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Gullah’sRadiant LightGullah’sRadiant Light

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COOL RIDE. A bike festoonedwith signs of celebration atHeritage Days at the Penn Centeron St. Helena Island.PHOTO/WADE SPEES

GULLAH’S RADIANT LIGHTGullah history is revealed in lowcountry land held by families for generations.

GULLAH SPIRITUALSGullah songs remain alive, spontaneous.

AFRICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO RICE PLANTINGSlaves created nearly all of the early innovations and techniques of antebellum rice culture.

EBBS AND FLOWS

ON THE COVER: A boy participated in a play titled “The Dream” during theCommunity Sing event at the Penn Center on St. Helena Island in 1986.

PHOTO/WADE SPEES

Coastal Heritage is a quarterly publicationof the S.C. Sea Grant Consortium, a university-based network supporting research, education,and outreach to conserve coastal resources andenhance economic opportunity for the people

of South Carolina. Comments regarding this orfuture issues of Coastal Heritage are welcomed.

Subscriptions are free upon requestby contacting:

S.C. Sea Grant Consortium287 Meeting Street

Charleston, S.C. 29401phone: (843) 727-2078

e-mail: Annette.Dunmeyer@scseagrant.org

Executive DirectorM. Richard DeVoe

Director of CommunicationsLinda Blackwell

EditorJohn H. Tibbetts

Art DirectorPatty Snow

Contributing WriterSusan Ferris

�Board of Directors

The Consortium’s Board of Directors iscomposed of the chief executive officers

of its member institutions:

Dr. Andrew A. Sorensen, ChairPresident, University of South Carolina

James F. BarkerPresident, Clemson University

John E. FramptonExecutive Director

S.C. Department of Natural Resources

Dr. Raymond S. GreenbergPresident, Medical University of South Carolina

Major General John S. GrinaldsPresident, The Citadel

Leo I. Higdon, Jr.President, College of Charleston

Dr. Andrew H. Hugine, Jr.President, S.C. State University

Dr. Ronald R. InglePresident, Coastal Carolina University

CONTENTS3

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COPYRIGHT © 2005 by the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium. All rights reserved.

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By John H. Tibbetts

CLOSING IN. Richard Habersham of the Phillips Community in Charleston County stands on a bridge spanning Horlbeck Creek. Sprawlingplanned communities surrounding the historic Gullah settlement have increased runoff pollution into the creek, he says. PHOTO/WADE SPEES

Gullah’s Radiant Light

O n a starlit August evening, trucks and carsrumble down Highway 41, which slices throughPhillips, a predominately African-American

community (pop. 400) in unincorporated CharlestonCounty. “It used to be a lot quieter out here before all thisdevelopment,” says Richard Habersham, president of thePhillips Community Association.

Habersham’s family has lived in Phillips since theCivil War-era. Most of the families there date back to thefreedmen who purchased land in 10-acre parcels alongHorlbeck Creek in 1870 and in subsequent years.

Until air-conditioning became inexpensive a fewdecades ago, Phillips Community was considered low-lying marginal land, mosquito-ridden, with poor wellwater and unhealthy drainage.

Today Phillips is just a few miles from bustling MountPleasant Towne Centre and within commuting distance ofdowntown Charleston. Some wooded parcels on Phillips’west side, formerly farmland, have beautiful marsh-and-creek views. Water and sewer lines have been extendedinto the community. Upscale planned developments—Park West, Dunes West, Rivertowne, and others—

surround Phillips, a doughnut hole in East Cooper’srelentless, high-toned sprawl.

Indeed “sprawl and taxes,” says Habersham,threaten the historic settlement. “When they buildthose high-dollar houses, the value of our propertygoes up too, and it affects our taxes. When taxes gettoo high, some residents might have to sell andmove away.”

Phillips residents worry that developers arewaiting for the moment to pounce. Habersham and hisneighbors fight every project threatening their peace:a proposed road widening, say, or a potential commer-cial development at the community’s edge. “It seemsthere’s always something coming up,” he says. “A littlebattle here, a little battle there.”

