Gullah

The Gullah are African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and Georgia, which includes both the coastal plain and the Sea Islands. Historically, the Gullah region once extended north to the Cape Fear area on the coast of North Carolina and south to the vicinity of Jacksonville on the coast of Florida; but today the Gullah area is confined to the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry. The Gullah people and their language are also called Geechee, which some scholars speculate to be related to the Ogeechee River near Savannah, Georgia. The term Geechee is an emic term used by speakers (and can have a derogatory connotation depending on usage) and "Gullah" is a term that was generally used by outsiders but that has become a way for speakers to formally identify themselves and their language.

The Gullah are known for preserving more of their African linguistic and cultural heritage than any other African-American community in the United States. They speak an English-based creole language containing many African loanwords and significant influences from African languages in grammar and sentence structure. The Gullah language is related to Jamaican Creole, Barbadian Dialect, and the Krio language of Sierra Leone in West Africa. Gullah storytelling, cuisine, music, folk beliefs, crafts, farming and fishing traditions, all exhibit strong influences from West and Central African cultures.

History

The name "Gullah" may derive from Angola, where some Gullah people may have originated. Some scholars have also suggested it comes from Gola, an ethnic group living in the border area between Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa, another region where many of the Gullahs' ancestors originated. The name "Geechee," another common name for the Gullah people, may come from Kissi, an ethnic group living in the border area between Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

Some scholars have also suggested Native American origins for these words. The Spanish called the South Carolina and Georgia coastal region Guale after a Native American tribe. The Ogeechee River, a prominent geographical feature in coastal Georgia, takes its name from a Creek Indian word.

African roots

Most of the Gullahs' early ancestors in what is now the United States were brought to the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry through the ports of Charleston and Savannah as slaves, making their way from Sierra Leone by way of Brazil. Charleston was one of the most important ports in North America for the Transatlantic slave trade. Up to half of the enslaved Africans brought into what is now the United States came through that port. A great majority of the remaining flowed through Savannah, which was also active in the slave trade.

The largest group of enslaved Africans brought into Charleston and Savannah came from the West African rice-growing region, centered primarily in Sierra Leone through the most significant slave castle for the modern day United States called Bunce Island. The people had cultivated African rice in this section of West Africa for possibly up to 3,000 years. South Carolina and Georgia rice planters once called this region the "Rice Coast", indicating its importance as a source of skilled African labor for the North American rice industry. Once it was discovered that rice would grow in the southern U.S. regions, it was assumed that enslaved Africans from rice-growing regions in Africa would be beneficial, due to their knowledge of rice-growing techniques.

In 1750, Henry Laurens and Richard Oswald opened the most significant slave castle just up the Sierra Leone river on what was then called Bance Island, and is now called Bunce Island. Here is where up to 80% of African Americans in the United States whose heritage comes from the slave trade are believed to have derived.

Origin of Gullah culture

The Gullah people have been able to preserve much of their African cultural heritage because of geography, climate, and patterns of importation of enslaved Africans. Taken from the Western region of Africa as slaves and transported to some areas of Brazil (including Bahia) the Gullah-Gheechee slaves were then sold to slave owners in what was then Charlestowne, South Carolina. By the middle of the 18th century, the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry was covered by thousands of acres of rice fields. African farmers from the "Rice Coast" brought the skills for cultivation and tidal irrigation that made rice one of the most successful industries in early America.

The semi-tropical climate that made the Lowcountry such an excellent place for rice production also made it vulnerable to the spread of malaria and yellow fever. These tropical diseases, endemic in Africa, were carried by slaves transported to the colonies by slave ships. Mosquitoes in the swamps and inundated rice fields of the Lowcountry picked up and spread the diseases to English and European settlers, as well. Malaria and yellow fever soon became endemic in the region.

Because of having built some immunity in their homeland, Africans were more resistant to tropical fevers than the Europeans. In addition, because planters devoted large areas of land to plantations for rice and indigo, the white population of the Low-country and sea islands grew at a slower rate than the black population. More and more enslaved Africans were brought as laborers onto the sea islands and into the Low-country as the rice industry expanded. By about 1708, South Carolina had a black majority. Coastal Georgia later acquired its own black majority after rice cultivation expanded there in the mid-18th century, and malaria and yellow fever became endemic. Fearing disease, many white planters left the Lowcountry during the rainy spring and summer months when fever ran rampant. Others lived mostly in cities such as Charleston.

