This week on The Learning Curve, Gerard and guest cohost Daiana Lambrecht, Senior Director of Parent Leadership and Advocacy at Rocketship Public Schools, interview Dr. Deborah Plant, editor of the 2018 book Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston. Dr. Plant discusses Hurston’s work as an anthropologist that told the story of one of the last survivors of the infamous Middle Passage. To mark Black History Month, she explores, through Hurston’s interviews with Oluale Kossola (Cudjo Lewis), the enslavement and displacement of native West Africans over 50 years after the slave trade was outlawed in the U.S. Dr. Plant discusses enslaved Africans striving for education, freedom, and community in the U.S., and the importance for American schoolchildren today learning about and remembering these stories. She closes the interview with a reading from Barracoon.