“People tell us we can just sell out and go some-where else,” says Phillips resident Jonathan Ford. “Forthe people in Rivertowne and Dunes West, mainlynorthern people, property is an investment. For us,property is home. You live, you grow up, you die, andyou pass it on. We’re just trying to preserve what waspassed on to us. Our grandfathers and great-grand

4 • COASTAL HERITAGE

International museum

Fund-raising has begun for aproposed $60 million InternationalAfrican American Museum, which isexpected to open in 2007 on a sitein downtown Charleston near theSouth Carolina Aquarium.

Congressman James E. Clyburnchairs a 36-member steeringcommittee partnering with the cityof Charleston to create themuseum. “We’re doing well with thefund-raising.”

The museum would emphasizeCharleston’s significance as a majorport of arrival for Africans in NorthAmerica and illustrate evidence ofAfrican influences in the historicallandscape of South Carolina. Itwould also describe the Caribbeanconnection with the lowcountry.

The International AfricanAmerican Museum would be part ofa new wave of heritage buildingscelebrating black American history.At least 25 African-American culturalbuildings are being planned acrossthe nation. These include theNational Museum of AfricanAmerican History and Culture,authorized by Congress last yearand expected to cost $300 million,to be built in Washington, D.C.; theMuseum of the African Diaspora inSan Francisco; and the MartinLuther King, Jr., National Memorial,also in Washington, D.C.

“We’re telling a challengingstory,” says Michael Allen, aneducation specialist with theNational Park Service Fort SumterNational Monument and member ofthe steering committee. “This is anopportunity to look at healing,understanding, and developingrelationships. This potential locationnear the water provides a greatvenue to talk about the internationalperspective of Charleston, theAfrican-American experience ofCharleston, and how those two helpto shape and form and affect thelowcountry, the South, and thenation.”

fathers had to work and buy propertythat they handed down to us.”

In 2000, after residents estab-lished the Phillips CommunityAssociation, Michael Allen, aneducation specialist with the NationalPark Service Fort Sumter NationalMonument, encouraged them todocument their own history. Historicand archeological assets in Phillipscould provide a bulwark againstsprawl’s encroachment, Allen toldthem. “That’s a card they needed toplay. When I step into any commu-nity, I’m looking at what options theymay have for preservation.” There areseveral historic black communities inthe East Cooper area that face similarpressures, including Hamlin,Scanlonville, Six Mile, Snowden,Whitehall Terrace, and Ten Mile.

Phillips residents have beensurprised by what they learned abouttheir history. The community’scurrent boundaries, for example,nearly match that of the originalfreedmen settlement in 1870. Andmany of today’s 10-acre parcels areidentical to the original lots pur-chased for $63 apiece after theCivil War.

Dr. John Rutledge, the firstphysician in the East Cooper area, wasthe first owner of Phillips Plantation;his brick tomb is located in a woodedpatch next to Highway 41. Rutledge’spolitically influential sons were bornon Phillips Plantation: John, a signerof the U.S. Constitution, and Edward,the youngest signer of the Declarationof Independence.

“It makes you feel proud of thehistory,” says Habersham, “that a littleplace like this had such an effect onthe state and the nation.”

Not long ago, many black SouthCarolinians resisted thinking aboutthe past. “My grandfather would saysomething about white people underhis breath,” Ford recalls, “and mygrandmother would say, ‘You can’t tellthe children that.’ She said youcouldn’t grow up hating people. Sothey repressed a lot.”

Today, Habersham and Ford lookback in admiration at freedmen ances-tors who struggled and saved to acquiretheir own lands, and further to thecaptive men and women hauled as slavesfrom West Africa to cultivatelowcountry plantation crops—particu-larly rice. Rice was the driving force ofthe South Carolina coast’s slave-basedeconomy for more than 150 years.