They left their African "rice drivers," or overseers, in charge of the plantations. Working on large plantations with hundreds of laborers, and with African traditions reinforced by new imports from the same regions, the Gullahs developed a culture in which elements of African languages, cultures, and community life were preserved to a high degree. Their culture was quite different from that of slaves in states like Virginia and North Carolina, where slaves lived in smaller settlements and had more sustained and frequent interactions with whites.

Gullah customs and traditions

African influences are found in every aspect of the Gullahs' traditional way of life:

The Gullah word guber for peanut derives from the KiKongo word N'guba.

Gullah rice dishes called "red rice" and "okra soup" are similar to West African "jollof rice" and "okra soup". Jollof rice is a style of cooking brought by the Wolof and Mandé peoples of West Africa.

The Gullah version of "gumbo" has its roots in African cooking. "Gumbo" is derived from a word in the Umbundu language of Angola, meaning okra, one of the dish's main ingredients.

Gullah rice farmers once made and used mortar and pestles and winnowing fanners similar in style to tools used by West African rice farmers.

Gullah beliefs about "hags" and "haunts" are similar to African beliefs about malevolent ancestors, witches, and "devils" (forest spirits).

Gullah "root doctors" protect their clients against dangerous spiritual forces by using ritual objects similar to those employed by African medicine men.

Gullah herbal medicines are similar to traditional African remedies.

The Gullah "seekin" ritual is similar to coming of age ceremonies in West African secret societies, such as the Poro and Sande.

The Gullah ring shout is similar to ecstatic religious rituals performed in West and Central Africa.

Gullah stories about "Bruh Rabbit" are similar to West and Central African trickster tales about the clever and conniving rabbit, spider, and tortoise.

Gullah spirituals, shouts, and other musical forms employ the "call and response" method commonly used in African music.

Gullah "sweetgrass baskets" are coil straw baskets made by the descendants of slaves in the South Carolina Lowcountry.

Gullah "sweetgrass baskets" are almost identical to coil baskets made by the Wolof people in Senegal.

Gullah "strip quilts" mimic the design of cloth woven with the traditional strip loom used throughout West Africa. The famous kente cloth from Ghana is woven on the strip loom.

The folk song Michael Row the Boat Ashore (or Michael Row Your Boat Ashore) comes from the Gullah culture.

Civil War period

When the U.S. Civil War began, the Union rushed to blockade Confederate shipping. White planters on the Sea Islands, fearing an invasion by the US naval forces, abandoned their plantations and fled to the mainland. When Union forces arrived on the Sea Islands in 1861, they found the Gullah people eager for their freedom, and eager as well to defend it. Many Gullahs served with distinction in the Union Army's First South Carolina Volunteers. The Sea Islands were the first place in the South where slaves were freed. Long before the War ended, Quaker missionaries from Pennsylvania came down to start schools for the newly freed slaves. Penn Center, now a Gullah community organization on Saint Helena Island, South Carolina, began as the very first school for freed slaves.

After the Civil War ended, the Gullahs' isolation from the outside world actually increased in some respects. The rice planters on the mainland gradually abandoned their farms and moved away from the area because of labor issues and hurricane damage to crops. Free blacks were unwilling to work in the dangerous and disease-ridden rice fields. A series of hurricanes devastated the crops in the 1890s. Left alone in remote rural areas in the Lowcountry, the Gullahs continued to practice their traditional culture with little influence from the outside world well into the 20th Century.

Modern times

In recent years the Gullah people—led by Penn Center and other determined community groups—have been fighting to keep control of their traditional lands. Since the 1960s, resort development on the Sea Islands has threatened to push Gullahs off family lands they have owned since emancipation. They have fought back against uncontrolled development on the islands through community action, the courts, and the political process.

The Gullahs have struggled to preserve their traditional culture. In 2005, the Gullah community unveiled a translation of the New Testament in the Gullah language (a project that took more than 20 years to complete). The Gullahs achieved another victory in 2006 when the U.S. Congress passed the "Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Act" that provides $10 million over ten years for the preservation and interpretation of historic sites relating to Gullah culture. The "heritage corridor" will extend from southern North Carolina to northern Florida. The project will be administered by the US National Park Service with extensive consultation with the Gullah community.

