Gullah Culture in America

Wilbur Cross, Eric Crawford

Description

• Outreach to Southeast book and gift stores, particular focus on GA and SC
• Outreach to regional festivals and conferences, including SIBA
• Targeted events at Gullah Geechee festivals in the Lowcountry region
  

• New edition of a strong seller: This second edition of Gullah Culture in America includes updates and new material written by Eric Crawford, a Gullah Geechee scholar at Benedict College, an HBCU in South Carolina.
• Renewed interest in Gullah culture: Specials like W. Kamau Bell’s episode “The South Carolina Gullah” on CNN’s United Shades of America indicate a renewed interest in learning about and preserving Gullah history, language, and culture. Blair has seen this interest spike firsthand. Our title Gullah Days released in 2020 and quickly required a second printing. Gullah Days was co-authored by Emory Campbell, who wrote the original introduction to Gullah Culture in America.
  

Foreword by Emory Shaw Campbell

Acknowledgments

1. Welcome Home!
2. Catching the Learning
3. The Penn School
4. Growing Up Gullah
5. Hallelujah!
6. Healing and Folk Medicine
7. Gullah Language
8. Geography
9. Gullah Food
10. Festivals and Celebrations
11. Music, Song, and Dance
12. Roots

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Ethnic Studies
• Social History
• Cultural
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Edisto
• Carolina del Sur
• Sierra Leona
• América
• St Helena Island
• Penn Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Sapelo Island
• Edisto Island, South Carolina
• West Africa
• School
• Slavery
• South Carolina
• African American
• American
• United States
• Georgia
• FL
• KY
• LA
• TN
• MS
• SC
• NC
• AR
• École
• Cumberland
• VA
• GA
• Sierra Leone
• Caroline du Sud

Informations

• Publié par: Blair
• Date de parution: 07 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781949467970
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