Rice cultivation began in Carolinawithin two decades after Englishsettlement in 1670, and slaves musthave been the first people to grow it inNorth America, according to a 2001book by Judith A. Carney, a geographerat the University of California, LosAngeles. Africans formed one-fourth ofthe colony’s population by 1672, andfood supplies were often short, so slavesgrew rice as a subsistence crop. Euro-peans later adapted it to a commercialcrop for export.

Slaveholders of northern Europeanorigin—mostly English, Scottish, andIrish—could not have had muchexperience growing rice before theyarrived in the lowcountry, Carneypoints out. Rice cultivation is a croptraditionally grown in tropical andsubtropical regions. West Africansbrought to Carolina, by contrast,belonged to ethnic groups that hadgrown rice for many centuries acrosshundreds of square miles.

Africans instructed Europeansettlers in their early efforts to cultivaterice, which later became an immenselyprofitable enterprise. By the Revolution-ary War, in fact, South Carolina’s coastaleconomy relied almost exclusively onexporting rice to Europe.

Super-wealthy and politicallyconnected rice planters became knownas the builders of the greatest agriculturaldynasties of their era anywhere in theworld. Rice planters constructed themansions of Charleston, Beaufort, andGeorgetown. For generations until theCivil War, rice planters were among themost powerful men in South Carolina,seen as brilliant innovators who hadtaken an unruly land and transformed itinto riches.

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SINGING PRAISE. Cheryl Shepard said she was thinking,“How good God is,” as she sang during Heritage Days

at the Penn Center on St. Helena Island. PHOTO/WADE SPEES

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Reading and Web sites

Allen, William Francis, Charles Pickard Ware and Lucy McKim Garrison. Slave Songs ofthe United States. New York: Peter Smith, 1951.

Avery Research Center. www.cofc.edu/avery/

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

Graham, Maryemma and Amritjit Singh, Eds. Conversations with Ralph Ellison.Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995.

Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition. users.aol.com/queenmut/GullGeeCo.html

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. “Negro Spirituals.” Atlantic Monthly, June 1867.

Joyner, Charles. Shared Traditions: Southern History and Folk Culture. Urbana:University of Illinois Press, 1999.

National Park Service. Low Country Gullah Geechee Culture Special Resource StudyDraft. www.nps.gov/sero/ggsrs/

The Penn Center. www.penncenter.com/index.html

Pollitzer, William S. The Gullah People and Their Heritage. Athens: University of GeorgiaPress, 1999.

But planters could not havecreated this wealth without thetechnical skills and cultural knowl-edge of Africans who had grown ricein their own native lands.

Slaves on the American “ricecoast” had belonged to variousAfrican ethnic groups and culturessuch as the Ashanti, Fante, Fula,Ibo, Mandingo, Yoruba, andBakongo. Because they did not speakthe same languages, Africans usedpidgin English to communicate withone another. Slaveholders requiredAfricans to understand pidgin sothey could follow orders in thefields. Over time, this pidgineventually flourished into a newcreole language known in theCarolinas as Gullah and as Geecheein Georgia and northern Florida.

In the early nineteenth century,many newly imported slaves inSouth Carolina were from Angola,commonly known as “N’Gulla.”“Gullah” could have originallyreferred to Angolans. But the Gullahpeople were not just Angolans; theywere a mix of African groups.

After the Civil War, theGullah/Geechee people continuedto live in lowcountry settlementsfrom Wilmington, North Carolina,to Jacksonville, Florida. This fertileswath of pinelands, sea islands, saltmarshes, swamps, and creeks isknown in historic-preservationcircles as the Gullah/Geechee Coast.

Forged in hardship, Gullah/Geechee culture—food, religion,crafts, stories, songs, and lan-guage—is a fusion of European andAfrican influences. Gullah is theonly lasting English-based creolelanguage in North America. Yet itsgrammar is African, as are numer-ous words. In the 1940s, the linguistLorenzo Dow Turner found 251African words used by Gullahspeakers. The Gullah people, infact, have retained more of theirAfricanisms than any other blackgroup in the United States.