Gullahs have also reached out to West Africa. Gullah groups made three celebrated "homecomings" to Sierra Leone in 1989, 1997, and 2005. Sierra Leone is at the heart of the traditional rice-growing region of West Africa where many of the Gullahs' ancestors originated. Bunce Island, the British slave castle in Sierra Leone, sent many African captives to Charleston and Savannah during the mid- and late 18th century. These dramatic homecomings were the subject of three documentary films—Family Across the Sea (1990), The Language You Cry In (1998), and Priscilla's Homecoming (in production).

Celebrating Gullah culture

Over the years, the Gullahs have attracted many historians, linguists, folklorists, and anthropologists interested in their rich cultural heritage. Many academic books on that subject have been published. The Gullah have also become a symbol of cultural pride for blacks throughout the United States and a subject of general interest in the media. This has given rise to countless newspaper and magazine articles, documentary films, and children's books on Gullah culture, and to a number of popular novels set in the Gullah region.

Gullah people now organize cultural festivals every year in towns up and down the Lowcountry. Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, for instance, hosts a "Gullah Celebration" in February. It includes "De Aarts ob We People" show; the "Ol’ Fashioned Gullah Breakfast"; "National Freedom Day," the "Gullah Film Fest", "A Taste of Gullah" food and entertainment, a "Celebration of Lowcountry Authors and Books," an "Arts, Crafts & Food Expo," and "De Gullah Playhouse." Beaufort, South Carolina hosts the oldest and the largest celebration "The Original Gullah Festival" in May, and nearby Penn Center on St. Helena Island, South Carolina holds "Heritage Days" in November. Other Gullah festivals are celebrated on James Island, South Carolina and Sapelo Island, Georgia.

But Gullah culture is also being celebrated elsewhere throughout the United States. Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana recently held an event to showcase the Gullah culture. Purdue's Black Cultural Center maintains a bibliography of Gullah publications as well. Metro State College in Denver, Colorado recently hosted a conference on Gullah culture, called "The Water Brought Us: Gullah History and Culture", which featured a panel of Gullah scholars and cultural activists. These events in Indiana and Colorado are typical of the attention Gullah culture now receives on a regular basis throughout the United States.

Cultural survival

Gullah culture has proven to be particularly resilient. Gullah traditions are strong not only in the rural areas of the Lowcountry mainland and on the Sea Islands, but also in urban areas like Charleston and Savannah. But some of the old fashioned ways have persisted even among Gullah people who have left the Lowcountry and moved far away. Many Gullahs migrated to New York starting at the beginning of the 20th century, and these urban migrants have not lost their identity. Gullahs have their own neighborhood churches in Harlem, Brooklyn, and Queens. Typically they send their children back to rural communities in South Carolina and Georgia during the summer months to be reared by grandparents, uncles and aunts. Gullah people living in New York also frequently return to the Lowcountry to retire. Second- and third-generation Gullahs in New York often maintain many of their traditional customs and sometimes still speak the Gullah language.

Gullah Language and the Bible

The presistence of the Gullah language has had an impact on African-American indigenous understanding of the Bible and has culminated in the translation of the Gospel according to Luke by the African-American Gullah people themselves. The American Bible Society (1994) published De Good Nyews Bout Jedus Christ Wa Luke Write: The Gospel according to Luke in the Gullah language in cooperation with and translated by the Gullah People themselves. The Preface states: ”The Gospel of Luke in Gullah (Sea Island Creole) is the first book of the Bible to be published in this tongue. This translation is prepared for the thousands of Sea Island speakers, whose language has been shown to be not only a completely worthy, but also a truly beautiful vehicle for the conveyance of God’s Good News. The Sea Island Translation and Literary Team is especially grateful to our numerous fellow Sea Islanders who have patiently and consistently contributed to the production of these sacred Scriptures into our mother tongue. The Team has prepared the translation in cooperation with the Summer Institute of Linguistics and Wycliffe Bible Translators and is deeply committed to the full authority and infallibility of the Bible as God’s written Word.”

The following passage from the King James Bible (KJV) followed by the Gullah rendering is a good example of the contribution the Sea Island Translation and Literary Team has made to biblical translation of the Bible into indigenous languages:

King James Version (KJV):

16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. 17 And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, 18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4:16-19, KJV).

African-American Gullah Version (AGV):

16 Jedus gone to Nazrut, weh e libe from de time e been a leetle chile til e git big. Wen de Jew Woshup Day come, y gone ta de meetin house like e always do. An e stan op fa read God Book ta de people. 17 Dey gem de book wa Isaiah done write. Isaiah been a prophut wa taak fa God Book ta de people. So den, Jedus open de book ta da place weh Isaiah write, say, 18 ”De Lawd Sperit da libe een me an gee me powa. Cause e done pick me fa tell de good nyews ta de po people. E done sen me fa tell dem wa ain’t free, say, ’Oona gwine be free.’ E sen me fa tell de bline people, say, ’Oona qwine see gin.’ E sen me fa free dem wa da suffa. 19 An e sen me fa tell de people say, ’De time done come wen de Lawd gwine sabe e people.’” (Luke 4:16-19,AGV).