GULLAH CULTURE — IN — AMERICA
WILBUR CROSS AND ERIC CRAWFORD
—BLAIR—
Cover Art: Two Baskets, 2000
Oil on Linen, 16" × 20" © Jonathan Green
The Collection of Margaret and Jeffrey Lofgren
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cross, Wilbur, author. | Crawford, Eric Sean, author, editor.
Title: Gullah culture in America / by Wilbur Cross and Eric Crawford.
Description: [Second edition]. | Durham : Blair, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022041318 (print) | LCCN 2022041319 (ebook) | ISBN 9781949467963 (paperback) | ISBN 9781949467970 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH : Gullahs—History. | Gullahs—Social life and customs. | Sea Islands—Civilization.
Classification: LCC E 185.93. S 7 C 76 2023 (print) | LCC E 185.93. S 7 (ebook) | DDC 305.896/07375799—dc23/eng/20220912
LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2022041318
LC ebook record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2022041319
CONTENTS Foreword. Going Home: How a Long-Lost Culture Is Rising from Oblivion, by Emory Shaw Campbell Chapter 1. Welcome Home! Chapter 2. Catch the Learning Chapter 3. A Quantum Leap Chapter 4. Growing Up Gullah Chapter 5. Hallelujah! Chapter 6. Healing and Folk Medicine Chapter 7. The Gullah Language Chapter 8. Preserving the Corridor Chapter 9. Gullah Geechee Cuisine Chapter 10. Gullah Celebrations Chapter 11. Music, Song, and Dance Chapter 12. Roots Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
FOREWORD
GOING HOME
Rising from Oblivion
Emory Shaw Campbell
Since long before America’s independence, the nation has had hidden pockets of a bygone African culture, rich in native history, with a language of its own, and long endowed with beguiling talents in its traditions, language, design, medicine, agriculture, fishing, hunting, weaving, and arts. Although thousands of articles and hundreds of books have been written on discoveries of Native American cultures and American Indian lore, the Gullah Geechee culture has been almost totally overlooked. It is known only to those living near these African American communities and select historians whose findings have been published in specialized journals and scholarly books. This new edition coauthored by Wilbur Cross and Eric Crawford explores what very few yet know as a direct link to the African continent, an almost lost culture that exists in the Sea Islands of the United States, along a corridor stretching from the northeast coast of Florida along the Georgia and South Carolina coastal shores to the Wilmington, North Carolina, area, and little more than fifty miles inland at any point.
The first published evidence of this culture went almost unnoticed until the 1860s, when northern missionaries made their way South, even as the Civil War was at its height, to the Sea Islands of South Carolina, where they established a small school to help formerly enslaved people learn how to read and write and make a living in a world of upheaval and distress. One of these schools evolved into the distinguished Penn School. There they noticed that most of the native island Black people spoke a language that was only part English, tempered with expressions and idioms, often spoken in a melodious, euphonic manner. Yet this was the barest beginning, for the language carried over into other forms of communication and expressiveness, ranging from body movements and the use of hand and head movements to the rituals of religion, work, dancing, greetings, and the arts.
The homogeneity, richness, and consistency of this culture were made possible by the fortunate fact that these peoples maintained a solidarity over the generations because they were isolated from other peoples and cultures. Thus, they were able to maintain their heritage, language, and traditions, unlike other peoples of African and foreign lineage who came to America’s shores and over the years blended in with other cultures, as they did in the northern or southern cities and the more heavily populated upper regions of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Even today there are more than three hundred thousand Gullah-speaking people living in the more remote areas of the Sea Islands, such as St. Helena, Edisto, Coosaw, Ossabaw, Sapelo, Daufuskie, and Cumberland.
Part of this book focuses on the engrossing story of Sea Islanders of Gullah descent who traveled in groups to Sierra Leone in 1989, 1998, 2005, and 2019 to trace their origins and ancestry. I was fortunate enough to have been involved with the research into these West African origins, along with one of the most noted authorities in this field, Joseph Opala, an anthropologist who had made some remarkable studies about Bunce Island, in the harbor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, where in the eighteenth century thousands of captured Africans were held temporarily to be boarded on ships bound for South Carolina and Georgia.
Many subjects of pertinent interest are included, beginning with a brief introduction to the Gullah culture in America, its roots, the location and extent of its peoples, its current history and beliefs, and, most importantly, its exuberance, imagery, color, and contributions to the world we live in. It should not be forgotten how a young African American linguist, Lorenzo Dow Turner, ventured into the remotest reaches of the Sea Islands of Georgia and the Carolinas in the early 1930s to begin the first scientific investigation of the Gullah peoples and culture. Astonishingly—unlike Native American cultures, which were studied many generations ago by sociologists—the Gullah history and heritage were virtually unknown, even in the Southeast, until the Turner studies were published.
Even so, his work eventually faded from public knowledge, and awareness of the Gullah culture lapsed again, almost into oblivion, until a slow revival began in the last quarter of the twentieth century. One book alone, covering an entire culture, cannot do more than give its readers a broad panorama of the subject. Yet, remarkably, the chapters in this history of Gullah culture present a wealth of detail that allows readers to experience the drama, the color, the romance, and the vitality of Gullah, and in effect “meet” many of the personalities who have played a part—past and present—in making it what it is today. The authors, using personal and historical research, recount interviews with Gullah people who have described what it was like to grow up in the old traditions. They take the reader on a tour of “praise houses,” where enslaved Africans and their descendants practiced religion, not only with the familiar spirituals, but with expressions of faith, joy, hardship, hope, and repentance in “shouts,” which begin slowly with the shuffling of feet and the clapping of hands, followed by louder and louder expressions of reverence. The authors introduce the reader to one of the most bewitching aspects of the Gullah culture—its practices of healing and folk medicine. Though originating hundreds of years ago, in many cases these practices have been proven to be scientifically effective, and some are the forerunners of medications developed in the present century.
As one who is recognized today for my fluency in the Gullah Geechee language and my many assignments to translate it, I was particularly pleased to see the chapter on our speech, which takes the reader on a rewarding and effective road to discovery of the origins and usages of words, phrases, and idioms. And I recommend to you the joys of reading about Gullah foods and recipes, festivals and celebrations, music, song, and dance, and the unbelievable origins of that side of the culture that brings joy to the heart. In retrospect, it is difficult to realize that so many of the uplifting aspects of this unique culture were born in the darkest days of slavery, inhumanity, torture, and discrimination. How Gullah people rose from the ashes to revive and live their culture in the most positive of ways is truly a fascinating and inspiring story.
This second edition expands very effectively the fundamental aspects of this culture and brings greater awareness of the Gullah Geechee traditions in North Carolina and Florida. Early studies by Michael Allen and Congressman James Clyburn confirmed the presence of vibrant Gullah communities existing in these states. Over the past few years, the culture has become like the coast. It is being paved over, and we are being influenced by the larger culture so much that we forget our own values. This book reeducates us about what is important. I can state without reservation that you will reach the end of the chapters with a sense of great human accomplishment, and you will want to pass the book along to others to let them know what the human body, spirit, and soul can accomplish under even the greatest duress.
Emory Shaw Campbell
Executive Director Emeritus, Penn Center,
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
OVERLEAF : Gullah father and son opening oysters on their wooden scows in 1904. Negative/Transparency No. 478150. (Photo by Julian Dimock.) Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History Library.

CHAPTER ONE WELCOME HOME!
On a November day in 1989, unusually brisk for the Lowcountry and Sea Islands, fourteen Gullah Geechee leaders gathered in Savannah, Georgia, for a trip that would be more meaningful than any other in their lives. Although they appeared to have much in common with other groups of travelers, these passengers would experience a journey that would take them backward in time to their ancestral homeland in Sierra Leone. It had been said that the enslaved Africans carried nothing with them on their involuntary voyages from West Africa to the New World. However, members of the “Gullah Homecoming” delegation were living proof that the enslaved had indeed brought “indelible memories of their culture—music, folklore, language, art, and religion—to the Sea Islands.”
The 1989 “Gullah Homecoming” was the culmination of p