Gullah culture, however, isindigenous to this country, createdunder conditions particular to anarrow stretch of coastline in theAmerican South.

Until the mid-1990s, SouthCarolina museums, plantation tours,and other historical attractionsignored Gullah influences onlowcountry life. Informal historylessons in coastal South Carolinafocused on Revolutionary warheroes, antebellum mansions,wealthy planters, and Confederatevalor. Slavery seemed a taboosubject, although about 25 percent ofall Africans legally carried intobondage in the United States passedthrough Sullivan’s Island nearCharleston.

Some Phillips residents stillshrug at the notion that they are partof the Gullah culture. “It’s good thatit brings awareness,” says JonathanFord, “but I think of Gullah mostlyas a tourist draw. You’ve had whiteshere in Phillips, and they lived inthe culture just like blacks.”

It’s common for lowcountryAfrican-American families to haveforgotten or suppressed their Gullahheritage, because for generations itwas seen as backward. Many Gullah

instead wanted to become mainstreamAmericans.

Yet many traditions in the PhillipsCommunity reflect Gullah culture.One such tradition is “heirs’ property,”or collective land ownership. After theCivil War, freedmen who purchasedland parcels shared them among familymembers and following generations.As families expanded, many parcelsremained in collective ownership.That is, several family members jointlyinherit a parcel that lacks an up-to-date title. The original purchaser fromthe nineteenth century is usually stillnamed as owner. About half of Phillipsparcels are heirs’ property, saysHabersham.

The problem with heirs’ propertyis that any heir can go before a judgeto gain the value of his property. Andoften the only way to get that value isto sell the entire parcel. Sometimesland speculators buy an interest froman heir and ask a judge to auction theentire parcel.

Heirs’ property, therefore, is aproblem for traditional African-American communities, says Allen.“They don’t want to put the land inone person’s name because that personcould go and sell it overnight. Theythink they’re safer with heirs’ property.

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OPENING SHOP. Adeline Mazyck’s sweetgrassbasket stand now shares turf with Town Centrein Mount Pleasant. Gullah people have madesweetgrass baskets for nearly three centuries in thelowcountry. But in recent years, the growth of gatedsubdivisions along the coast has limitedbasketmakers’ access to sweetgrass.PHOTO/WADE SPEES

8 • COASTAL HERITAGE

But I think they should have theirname on the title and not someonewho died in 1890.”

Even so, Daniel Pennick, aCharleston County planner, says thatheirs’ property may have protectedmany Gullah communities fromdevelopment. “Developers don’twant to deal with an unclear title.”

Gullah people view family landas “sacred,” says Pennick. It’s a placeof refuge, a place to rest after they’veseen the world, after serving in themilitary or working for decades inthe North. For others, it’s the placeto raise children and grow upknowing aunts and uncles andcousins, the place to spend longsummers with grandparents.“Everybody’s your cousin here,” saysHabersham.

“We consider land as family,”says Marquetta Goodwine, anactivist, author, and musician alsoknown as Queen Quet, chieftess ofthe Gullah/Geechee Nation.Goodwine lives on St. HelenaIsland, but she could be talking aboutthe Phillips Community as well:“The reason we’ve been able tosurvive and stay here is that we lookafter each other.”

GULLAH COUNTRY

The antebellum lowcountry, inmany respects, was Gullah country.Before the Civil War, slaves oftenknew the land and waterways betterthan their masters. Slaves hunted inwoods for meat that sustained theplantations, and black watermendominated local maritime trades,running slave-operated canoes andcargo vessels between town andcountry. Gullah people workedproductive plots of land in their freetime and traded goods along theriverbanks, the major highways oftheir time.

By 1800, about one in fourslaves in the lowcountry were skilledtradesmen—blacksmiths, machinists,and carpenters—rented out for work.

