Gullah: Encyclopedia II - Gullah - People

Gullah - People

The Gullah people are an African American population of African slave ancestry. They live in the Sea Islands and the nearby coastal low country region of South Carolina, Georgia and northern Florida. In Georgia, they are commonly referred to as Geechees.

The origin of the name Gullah may be from Angola, a country in southwestern Africa where many of the Gullahs' ancestors came from. However, some believe it comes from Gola, a tribe living on the border area between Liberia and Sierra Leone in West Africa. Regardless of the origin of the name, the Gullah language and culture have clear African roots.

Gullah - History

By the late 1700s, the Sea Islands and the coastal low country of South Carolina and Georgia was covered by many thousands of acres (many km²) of rice. Cotton also became an important crop in this region after the American Revolution. African slaves brought in large numbers from the "Rice Coast" region of West Africa brought the skills that made rice one of the most successful industries in early America. After the American Civil War ended in 1865, the slaves were freed and the plantations closed. Penn Center on St. Helena Island, South Carolina is a modern institution engaged in research and preservation of Gullah culture.

The cultural heritage of the Gullah people has drawn interest for many years from historians, anthropologists, and linguists. The Gullah have preserved a great many African influences in their cuisine, crafts, storytelling, religion, music, etc. They have also preserved a creole language containing many African loanwords and many African grammatical and syntactical influences.

The Gullah people were able to preserve so much of their African heritage because of geography and climate. The semi-tropical climate of the South Carolina and Georgia low country made the area an excellent place to grow rice, but it made it open as well to the spread of malaria and yellow fever. Mosquitoes, brought by accident on the slave ships from Africa, spread these diseases during the wet spring and summer months. White planters fled the low country during these seasons, leaving African "drivers" in charge. Thus European influence was reduced and African influence increased. By about 1708 South Carolina had a "black majority" and later coastal Georgia acquired its own black majority after rice cultivation took off there in the 1760s. The social isolation of the Gullahs helped them preserve their African language, culture, and community life.

When the American Civil War began, Union forces rushed to blockade the Confederate shipping lanes. White planters on the Sea Island, fearing the turmoil of war, abandoned their plantations and fled to the mainland. When Union forces arrived in the Sea Islands, they found the Gullah people eager to take up their new-found freedom, and eager as well to serve in the Union Army in order to defend that freedom. Even before the Civil War ended missionaries from the Northern States came down to the Sea Island to start schools to educate the newly freed slaves. Penn Center, now a community organization, began as the first mission school for blacks in the Sea Islands.

In recent years the Gullah people -- led by Penn Center and other determined community groups -- have been fighting to keep their traditional lands and to preserve their culture. Since the 1960s resort development on the Sea Islands has threatened this unique African-American folk tradition. But the Gullahs have demonstrated a great deal of strength as a community and great determination to carry on with their ancient traditions.

In recent years the Gullahs have also reached out to their distant family in West Africa. Gullah groups made three celebrated "homecomings" to Sierra Leone in 1989, 1997, and 2005. These homecomings have been the subject of two documentary films -- "Family Across the Sea" and "The Language You Cry In."

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "People", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki