the role of the folklorist/ethnographer, Hurston does away with the conventions of social science that Du Bois valorized, "rejecting the objective observer stance of Western scientific inquiry" (Plant 2018: xxv) in favor of an approach that highlights the worldview of the people with whom the ethnographer speaks. Indeed, she cherishes Black people's storytelling sensibilities, even going so far as to assume "the office of a priest," as Deborah Plant said, in order to create a narrative space for their "unburdening" (2018: 10). But beyond these methodological gems, Hurston's approach has profound implications for how we should think about race.Let us consider the exchange that sparks Hurston and Kossula's initial dialogue (Hurston 2018:18):Hurston: "I want to know who you are, and how you came to be a slave, and to what part of Africa do you belong, and how you fared as a slave, and how you have managed as a free man?"Kossula: "Thankee Jesus! Somebody come ast about Cudjo! I want tellee somebody who I is, so maybe dey go in de Afficky soil some day and callee my name and somebody dere say, 'Yeah, I know Kossula.'"Here Hurston was, a Black woman, recording the life history of a Black man, who is telling her the story of how he became Black, which is to say, how she herself came to be seen as Black, and how they, together, became part of the same race. Before Kossula was Black in the way that would become commonsensical in the United States, his tribe was raided to fill the royal stockades of a Dahomey King. To say that he was Black before then is like saying he was Cudjo Lewis before he landed in the United States. The name, like the racial category, only takes hold once he reaches North American shores.Another lesson Barracoon teaches its readers is how collective identity is forged through a shared sense of endangerment. Kossula explains how experiences can be so painful to remember that subsequent generations must make do with a partially erased reality. Still, Black people's status as victims didn't effectively turn them into a vacuous shell of themselves to be bought and sold to the highest bidder. What Hurston reveals is that the African people who were once legally considered property never lost their humanity.* * *The term "black cargo" emerges from this history of enslavement. But in this talk, Black cargo does not merely refer to dark-skinned people being stolen and packaged aboard slave ships like the Clotilda. Black cargo, in fact, does not pertain to the people themselves, who were never fully stripped of their humanity, even through enslavement. Black cargo consists, instead, of the stories those enslaved people carried with them.I must admit, as I have listened to stories of Black people who face state-sanctioned violence today, part of me felt like Zora Neale Hurston in her old Chevrolet, traveling through Eatonville, collecting stories that, presumably, were soon to be forgotten. But there are key differences between what Hurston was doing then, and what I was doing one hundred years later. When I embarked on my own ethnographic journey, I had no clue that I would encounter an oral tradition of Black people passing along their stories of being betrayed by their government in the form of police abuse. I had set out to speak with any Chicagoan who was willing and able to talk, no matter his or her race or socioeconomic status, about the role they believed the police should play in our society. I interviewed over one hundred Chicagoans for this study, fifty-three of whom identified as Black. While speaking with those Black residents, I found it remarkable how much the stories of police violence they told me resonated with each other, and yet differed from the respondents of other races. Even if they themselves had not personally been victimized by the police, the Black respondents expressed solidarity with victims of police violence through the stories they had carried with them their entire lives.These stories were as historical as they were personal. They were rooted in chattel slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights movement, and the backlash to the political gains of the 1950s and 1960s that my interviewees were living with today. Through their descriptions of racial discrimination, of being treated as predators and criminals, of being entrapped by sexual violence-all at the hands of the police-I realized that these African descendants were organically articulating a theory of racialization. The stories they carried with them were no less than precious reflections about what it means to be Black.Just as Kossula trusted Hurston to "tell his story and transmit it to the world" (Plant 2018: xx), the Chicagoans who have contributed to my research with their profound insights likewise trusted me. As Hurston teaches us, the key benefit of the ethnographic enterprise is that it allows the researcher to inquire into experiences, and to learn about who people really are and how they came to be that way-or how, in this case, the legacy of slavery impacts the way people are policed today. It is through these careful and delicate queries that "Black cargo" is transformed from an empty, hollowed-out shell that is the legal property of another person, into a human vessel that passes on stories of survival for the edification of all.My talk today demonstrates this point by exploring a 2014 police shooting. The shooting of Laquan McDonald garnered national attention when, on October 20, 2014, Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke shot the seventeen-year-old Black teenager sixteen times. For one of my interviewees, Kenya Davis, a twenty-five-year-old middle school teacher, the McDonald shooting became an event that deeply impacted her life. My interview with Kenya, and the stories about the event that she carried with her, thus help me understand how a fantasy of Black predatory violence that is rooted in slavery works to propel police violence.* * *Kenya was born and raised in Chicago, a city known for its activist roots, but she didn't start organizing until she was miles away from home, at college. As she remembers it now, two defining features of her college were that it was predominantly White and profoundly privileged. "A couple of years ago," she told me, "The New York Times wrote an article entitled, 'Where does the top one percent send their kids?'"4 And her college was number two on the list, Kenya said.Initially Kenya felt as though she were living in a bubble, and she was comfortable being enclosed and protected within it. But with each passing semester, she was continuously reminded that she was different from the White students enrolled there. At first she experienced her stigma in a solitary way. But when the issue of state-sanctioned violence and the police's use of force began to receive renewed national attention in the early 2000s, Kenya was compelled to act."There was a man named Troy Davis," she said. "He was on death row in the and he was at the hands of the But there was a lot of that he didn't really do this Kenya about the who their and of the Black of who had been trying to him for When the of him on Kenya "It was a day on for like Kenya to the she had experienced the course of her life to the state-sanctioned violence that was of And after death, when she and the other Black students a in the city to her she that the she had was not merely the of her It was far more we were down the people were at she said. Kenya found the because all she was doing was her first to was a for then Kenya not have the to what was But now, if she could speak to the White of that the people who and and at her as she in the of a life, she would say a to make them their has been And are so are so that you are that down the Troy as a on a journey to more about the use of force in the legal She that the use of force is not merely for people like who were because they have been It Black people like her as day. When she began to talk to me about the way that the police made her it me that her was not merely about the that life. It was about the this is me speaking as a Black she said, the police make me And the police make all of my students They make I know of or not you've when the police past when the police are in the when in the space with they make you have to this is she me, the that they have a and the to a life in me. of the When Kenya these they a with the of other Black respondents I had interviewed for my While about the police for the interviewees, all of the African Americans not around the The this felt so I was that in their over the police's use of my Black respondents were a old about or not the police should be able to * of the of the police in New in the first in the history that a police officer with a the life of a The government had been living in of a from Black people for the War of and the of in the same the with Americans like the and to their from the government that Black people the New government to create their first slave years in was in at the start of the when the government a to a new that they enslaved or no allowed to to the city were critical to who had previously been to their own to these The of slave city government that they needed to the White the of an police force was to New in the many of the White at the time of or were at the the being that the government wanted to them as if they were enslaved New not own but the White why it was to have an to But if that was allowed to and them that was an for them to A critical mass of Whites felt that the government had on their by a in to their And after the police of when the police a White person, an event that to their about a police they a the police violence was not a of but a from an past when could any form of violence on enslaved people that they they the police as an of the slave they that police the of the of the of a police force that political when their to violence on another to a with an to deadly The to they was to the of the city was the most made by New When the to the police of their by a against in means a who was to the social from the of can be as a slave named was out by his A he was allowed to The problem was that, when he to the police captured him and his as to a where his was he As he into a of and the slave its of the through an and to the where he organized a of that the will you from if not the And how will the police you if they are stripped of their In the police is as in human as a leading that from his while that the police's are when from his The that they through became so that it no had to be to the By the beginning of the there was no a need to for the police's need for because that need was no in The had come to that there would be social like this of moral police came to of my to the enduring legacy of this of For Kenya brought the a Black teenager who had been shot sixteen times. "It all me of Laquan she said. In the McDonald case, Kenya went on to say, over the full of police the the of the shooting in 2014, for McDonald was shot one in he was shot many more she said. The problem with this of for Kenya, is that it allows the to that people are in line with what they the violence inflicted on McDonald was so out of line with the he Kenya felt, the was to the and the police were determined to of their own as in the to as a Kenya that the to Black people to police Kenya, police a from speaking to to she thought the two of this were as if in a my Kenya said, "the police are She a to me and is me, that is abuse. about it. has a and they have the have the of the to use their they like in notion that the police's use of force can be to their own of which can with or not they are in with early with The felt that it was and to create a legal around a they that would be shot has not been the What has in the police's use of Laquan case, is that it has become for a police officer to a Black person, in this point, Kenya that, in she why police need to use force if their lives were in she this when the police use force because they like in Kenya this to the of from the of it. But if there was any that Kenya not know the to the she soon her so Kenya said, about an legal to * after this interview with Kenya, Jason Van Van Dyke would the on October 2018, four years and two after he Laquan his the this would learn that on October 20, 2014, on the of and Van Dyke a The came from a police officer named who that one of the on his had been Van Dyke and his had been to the that that it was their to to any where need of their Van Dyke and at the of and While they were the it would to and his Van Dyke to about the who had been so as to the of a police didn't they him if attacking Van Dyke wanted to A short time before they the of the Van Dyke this with an my he about the going to have to the they to and Van Dyke and with one to a a black and Van Dyke the away from was carrying a was seventeen-year-old Laquan around until it was to and Van Dyke the At this point, he and McDonald were away from each was from and an was to his to to Van to while his Van Dyke he could see and he soon the it the face had no Van Dyke from the were just out of his had just these just through Van Dyke that he began at McDonald to the But McDonald Van Dyke said. never lost he were and face was just Van Dyke before how McDonald threatened him with the "He the from his side across his my Van Dyke said, that it was only after McDonald made this that he began to Dyke that he had no he had McDonald when he to though, McDonald to the Van Dyke that once he realized McDonald had he shooting. But then he McDonald "I could see him to with his the I see his start to come I see him that with his not go of it. And his were face has no on McDonald was on the Van Dyke that he was at him to that say how many he at he