But slaves, of course, did notown their skills; slaveholders did.Bondsmen also did not own theland they knew so well, and it wasownership that separated prosper-ous from poor in antebellum SouthCarolina. Americans—white andblack—understood that holdingproperty was the route to indepen-dence, self-determination, anddignity.

So when African-Americansgained freedom in the wake of theCivil War, many were determinedto acquire land near where theywere born, and they looked toUnion leaders for help.

In January 1865, after com-pleting his march across Georgia tothe sea, Major-General WilliamTecumseh Sherman was alarmedabout the tens of thousands of

freed slaves—men, women, andchildren—who desperately followedhis army. In a January 12 letter to afellow Union general, Shermancomplained that just one of hiscolumns of 30,000 soldiers was nowresponsible for the care of 17,000freed slaves. With “a large proportionof them babies and small children,”Sherman wrote from Savannah, “hadI encountered an enemy of respect-able strength defeat would have beencertain.”

That same day, Sherman andSecretary of War Edwin Stanton met20 freedmen—ministers and churchofficers—in Savannah to discuss howthe freedmen could help the Unionand themselves during and after thewar. Their spokesman was an ordainedBaptist minister named GarrisonFrazier, 67 years old. Frazier had been a

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slave until he was 59, when hebought himself and his wife for athousand dollars in gold and silver.

“The way we can best take careof ourselves,” Frazier told Sherman,“is to have land, and turn it and tillit by our own labor—that is, by thelabor of the women, and children,and old men—and we can soonmaintain ourselves and havesomething to spare; and to assist theGovernment the young men shouldenlist in the service of the Govern-ment, and serve in such manner asthey be wanted.”

Frazier’s words impressedSherman, who issued Special FieldOrder No. 15, which handed overabandoned rice plantations and thesea islands of South Carolina,Georgia, and northern Florida tothe freedmen.

The order also provided eachfamily with a land parcel of notmore than 40 acres to cultivate.Later, Sherman called for distribu-tion of excess Army mules tofreedmen. These orders gave rise tothe slogan “Forty acres and a mule.”

By June 1865, more than40,000 freedmen had begun tillingmore than 400,000 acres of land inthe region. Former slaves believedthat it was their land to keep, thatthey had already earned it withtheir uncompensated labor. Soonafter the war, Radical Republicansin Congress argued that lowcountryplantations must be broken up todestroy the power of theslaveholding class that had driventhe country to war.

President Andrew Johnson,however, stopped the redistribution

experiment by pardoning manyformer rebels and returning planta-tions to the former owners.

In October 1865, U.S. ArmyGeneral Oliver O. Howard informeda gathering of Gullah people thatland given to them by Sherman wasno longer theirs. In a speech to twothousand freedmen on Edisto Island,General Howard asked them to “layaside their bitter feelings, and tobecome reconciled to their oldmasters.”

A freedman called out, “WhyGeneral Howard, why do you takeaway our lands? . . . You give them toour all-time enemies. This is notright!”

Since some lands remainedabandoned, Gullah people didmanage to hold them via the SpecialField Order. Others received land inreward for their service in the Unionarmy. Many freedmen, however,worked for years to save enoughmoney to purchase land.

Marquetta Goodwine, who ownsseveral acres with her family on St.Helena Island, points out that afterthe Civil War, her great-great-grandfathers on each side “boughtthe very land where they wereenslaved.”

Small settlements, often asextended-family compounds, werebuilt on the newly acquired proper-ties. Working subsistence farms,hunting, and fishing, the Gullahpeople survived the intense povertyin the years following the Civil War.

Lowcountry rice plantations,meanwhile, began a long decline.Federal armies had damaged manyestates. Preferring to work their ownland or hold other jobs, freedmenresisted returning to the rice fields.

Through desperate times, manyGullah families managed to holdonto their property. Landownershipkept them free of the sharecroppingsystem that whites used duringand after Reconstruction to regaineconomic power over rural southernblacks.

