#gullah culture

[yearningforunity]

A rice raft with Gullah Geechees near Georgetown, S.C., in 1904.

Photo: College of Charleston Stereoscopic Views, Special Collection, Addlestone Library.

[kemetic-dreams]

According to Dr. Yvonne Chireau, "Hoodoo is an African American-based tradition that makes use of natural and supernatural elements in order to create and effect change in the human experience."

 Hoodoo was created by African Americans, who were among over 12 million enslaved Africans from various Central and West African ethnic groups being transported to the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries (1514 to 1867) as part of the transatlantic slave trade. The transatlantic slave trade to the United States occurred between 1619 and 1808, and the illegal slave trade in the United States occurred between 1808 and 1860. Between 1619 and 1860 approximately 500,000 enslaved Africans were transported to the United States. 

From Central Africa, Hoodoo has Bakongo magical influence from the Bakongo religion incorporating the Kongo cosmogram, Simbi water spirits, and Nkisi and Minkisi practices. The West African influence is Vodun from the Fon and Ewe people in Benin and Togo following some elements from the Yoruba religion.  After their contact with European slave traders and missionaries, some Africans converted to Christianity willingly, while other enslaved Africans were forced to become Christian which resulted in a syncretization of African spiritual practices and beliefs with the Christian faith. 

Enslaved and free Africans learned regional indigenous botanical knowledge after they arrived to the United States. The extent to which Hoodoo could be practiced varied by region and the temperament of the slaveholders. For example, the Gullah people of the coastal Southeast experienced an isolation and relative freedom that allowed retention of various traditional West African cultural practices. Gullah people and enslaved African-Americans in the Mississippi Delta, where the concentration of slaves was dense, Hoodoo was practiced under a large cover of secrecy. The reason for secrecy among enslaved and free African Americans was that slave codes prohibited large gatherings of enslaved and free African people. Slaveholders experienced how slave religion ignited slave revolts among enslaved and free African people, and some leaders of slave insurrections were African ministers or conjure doctors

[sanyu-thewitch05]

These Afro-American folklore stories are so beautiful. I especially like that within the horror ones, we’ve been running away from scary ish. We’ve been not dying from scary things. We know when to run. I also like there’s also a mermaid and fairy tale too. But these stories were so much fun to read.

@queen-shiba you’ll love this.

[newjackamericana]

African American Culture (Gullah)- Sweetgrass baskets

[ausetkmt]

The Gullah and Geechee culture on the Sea Islands of Georgia has retained ethnic traditions from West Africa since the mid-1700s. Although the islands along the southeastern U.S. coast harbor the same collective of West Africans, the name Gullah has come to be the accepted name of the islanders in South Carolina, while Geechee refers to the islanders of Georgia. Modern-day researchers designate the region stretching from Sandy Island, South Carolina, to Amelia Island, Florida, as the Gullah Coast—the locale of the culture that built some of the richest plantations in the South.

Many traditions of the Gullah and Geechee culture were passed from one generation to the next through language, agriculture, and spirituality. The culture has been linked to specific West African ethnic groups who were enslaved on island plantations to grow rice, indigo, and cotton starting in 1750, when antislavery laws ended in the Georgia colony.

Enslavement

Courtesy of Georgia Archives.

Rice plantations fostered Georgia’s successful economic competition with other slave-based rice economies along the Eastern Seaboard. Coastal plantations invested primarily in rice, and plantation owners sought out Africans from the Windward Coast of West Africa (Senegambia [later Senegal and the Gambia], Sierra Leone, and Liberia), where rice, indigo, and cotton were indigenous to the region. Over the ensuing centuries, the isolation of the rice-growing ethnic groups, who re-created their native cultures and traditions on the coastal Sea Islands, led to the formation of an identity recognized as Geechee/Gullah.

There is no single West African contribution to Geechee/Gullah culture, although dominant cultural patterns often correspond to various agricultural investments. For example, Africa’s Windward Coast was later commonly referred to as the Rice Coast in recognition of the large numbers of Africans enslaved from that area who worked on rice plantations in America.

Language

Photograph by WIDTTF 

Gullah is thought to be a shortened form of Angola, the name of the group first imported to the Carolinas during the early colonial period. Geechee, historically considered a negative word identifying Sea Islanders, became an acceptable term in light of contemporary evidence linking it to West Africa. Although the origins of the two words are not definitive, some enslaved Africans along the coast had names that were linked to the Kissi group, leading to speculation that the terms may also derive from that particular culture.

Linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner researched and documented spoken words on the coast during the 1930s, traced similarities to ethnic groups in West Africa, then published the Gullah dialect lexicon, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (1949). His research confirms the evolution of a new language based on West African influences and English. Many words in the coastal culture could be matched to ethnic groups in West Africa, thereby linking the Geechee/Gullah people to their origins. Margaret Washington Creel in A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community-Culture among the Gullahs (1988) identifies cultural and spiritual habits that relate to similar ethnic groups of West Africans who are linked by language. Her research on the coastal culture complements Turner’s findings that Africans on the Sea Islands created a new identity despite the tragic conditions of slavery.

