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http://digital.mobilepubliclibrary.org/files/original/8afd9a13955e1760be23cc3788ee2287.pdf
279b30975f999e3023081d95495ba904
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Clotilda Collection
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clippings file
Description
An account of the resource
Items from the Clotilda vertical files and archival collection
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Mobile Public Library's Clotilda Files Collection
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Mobile Public Library, Local History & Genealogy
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This file may be freely used for educational uses as long as it is not altered in any way. No commercial reproduction or distribution of this file is permitted without written permission from this institution.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
scanned images
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text, still image
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
files-clotilda
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document
Last Survivor of Slave Ship Deeply Grateful to God, Man
By Emma Roche
His last dramatic words to me were, “When they tell you Kazoola is dead, say ‘No! Kazoola is not dead – he has gone to heaven to rest.’”
Since January he had been ill. Late in that month we took Roark Bradford, author of “All Gawd’s Chillun,” to call on Kazoola, known as Cujo Lewis, last survivor of the last slave ship, Clotilde, and I saw then that death had marked for his own my pathetic old friend. Gone was his merry spirit and keen wit, so characteristic of him but memory, sight and hearing were still intact, and he told Mr. Braford the harrowing story of the African manhunt which resulted in his capture and his bondage in America.
Years ago when I made drawings of the survivors of the last slave ship, he asked that I call him “Kazoola,” the name given him by his father and mother in Africa, because is was the name he loved. He lived and died in the house he built for himself 75 years ago – a year after he was brought to Alabama – and in all that time he spent only two nights away from its roof. Here Celie, his African wife, who was afraid at first that Americans would eat her, had lived and died; here his sons had been born, grew up, and died, too. Here during their lifetime the Africans gathered on Sunday afternoons to talk of their African home and to speak their native language. It is substantially built – two rooms opening on a gallery which extends across the front length, with two smaller rooms at the rear. There are no glass windows – only wooden shutters.
After he was too weak to be about, when I called to see him the doors and windows would be closed tight. Opening a door, I’d call, “Kazoola,” and out of the gloom a low moan and a “Thank God” would answer me. A feeble one-eyed, old negro ministered to him and a daughter-in-law brought him food. He was made comfortable to the end, and his one sadness was that there was no one left in all the world who could speak to him in his native language.
On my last visit I found him sitting in an old rocking chair by the window, the wooden shutter thrown back. He was sitting very straight – his breath short. He looked younger – more like himself of a quarter of a century ago. His eyes seemed very large and full of dreams. I touched his hands and they were as cold as death, though the afternoon was warm. “How is it, Kazoola, that I find you sitting up?”
“I will tell you. I remembered that, in Africa, when one was sick and the sun was ready to go down, the sick one was lifted up and held out so.”He held out his arms, as if a limp, sick body might lie across them. “He was held out until the sun went down; then he was put back in bed so.” He made another movement as if laying the sick one back upon a bed, his gesture one of care and gentleness. “I was lying on my bed, and I looked up and knew the sun was about to go down, so I got up to sit by my window, where I can look out.” The window opened to the east, but his eyes were fixed on the reflected glow of the sunset sky. I shall always remember Kazoola as I saw him then, surrounded by the gloom of the room, a shaft of reflected sunset across his face and hands – a veritable Rembrandt painting come to life.
He sang for me in his native language the Tarkar death chant as sung in his African home, a stirring chant built upon minor cadences. He then told me that, after he and the other Africans adopted the Christian religion, Poleete, Charlee and he transposed the words of the chant to fit their new belief. “This is how we put it in the American language, and I want you to remember it when I am gone.” He sang these American words to the tune of his African chant:
“Jesus Christ, Song of God,
Please, Jesus, save my soul.
I want to go to heaven
When I die,
Jesus Christ, Son of God.”
Kazoola could neither read nor write, but he was witty, intelligent and had a remarkable memory. His dialect, which many could not understand, was not of the negroid type we know in the south. He was quite eloquent at times, and his words were often fraught with an indescribable pathos. He liked to speak in parables, and most of his talk was allegorical, but toward the end he dropped this manner of speech and spoke more directly, but always picturesquely. He knew his Scripture, could repeat many lines, and tell correctly the verse and chapter from which they were taken.
He and his African companions were in Alabama for 10 years before they embraced Christianity. They then built a substantial church on the green next to Kazoola’s home, and he always ranf the bell for services. After he had sung to me his African death chant, he asked that I get pencil and paper and write down the date and place of his conversion. It was Stone Street church in Mobile, in 1869. Benjamin Bush was the pastor. Bush asked Kazoola, “Where do you want to go when you die?” Kazoola replied, pointing to the sky, “I want to go yonder.” Bush then told him of God and the Bible – and Kazoola asked that I record that, ever since hearing the story, he has been ready and willing to die for Jesus.
Though no religionist, I have been profoundly touched by Kazoola’s devoted faith. When he has been a recipient of small favors, I have seen him look up to the sky, stretch out his hands and fervently say, “Lord, God, I thank Thee! Jesus, I thank Thee!” When much time elapsed between my visits, when he saw me again, tears of gratitude would flow down his cheeks, and he would look up to the God he believed lived just above him in the sky and say, “Lord! God! I thank Thee that I see her once again.”
About a year ago I called – the interval had been long since I had seen him. “How are you, Kazoola?” I asked
“I will tell you,” he replied, and resorted to a parable. “Suppose you own a little cat and a little dog. In the morning you get up and feed the little cat and give it water but you forget all about the little dog – how is it that you expect that little dog to live?”
He had much wisdom and only a few years ago he refused an opulent offer to appear in a vaudeville show in New York city.
In sight of his home on a gentle hillside under tall pines lie his wife and all his African companions. “All I have lies in American soil,” he would say, pointing to the graves beneath the pines. On July 29 Kazoola, the last of that pitiful, gallant band of Africans, was laid on the hillside, too, and perhaps his last words to me are true, “Kazoola is not dead – he has gone to heaven to rest.”
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Last Survivor of Slave Ship Deeply Grateful to God, Man
Subject
The topic of the resource
Kazoola
Description
An account of the resource
Mobile Press article about the passing of Kazoola, also known as Cujo Lewis
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Emma Roche
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Mobile Press
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Mobile Press
Mobile Public Library, Local History & Genealogy
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
August 18, 1935
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
newspaper article
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Last-Survivor-of-Slave-Ship-August-1935
Africatown
Clotilda
Clotilde
Cudjoe 'Kazoola' Lewis
Kazzola