TRACING THE PAST. MichaelAllen, of Gullah descent and aneducation specialist with theNational Park Service, standswhere one of three Gullah slavecabins was originally located at theCharles Pinckney NationalHistoric Site. After the Civil War,many Gullah people saved moneyand bought land on or near theplantations where they had beenenslaved. PHOTO/WADE SPEES

10 • COASTAL HERITAGE

HOLDING ON. “Land ownership was key to freedom and independence for the Gullah people”following the Civil War, says former Penn Center Executive Director Emory S. Campbell duringHeritage Days on St. Helena Island. “They were so serious about freedom. They knew what wasimportant.” PHOTO/WADE SPEES

ISOLATION TO LOSS

For generations, the Gullahpeople lived in isolation. Riverscut off the sea islands from themainland. Forests and poor roadsseparated Gullah mainlandcommunities from larger townsand cities. Until the advent ofair-conditioning, brutal summerheat and humidity, plus prolificmosquitoes and hurricanes,discouraged many whites fromliving near marshes and seaislands of the South Carolinacoast.

“The only people whowanted the land were Gullah,”says Emory S. Campbell, presi-dent of Gullah Heritage Consult-ing Services, who grew up onHilton Head Island in the erabefore a bridge connected it tothe mainland. “That’s when theGullah really gelled in terms ofculture.”

Campbell retired in 2003 asexecutive director of the PennCenter, an outgrowth of thefamous Penn School, established

by missionaries in 1862. The PennSchool educated local blacks untilthe early 1980s, when it became acommunity-development center,offering youth programs on Gullahculture and housing local historyexhibits and demonstration projects.

“I spoke Gullah all my life andI wanted to go to the Penn School,”says Campbell. “My brothers andsisters went to Penn School, andthey stayed for six months, andwhen they returned home they nolonger spoke Gullah. The PennSchool was a place that transformedpeople from slavery to freedom. Ittransformed African to mainstreamAmerican.”

Campbell sought this transfor-mation because the Gullah peoplewere objects of ridicule. MainstreamAmerican blacks considered theGullah language as “broken”English. “Everybody would laugh atme” for speaking Gullah, saysCampbell. Now scholars recognizeGullah as a fully mature creolelanguage.

Because the culture is so rich inAfrican influences, Gullah fasci-

nated anthropologists, linguists, andfolklorists. It is probably the mostthoroughly researched black culture inthe United States.

Yet Gullah traditions faded afterdevelopers began building resorts on theSouth Carolina sea islands in the 1960s,and tourists and retirees poured over thenew bridges. Suburban developmentsprawled nearer mainland settlementsin the quiet nooks and crannies of thecoast. Racial integration, the civil-rights movement, and economicopportunities diluted the Gullah’sisolation.

Today some elders still speakGullah, but their grandchildren oftenregard it as old-fashioned, as the quaintspeech of a passing generation.

Still, a few Gullah strongholds,particularly on the sea islands, arethriving. Much of St. Helena Islandis still owned by Gullah people,whose culture is celebrated eachyear in a festival located at the PennCenter there.

THE INHERITANCE

From the early 1950s until hisdeath in 1994, essayist and novelistRalph Ellison gained renown as achronicler of African-Americanculture, which he described assteeped in tradition and complexity.Black culture, he argued, touchesevery aspect of American society,stimulating and redefining music,language, sports, food, literature,clothing styles, and the nation’scivic morality and ideals, particu-larly through the anti-slavery andcivil-rights movements. But untilthe 1980s, Ellison’s views were atodds with many intellectuals—black and white—who viewedAfrican-American culture asvirtually destroyed by slavery andsegregation.

Ellison, however, warnedagainst looking to Africa for themost important roots of blackAmerican culture. Blacks andwhites for centuries have been

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entangled in their American experi-ence, which remains closer-at-handthan their African or Europeanheritages. Blacks, Ellison said, shouldcelebrate their contributions to andborrowings from white culture, andshould emphasize the Americanaspect of being “Negro-American.”