Cultural Heritage

Documentation of the developing culture on the Georgia islands dates to the nineteenth century. By the late twentieth century, researchers and scholars had confirmed a distinctive group and identified specific commonalities with locations in West Africa. The rice growers’ cultural retention has been studied through language, cultural habits, and spirituality. The research of Mary A. Twining and Keith E. Baird in Sea Island Roots: African Presence in the Carolinas and Georgia (1991) investigates the common links of islanders to specific West African ethnicities.

The enslaved rice growers from West Africa brought with them knowledge of how to make tools needed for rice harvesting, including fanner baskets for winnowing rice. The sweetgrass baskets found on the coastal islands were made in the same styles as baskets found in the rice culture of West Africa. Sweetgrass baskets also were used for carrying laundry and storing food or firewood. Few present-day members of the Geechee/Gullah culture remember how to select palmetto, sweetgrass, and pine straw to create baskets, and the remaining weavers now make baskets as decorative art, primarily for tourists.

Image from Richard N Horne

Photograph by Sharon Maybarduk

In 1997 the two women met in the African village to share and reenact what was understood as a Mende funeral song, sung only by the women of Jabati’s family lineage, who conducted the funerals of the village. Evidence suggests that a female member of Moran’s family had been forced into captivity from the village nearly 200 years before. The return of the song and the visit from the Moran family led to a countrywide celebration that can be viewed in the documentary The Language You Cry In (1998). The discovery of the song and subsequent linguistic research confirmed yet another link between the cultures of West Africa and the Georgia coast.

Such corresponding practices as similar names, language structures, folktales, kinship patterns, and spiritual transference are but a few areas that suggest a particular link between the southeastern coastal culture of the United States and Sierra Leone in West Africa.

Migration

Thousands of enslaved laborers from Georgia and South Carolina who remained loyal to the British at the end of the American Revolution (1775-83) found safe haven in Nova Scotia in Canada and thus gained their freedom. Many returned to Sierra Leone in 1791 and the following year established Freetown, the capital city. Members of that group are identified today as Krio.

Fugitives from slavery were also harbored under Spanish protection in Florida prior to the Second Seminole War (1835-42). Native American refugees from around the South formed an alliance with self-emancipated Africans to create the Seminole Nation. The name Seminole is from the Spanish word cimarrón, meaning runaway. The 1842 agreement between the United States and Spain, which ended the Seminole hold on Florida, caused a migration to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Some Seminoles followed Spanish protectors to Cuba and to Andros Island in the Bahamas.

Photograph by Jennifer Cruse Sanders

During the 1900s, land on some of the islands—Cumberland, Jekyll, Ossabaw, Sapelo, and St. Simons —became resort locations and reserves for natural resources. The modern-day conflict over resort development on the islands presents yet another survival test for the Geechee/Gullah culture, the most intact West African culture in the United States. Efforts to educate the public by surviving members of the Geechee/Gullah community, including Cornelia Bailey of Sapelo Island and the Georgia Sea Island Singers, help to maintain and protect the culture’s unique heritage in the face of such challenges.

[miscmagpie]

Absolutely shattered by the tragedy on Sapelo Island, GA yesterday.

It's a very small community of Gullah Geechee people and the ferry gangway collapsed at the end of a day of cultural celebration.

At least seven people are dead. More are missing or in critical condition.

I don't know of alternative links for aid at this time, but I know the Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society has a donation link for their organization at the bottom of the page and can use all of the help they can get.

The community of Hogg Hummock itself is mostly compromised of older residents on fixed incomes, so any assistance to help them get through this tragedy would be a big help.

[rte-66]

Southern Diversity

[not-so-superheroine]