Overview of Gullah Culture

The Original Gullah Festival

Gullah Summary

New Georgia Encyclopedia

Gullah Heritage

Gullah Pride

Gullah and Geechee

Lowcountry Africana

Teacher Resources

Photos of the Gullah Region

Gullah-Geechee Corridor

Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Act

US Park Service Study of the Gullah

Purdue University Gullah Select Bibliography

Explore the Gullah Heritage in South Carolina's Treasured Coast

Gullah cultural topics

Gullah Tales

Gullah New Testament

Sweetgrass Baskets

Priscilla's Homecoming

Priscilla's Homecoming and the USF Africana Heritage Project

Penn Center

The McIntosh County Shouters

Gullah Gullah Island

Daughters of the Dust

Golden Isles of Georgia

Sapelo Tours

Gullah Festival 2010

Gullah historical topics

List of topics related to Black and African people

Lorenzo Dow Turner

Gullah Language

Ambrose E. Gonzales

Virginia Mixson Geraty

Peter H. Wood

Dale Rosengarten

Sweetgrass Baskets

Joseph Opala

Bunce Island

Bilali Document

Stono Rebellion

Black Seminoles

Ebos Landing

Port Royal Experiment

Gullah historical figures

Jemmy

Bilali (Ben Ali)

Denmark Vesey

Gullah Jack

Jehu Jones, Sr.

Jehu Jones, Jr.

Edward Jones

Robert Smalls

Joseph Rainey

Gullah leaders, artists, and cultural activists

Mrs. Rosalie Pazant, Founder of The Original Gullah Festival

Cornelia Bailey

Alphonso Brown

Emory Campbell

Joyce Coakley

Louise Miller Cohen

Ron Daise

Sam Doyle

Herb Frazier

Georgia Sea Island Singers

Marquetta Goodwine

Jonathan Green

Nichole Green

Vertamae Grosvenor

Sherman Pyatt

Hallelujah Singers

McIntosh County Shouters

Dorothy Montgomery

Sallie Ann Robinson

Philip Simmons

Anita Singleton-Prather

Althea Sumpter

Famous African Americans with Gullah roots

Robert Sengstacke Abbott

Jim Brown

Chubby Checker

Joe Frazier

James Jamerson

Jazzy Jay

Michelle Obama Clarence Thomas

James Brown

Roddy White

Further reading

;Gullah history

Ball, Edward (1998) "Slaves in the Family,” New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.

Carney, Judith (2001) "Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas," Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Fields-Black, Edda (2008) "Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora," Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Littlefield, Daniel (1981) Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina," Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Miller, Edward (1995) "Gullah Statesman: Robert Smalls from Slavery to Congress, 1839-1915," Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

Pollitzer, William (1999) "The Gullah People and their African Heritage," Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Smith, Julia Floyd (1985) "Slavery and Rice Culture in Low Country Georgia: 1750-1860," Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

Smith, Mark M. (2005) "Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt," Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

Wood, Peter (1974) "Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion," New York: Knopf.

; Gullah language and storytelling

Bailey, Cornelia & Christena Bledsoe (2000) "God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks about Life on Sapelo Island," New York: Doubleday.

Geraty, Virginia Mixon (1997) "Gulluh fuh Oonuh: A Guide to the Gullah Language," Orangeburg, SC: Sandlapper Publishing Company.

Jones, Charles Colcock (2000) "Gullah Folktales from the Georgia Coast," Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Jones-Jackson, Patricia (1987) "When Roots Die: Endangered Traditions on the Sea Islands," Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Mills, Peterkin and McCollough (2008) "Coming Through: Voices of a South Carolina Gullah Community from WPA Oral Histories collected by Genevieve W. Chandler," The University of South Carolina Press.

Montgomery, Michael (ed.) (1994) "The Crucible of Carolina: Essays in the Development of Gullah Language and Culture," Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Sea Island Translation Team (2005) "De Nyew Testament (The New Testament in Gullah)," New York: American Bible Society.