In an interview in 1971, Ellisonsaid: “You get Negro-Americanswalking around top-heavy fromtrying to Africanize themselves whenthat which is authentically Africanin them has come down to usthrough more subtle ways, and weare not the only inheritors of it. I’mafraid white southerners inherit ahell of a lot of it too.”

Others have argued that Africansources of American black culturedeserve far greater attention andstudy than they’ve received.

In a 1999 book, Charles Joyner,a Coastal Carolina Universityhistorian, holds both views inbalance. After describing the“Africanity” of American slaveheritage, he points out that slavesand their descendants helped form aunique culture in the New World.“Africans,” he wrote, “were creativein Africa; they did not cease to becreative when they became involun-tary settlers in America.”

African-American history,however, was largely denied in thelowcountry until a decade ago, someexperts say. “When I came here in1994, the plantations were stilltalking about ‘servants,’ and the‘servant quarters,’ not about theslaves,” says W. Marvin Dulaney, aCollege of Charleston historian anddirector of the Avery ResearchCenter for African American Historyand Culture. “The plantations werepainting this crazy image that therewere no slaves here. There’s a greatdifference between a servant and aslave. In Charleston, there was almostno African presence in the city interms of how (history) was inter-preted. I talked to (the plantationdirectors) and told them they needed

to do a better job of recognizing theAfrican-American presence, andthey seemed to respond.” Nowsome historic plantations havetours that describe antebellumGullah life.

During the past decade,Dulaney and Avery Center staffhave created exhibitions on slaveryand the African-American experi-ence in the lowcountry. Dulaneyhas also pushed for reopening ofthe old Slave Mart Museum.

The U.S. Park Service,especially through the efforts ofMichael Allen, has also sought tobring African-American contribu-tions to the forefront.

At the request of U.S. Repre-sentative James E. Clyburn, theNational Parks Service has com-pleted a major study of the Gullah/Geechee coast and potential forhistorical tourism, economicdevelopment, and educationalprojects there. The Park Servicestudy recommends establishingGullah/Geechee interpretive siteson U.S. Highway 17 near MountPleasant, at the Penn Center, andin McIntosh County, Georgia.

In May 2004, the Washington,D.C.-based National Trust forHistoric Preservation named theGullah/Geechee Coast as one ofAmerica’s 11 Most EndangeredHistoric Places. This designationalso brings national recognition toGullah culture, says Allen.

Clyburn subsequently intro-duced the Gullah/GeecheeCultural Heritage Act (H.R. 4683),which would implement the ParkService’s suggestions. The actwould establish a Gullah/GeecheeCultural Heritage Corridor andcreate a commission to helpfederal, state, and local authoritiesmanage the corridor and its assets.The legislation would authorize $1million in annual funding over 10years, calling for one or moreinterpretive centers at appropriatelocations within the Heritage

Corridor. “We hope that this could bereally significant in increasingheritage tourism,” says Clyburn.

The Park Service’s study andClyburn’s bill “acknowledge theinvisible people of the area,” saysDulaney. “It could bring money andhelp the Park Service protect somespecific places along the coastdealing with African-Americanhistory. And it will provide animpetus for some of the otherorganizations—plantations, muse-ums—to do more in that respect.”

Now, Phillips Community leadershope to gain acknowledgement fromstate and federal agencies as a historicsite, though they are not relying ongovernment help. “Every (ruralAfrican-American) community I’vetalked to has some kind of preserva-tion effort underway,” says CynthiaPorcher, principal researcher on thePark Service’s study. “They are notsitting back waiting for something tohappen, but they don’t have access tobig bucks.”