Code (set theory · Government (linguistics · Political science · Reading (process · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · White (mutation · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society

• Racial Optics of Escalation

  Sonia N Da, Sonia N Das et al.•Current Anthropology•2024

  Add to list

• From rebellion to revolution

  Eugene D Genovese•From rebellion to revolution•1981

  Add to list

• The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois

  Open Access•St Clair Drake•Political Science Quarterly•1971

  Add to list

• W. E. B. Du Bois

  Clarence E Walker, David Levering Lewis•The Journal of Southern History•1995

  Add to list

• Disturbing the Peace

  Bryan Wagner•Disturbing the Peace•2009

  Add to list

• Blackness and Legend

  Ford Ford•Black Camera•2015

  Add to list

• Barracoon

  Open Access•Martin Larsson, Martin Jesper•Estudios Sociológicos de El…•2022

  Add to list

• The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1856

  Harvey Wish•The Journal of Southern History•1939

  Add to list

• Slave Codes and Judicial Practice in New Orleans, 1718–1807

  Open Access•Thomas N Ingersoll•Law and History Review•1995

  Add to list

• "Boas, Foucault, and the "Native Anthropologist

  Open Access•Matti Bunzl•American Anthropologist•2004

  Add to list

• Can you be Black and Look at This

  Elizabeth Alexander•Public Culture•1994

  Add to list