Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"

by Zora Neale Hurston

“When I knew her, in the fifties, she was a big woman, erect. Not quite as light as I am [Dr. Benton is dark beige], and about five foot, seven inches, and she weighed about two hundred pounds. Probably more. She . . . ” “What! Zora was fat! She wasn’t in Van Vechten’s pictures!” “Zora loved to eat,” Dr. Benton says complacently. “She could sit down with a mound of ice cream and just eat and talk till it was all gone.” While Dr. Benton is talking, I recall that the Van Vechten pictures were taken when Zora was still a young woman. In them she appears tall, tan, and healthy. In later newspaper photographs—when she was in her forties—I remembered that she seemed heavier and several shades lighter. I reasoned that the earlier photographs were taken while she was busy collecting folklore materials in the hot Florida sun.