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Kojo

Summary: Kojo

One of the ships Kojo, known as Jo, has been working on for two years, Alice, has been robbed, leading the police to question all of the Black dockworkers. Jo, who has been jumpy around police ever since escaping catchers in the woods on the way to Maryland with Ma Aku, asks his friend Poot to cover for him and leaves. As he walks, Jo admires his city of Baltimore and thinks of how Ma Aku freed him from a life of slavery. Jo decides to visit his wife, Anna, who is pregnant with their eighth child, at the Mathison house, which she cleans along with Ma Aku. The Mathisons are wealthy abolitionists. When Anna and Ma Aku are finished, the three of them return home to Jo and Anna’s children, each one’s name beginning with a letter of the alphabet in order from A to G. They have been calling the new baby “H.”

The next day, Mathison tells Jo that a new law is being passed that will require any runaway slaves to be sent back to the South. Mathison encourages Jo to go north as he and Ma Aku are runaways with forged free papers. However, Jo does not want to leave Anna and the children, who were born free. A few months later, on the day Jo’s oldest daughter, Agnes, gets married, the law is passed. Every morning, Jo makes sure Anna and the children have their papers. However, one day, Anna does not come home from work. After three weeks without finding Anna, Mathison finds a young Black boy, who relays to Jo that he saw a white man taking a Black pregnant woman into his carriage. Though Mathison has hope that they can find Anna, Jo knows that she was sold.

Ten years later, Ma Aku has died, and Jo still sees Anna everywhere he turns. Knowing that his grown children cannot stand to be around him anymore, he has moved to New York, where he takes any job he can during the day and drinks at the Black bar at night. One night at the bar, Jo hears the bartender and a man argue about whether South Carolina seceding means war is coming. However, Jo cannot bring himself to care.

Analysis: Kojo

Kojo’s, or Jo’s, story reveals that Aku was successful in bringing Ness’s child to freedom. However, though Jo and his family may not be enslaved, they are not fully free either. Jo is aware that his freedom could be revoked at any time, as he knows the police would take any excuse to arrest a Black man for a crime he did not commit. Even as many of his acquaintances flee with the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Jo is accustomed to hiding in plain sight, as his papers are illegal.

Jo’s love of boats shows the disconnection from his heritage that has happened only over two generations. The symbols of boats and water appear in other stories, often showing that descendants of enslaved people dislike both elements because they were forcibly brought to the United States on a boat that crossed the Atlantic. However, as Jo never knew his grandmother, who was brought over on a boat, and barely remembers his mother, he didn’t inherit the fear of water. Though Jo was lucky to have escaped a life of slavery, this disconnect shows that he may have been more likely to bring his family north if he knew firsthand the dangers and horrors of slavery. Such a scenario reveals that not being aware of one’s recent history can doom a person to repeat it.

The mention of the Fugitive Slave Act and the impending Civil War highlights the tensions in the country at the time. Jo and his family are happy and relatively comfortable. Supposed progress has been made, with more free Black people in the North and people like the Mathisons arguing for the abolition of slavery. However, Jo and his family cannot escape the dangers that are inherent to existing as Black people in a Southern border state.

Jo’s story shows the importance of family bonds. Though Jo was separated from his own parents, he sees Ma Aku as a mother figure, as she was the one who ultimately rescued him from slavery. This was what allowed Jo to build his own family, one he is immensely proud of and close to. However, the loss of his wife and unborn baby to slavery ends up tearing the family apart. Though Jo would still have been devastated had Anna died, he may have taken comfort in his family and grieved with them. However, knowing he lost her to the institution of slavery is more than he can bear. Even if a person is not enslaved themselves, slavery still has the power to destroy families and people.

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