fun fact, i live in a swamp.  no, it doesn’t smell bad. when you get to the swampy areas there are cypress trees in the water that put of the smell really good.  the marshes near the salt and brackish water that smell like the pluff mud from which the sweetgrass grows. it smellls like dead sea creatures and works like quick sand and the more tou struggle the more you sink. simply do not walk on it. i have literally never in all my years. anyway, living in a swamp is cool. there are all sorts of creatures and plants. you can find and hunt for food. i wouldn’t go swimming in it (don’t die from brain eating amoeba or gators pls. take florida level precautions bc it’s not that that different in coastal neigboring states). we also have lots of swamp themed/related events. my favorite is the hell hole swamp festival, a bomb community event where everyone comes out for essentially a swampy country fair (no rides or funnel cakes but like barbeque and cake and children’s games, and child school choirs, and fun competions. Its also home of the Hell Hole Gator Run, a 10 K. The Hell Hole Talent Show is great too. Just community members of all ages putting on performances and a dinner. If you are from the lowcountry come check it out. we admittedly can be a bit insular, but bring a friend or family and you’ll intergrate right in. express interest in them, their culture, and the geographic area and they will be happy to share.  there are state parks specifically so people can enjoy there time in said swamp. the Santee Canal park has a nature museum that’s pretty cool. you can learn about the ecology of the area and the flora and fauna there in. knowing how to navigate the swamp help the US win the revolutionary war (they didn’t have immunity against malaria and probably got attacked by gators like today’s clueless and or ignorant tourists to the southeast US. like don’t get piss drunk in an area that has deadly wild life and don’t think you’re city smarts apply in nature. they don’t. listen to locals. also don’t screw around with the gators??? we have tourists who pelt them with stones. they are opportunistic hunters who often don’t even mess with you unprompted most of the time. they are important to the enviroment and tourist foolishness can get them put down/ euthanized). i realize i keep pointing out how deadly it can be, but urban places like NYC, Philly, Los Angelos, and Chicago have their potentially deadly issues, just different ones. still places worth visiting and respecting.  but basically, i live in a swamp and it’s great actually. i often feel like Shrek when people come here to live and disrespect the area. it’s a beautiful place, ecologically important, has events you can’t find in urban areas, people (left and right politically) care about ecological preservation (hunters and fisherman are on board). don’t disrespect the swamp because the swamp WILL disrespect you. also don’t try to make it new york city or columbus. (becuse its usually and ohian. they are gentrifying the area and promoting “development” that ruins the natural beauty and ecological important cites that the locals take a lot of pride in and are essential to our way of life. literally stay in Ohio if you can’t intergrate into rural/ small towns in southeast states, deadass. i get so angry, no joke. i love my home and my swamp. the state most hated by south carolinians is ohio and there is a reason for that.) in the words of shrek which often echo in my head: “what are you doing in MY Swamp?!!!” i like it here, you should totally visit and drop you preconceptions to best enjoy the experience, and be on your toes and your best behavior if you are an ohian, because most of us already hate all things ohio and will may mess with you if you have an ohio tag on your car and tick them off on the road for diving rudely or insulting said swamp, and our preferred “lack” of development. We feel about it like shrek did tbh. we want to live in south carolina, not ohio /srs.

[odysseys-blood]

now more than ever i think i need to rewatch gullah gullah island

[yearningforunity]

RING SHOUT, St. Simon's Island, Georgia, ca. 1940

The ring shout, rooted in the ritual dances of West Africa and forged by the Atlantic slave trade, is believed to be the oldest surviving African-American performance tradition of any kind. Centered in the Gullah-Geechee region of the coastal South, it differs from traditional Black Religious Music in repertory, style, and execution.

[kemetic-dreams]

Historians from Southern Illinois University in the Africana Studies Department documented about 20 title words from the Kikongo language are in the Gullah language. These title words indicate continued African traditions in Hoodoo and conjure. The title words are spiritual in meaning. In Central Africa, spiritual priests and spiritual healers are called Nganga. 

In the South Carolina Lowcountry among Gullah people a male conjurer is called Nganga. Some Kikongo words have a "N" or "M" in the beginning of the word. However, when Bantu-Kongo people were enslaved in South Carolina the letters N and M were dropped from some of the title names. For example, in Central Africa the word to refer to spiritual mothers is Mama Mbondo. In the South Carolina Lowcountry in African American communities the word for a spiritual mother is Mama Bondo. In addition during slavery, it was documented there was a Kikongo speaking slave community in Charleston, South Carolina

[janedrewfinally]

These are not only lovely and amazing works of art, they really do smell sweet!

Corey Alston (Mount Pleasant, SC)

“​​My name is Corey Alston. I’m a fifth generation Sweetgrass Basket Weaver. I currently run the family business in the Charleston City Market. Sweetgrass Basket Weaving has been a major part of the Gullah Geechee Culture dating back to days of Enslavement. This coastal art form has been recognized as South Carolina State Handcraft and has been known to be kept alive the longest along Sweetgrass Basket Makers HWY of South Carolina. This skill is one of the rare arts of our country that is founded nowhere else in America. Gullah Sweetgrass Baskets are a national treasure.

“​​Being chosen as one of the artisans of Mt. Pleasant does not only bring awareness to my skill set and my culture as a Gullah Geechee representative, but in collaboration with Acres of Ancestry raises awareness of the unjustifiable treatment that Black and minority farmers have endured. The more that this topic is brought to the forefront, the more that our nation’s leaders will see that treating white farmers one way and then treating Black farmers another way will not be accepted. I applaud Acres of Ancestry for working tirelessly on making sure that everyone understands what our elder farmers are going through.

“​​These two Sweetgrass Baskets are called ‘Poppa’ and ‘Big Momma.’ It took six months to complete ‘Big Momma’ and four months to complete ‘Poppa.’ They both measure 36 inches tall.”

​​—Corey Alston, fifth generation basket weaver and cultural preservationist from Mount Pleasant, SC, Artisan Statement

[newjackamericana]

If I must die- Translation Request

Hello! This is a very different type of post I haven’t done before but if any African American who knows one or more languages,such as: Tutnese, Yukish/Yukkish, Gullah, Kouri vini, or ormandi would like to translate the late Palestinian poet Dr. Refaat Alareer’s last poem in those languages please post in the replies or put your translation directly in the Twitter post with other translated languages! Thank you and happy translating!

[ausetkmt]

CLICK THE TITLE LINK TO DOWNLOAD THIS BOOK FREE FROM THE BLACK TRUEBRARY

CLICK THE TITLE LINK TO DOWNLOAD THIS BOOK FREE FROM THE BLACK TRUEBRARY