Stoddard, Albert Henry (1995) "Gullah Animal Tales from Daufuskie Island, South Carolina," Hilton Head Island, SC: Push Button Publishing Company.

Turner, Lorenzo Dow (2002) "Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect," Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

; Gullah culture

Campbell, Emory (2008) "Gullah Cultural Legacies," Hilton Head South Carolina: Gullah Heritage Counsulting Services.

Carawan, Guy and Candie (1989) "Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of Life: The People of Johns Island, South Carolina, their Faces, their Words, and their Songs," Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Creel, Margaret Washington (1988) "A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community Culture among the Gullahs," New York: New York University Press.

Cross, Wilbur (2008) "Gullah Culture in America," Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.

Joyner, Charles (1984) "Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community," Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Kiser, Clyde Vernon (1969) "Sea Island to City: A Study of St. Helena Islanders in Harlem and Other Urban Centers," New York: Atheneum.

McFeely, William (1994) "Sapelo's People: A Long Walk into Freedom," New York: W.W. Norton.

Parish, Lydia (1992) "Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands," Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Robinson, Sallie Ann (2003) "Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way" and (2006) "Cooking the Gullah Way Morning,Noon, and Night." Charlotte: University of North Carolina Press.

Rosenbaum, Art (1998) "Shout Because You're Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition in Coastal Georgia," Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Rosengarten, Dale (1986) "Sea Grass Baskets of the South Carolina Lowcountry," Columbia, South Carolina: McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina.

Twining, Mary & Keigh Baird (1991) "Sea Island Roots: The African Presence in the Carolinas and Georgia," Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press.

Young, Jason (2007) "Rituals of Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry South in the Era of Slavery," Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University.

; Historical photos of the Gullah

Georgia Writer's Project (1986) "Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes," Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Johnson, Thomas L. & Nina J. Root (2002) "Camera Man's Journey: Julian Dimock's South," Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Minor, Leigh Richmond & Edith Dabbs (2003) "Face of an Island: Leigh Richmond Miner's Photographs of Saint Helena Island," Charleston, South Carolina: Wyrick & Company.

Ulmann, Doris & Suzanna Krout Millerton, New York: Aperture, Inc.

; Children's books on the Gullah

Branch, Muriel (1995) "The Water Brought Us: The Story of the Gullah-Speaking People," New York: Cobblehill Books.

Clary, Margie Willis (1995) "A Sweet, Sweet Basket," Orangeburg, South Carolina: Sandlapper Publishing Company.

Geraty, Virginia (1998) "Gullah Night Before Christmas," Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company.

Jaquith, Priscilla (1995) "Bo Rabbit Smart for True: Tall Tales from the Gullah," New York: Philomel Books.

Krull, Kathleen (1995) "Bridges to Change: How Kids Live on a South Carolina Sea Island," New York: Lodestar Books.

Seabrooke, Brenda (1994) "The Bridges of Summer," New York: Puffin Books.

Raven, Margot Theis (2004) "Circle Unbroken," New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

; Works of fiction set in the Gullah region

Conroy, Pat (1972) "The Water Is Wide," Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Dash, Julie (1999) "Daughters of the Dust," New York: Plume Books.

Gershwin, George (1935) "Porgy and Bess," New York:Alfred Publishing. Heyward, Dubose (1925)"Porgy," Charleston, S.C.: Wyrick & Company. Hurston, Zora Neale (1937) "Their Eyes Were Watching God," New York: Harper Perennial.

Kidd, Sue Monk (2005) "The Mermaid Chair," Viking Press

Siddons, Anne Rivers (1998) "Low Country," New York: HarperCollinsPublishers.

Naylor, Gloria (1988) "Mama Day," New York: Ticknor & Fields.

Straight, Susan (1993) "I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots," New York: Hyperion.

Other media

;Television Gullah Gullah Island; Children's show on Nickelodeon.

;Films

Bin Yah: There's No Place Like Home (2008)

There is a River (2003) (Episode 1 of PBS Series "This Far by Faith")

The Language You Cry In (1998)

God's Gonna Trouble the Water (1997)

Home Across the Water (1992) (Streaming video)

Daughters of the Dust (1991)

Family Across the Sea (1990)

When Rice Was King (1990)

Gullah Tales (1988)

Tales of the Unknown South (1984) ''(One of these short films is a Gullah ghost story.)

Conrack (1974)

;Radio programs

NPR programs on the Gullah

"Finding Priscilla's Children"

Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Act

Footnotes

Category:Gullah Category:African American