Gullah Island

2008-02-27
By Rosalind Cummings-Yeates

“Luke 16:20-23, Dem Wa Bless Fa True,” he rolls the words melodically.  “Wen Jedus see all de crowd dem, e gon pontop one high hill.  E seddown dey, Jeddus staat fa baan um.  E say, dey bless fa true, dem people wa ain hab no hope een deyself.”  Don’t recognize the famous passage?  I didn’t either.  But hearing vocalist/cultural expert Ron Daise recite his favorite verse from the Gullah Bible neatly summed up the singularity of a culture that has survived over 200 years.  A language, customs, food and beliefs managed to travel in tact, from Sierra Leone, through the Middle Passage, to the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina.

My first real awareness of Gullah culture came courtesy of Julie Dash’s epic “Daughters of The Dust.”  I loved all the African symbolism and the languid beauty of the land and the language.  But the film was set at the turn of the last century and it never occurred to me that there were people who still lived this culture.  When I first stepped onto the dusty roads and marsh-filled landscape of St. Helena, SC (where Daughters of the Dust was filmed) I realized that not only did Gullah culture still live but it had claimed its place as a distinctive part of American history.

The Penn Center
Encircled by oak trees draped in Spanish moss and a mystical air, the Penn Center represents the essence of Gullah history.  As the South’s first school for freed slaves, the 50-acre campus was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974 and houses a museum, conference center, nature trail and various historical buildings.  Strolling into the small museum, I could feel the history seeping from the walls.  Displays document the journey of enslaved Africans who were imported from West Africa’s “Rice Coast”(Sierra Leone, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau) specifically to cultivate the rice and indigo plantations of South Carolina.  The slave masters couldn’t handle the heat and yellow fever rampant in Low Country so the Africans lived mostly isolated from American life.  The museum boasts decades old sweet grass baskets, handmade fishnets and boats made according to traditions that all hark directly back to Africa.  The Penn Center was where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to retreat and meditate during the civil rights movement.  It was also where SCLC citizenship meetings were held in secret.

Gullah Grub
Food plays a huge role in Gullah culture and rice always gets the spotlight.  All the restaurants I visited served at least three kinds: red rice, cooked with tomatoes and pork, Gullah rice, prepared with chicken, shrimp, pork sausage and vegetables and hoppin’ john, cooked with field peas.  She Crab soup and shrimp and grits are Gullah staples that every South Carolina diner serves but the key to Gullah cooking is the preparation.  “The time and preparation makes it Gullah,” says Mr. Bill, chef for St. Helena’s Gullah Grub restaurant.  “We use natural herbs and because of the method of cooking, it lasts longer in your system,” he says.  “That food that you eat and by the time you get home you’re hungry, that’s what we call slip through food.”  After tasting his fried whiting, collards, cornbread and sweet potato pie that haunts my dreams, I didn’t doubt a word he said.  Gullah spices make meals taste differently than traditional soul food.  There’s less grease and a spicy tingle left in your mouth.

Hilton Head
It might be famous for sprawling golf courses and luxurious resorts but Hilton Head Island will always represent proud Gullah heritage to me.  Thanks to the eloquent Emory Campbell, former director of the Penn Center and owner of Gullah Heritage Trail Tours, I know the real story.  Before a bridge was built to connect it to the mainland in 1956, Hilton Head was entirely Gullah territory.  You can still catch glimpses of this history in the handfuls of sprawling land still owned by Gullahs, the graveyards built on the waterfront so souls can float home to Africa and in the five Gullah Baptist churches.  You can also hear it in the lyrical Gullah speech that dances in your ears.  It sounds very much like Jamaican patois but with different intonations.  Linguists have traced the Gullah language directly to Sierra Leone Krio. 

Gullah Spirit
When I asked Ron Daise, the creator and star of Nick Jr.’s mid-late 90s children’s hit, “Gullah Gullah Island,” to sum up Gullah culture, spirituality was the first thing that he said.  It was also the word that Emory Campbell chose.  Traveling through Gullah country, the sprit of the people definitely struck me.  It’s light-hearted yet strong, with an edge of no-nonsense, like the sweet grass basket ladies who refuse to let me photograph their baskets until I bought one first.  It’s the kind of African spirit that has been sustained by faith.  When the Sea Island Translation Team translated the bible into Gullah in 2005, it was a validation of the culture’s strength.  Called “De Nyew Testament,” the Gullah Bible is written entirely in Gullah with translations in the margins.  Here’s the translation for Daise’s favorite verse: “And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him and he opened his mouth and taught the saying: blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Writer Rosalind Cummings-Yeates is a Chicago-based freelance writer who specializes in African and Caribbean culture.