When Hurston first visits Cudjo, she finds him eating breakfast on his porch he immediately takes to her because she addresses him by his African name, Kossula. They band together to build a village called “Africatown,” which is now known as Plateau. However, just one year later the Civil War begins, and at its end all the slaves are freed. The brothers sell some of the slaves but divide the majority among themselves. Returning to America in seventy days, Foster covertly enters the Mobile Bay the slaves are hidden on a plantation, and Foster burns the boat to destroy evidence of his journey. There are many people to choose from, given that the Dahomey habitually declares war on its neighbors and sells the defeated as slaves. Arriving in the Gulf of Guinea, Foster meets with the prince of Dahomey and selects 130 slaves from the barracoon, or stockade. Three brothers- Jim, Tim, and Burns Meaher-who own a shipyard in Alabama finance the expedition, sending Captain Bill Foster in the ship Clotilda to buy slaves in the West African kingdom of Dahomey. Hurston gives some background information on the men who bought Cudjo and brought him to America in 1859, decades after the international slave trade was abolished in America. As such, she’s seeking out the last survivor of the infamous Middle Passage to hear his side of the story. However, almost none of the writers are people who themselves endured slavery. She says that slavery is “the most dramatic chapter in the story of human existence,” and many people have written about it, both in support and condemnation. Zora Neale Hurston opens the narrative with an introduction detailing her purpose in seeking out and interviewing Cudjo Lewis.

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