“There’s a strong sense of pride,”Allen says. “People say, ‘Our great-granddaddy purchased the propertythat we’re still living on. That’sbecause of the sacrifice of someone ahundred years ago. There may havebeen bad crops or he might havealmost lost the land due to taxes orthe Klan might have tried to runhim off, whatever. So we’re stillliving on great-granddaddy’s land,and we’re still paying the taxes.’ ”

At first glance, an African-American rural community re-sembles a random scattering ofmodest houses. Rural lowcountryblacks were not wealthy; they didnot leave monuments or grandhomes.

Yet a deeper investigation tells astory of sacrifices and accomplish-ments across generations. History isrevealed in family and communitytraditions, in land use, stories, food,and language. To see these places forwhat they are, “you must look,” saysAllen, “at history with new eyes.”

12 • COASTAL HERITAGE

S ome of the most beloved American spirituals emerged from the talents of the Gullah people of coastal South

Carolina. Slave songs such as “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,” “Roll, Jordan, Roll,” “Nobody Knows the TroubleI’ve Had,” and “Blow Your Trumpet, Gabriel” were first written down in the Port Royal area or Charleston during

the Civil War but later transformed and popularized worldwide.In 1862, an educational mission of concerned northern whites and blacks was sent to Port Royal and nearby islands

after the area had fallen to Union troops. These missions were designed to aid newly freed slaves. At this time, fewnortherners—or inland southerners—had encountered antebellum Gullah language and culture.

Working on St. Helena Island, a pair of young northern teachers, one white and one black, contributed to a historicbook, Slave Songs of the United States, published in 1867, which codified the lyrics and melodies.

The person most responsible for bringing Gullah music to national attention was Thomas Wentworth Higginson, awhite abolitionist who served as a colonel in the United States’ first regiment of African-Americans, the First SouthCarolina Volunteers.

In an Atlantic Monthly article in June 1867, Higginson described returning to army camp at night on horseback andhearing groups of freedmen “chanting, often harshly, but always in the most perfect time.” He wrote down the words andmelodies, hoping to capture the varied songs. “Almost all their songs were thoroughly religious in their tone. Nothing butpatience for this life—nothing but triumph in the next.”

Later, a group of young black singers from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, known as the Fisk Jubilee Singers,brought many of these spirituals to the attention of the American public and eventually to Europe.

But the spirituals popularized by the Fisk Jubilee Singers are different from those that the Gullah people have sungfor generations, says Marquetta L. Goodwine, an activist, author, and performer also known as Queen Quet, chieftess ofthe Gullah/Geechee Nation.

Northerners whodocumented Gullahspirituals misunder-stood some of thelyrics and the sponta-neous nature of thesongs, says Goodwine.While slave songs werereligious, they alsoserved as ways forslaves to communicateplans to escape andthe level of dangerthat escapees wouldface at any particulartime. The songs couldbe both warningsignals and outlets toexpress the horrors of slavery.

The rhythms and musical structure of Gullah spirituals are also different from the popularized versions. “Go Down,Moses,” is almost always sung in a grand, stern legato in the Americanized version. But in the Gullah tradition, songsoften change during the performance to reflect the changing mood or meaning of the piece. A somber, dirge-like melodycan be transformed in mid-song, building into rapid meter, accompanied by “sea-island claps” and foot stomping as thesing-shouting turns ecstatic and percussive.

INSPIRATION BOUND.Music is an integral part of

Gullah heritage. This girlparticipated in the

Community Sing event atthe Penn Center on

St. Helena Island in 1986. PHOTO/WADE SPEES

Gullah Spiritualsprovided roots of American gospel songs.provided roots of American gospel songs

WINTER 2004-05 • 13

In the early decades of thetwentieth century, some elderlyformer rice planters and their

descendants wrote memoirs of theantebellum era. As supporters of thesouthern Lost Cause, the memoiristsviewed rice planters as heroic andingenious. Slaves, by contrast, wereusually seen in these accounts asrough implements or simple brutesused to grow rice, the crop thatstimulated the lowcountry’s wealthand power before the Civil War.

Memoirist David Doar, in 1936,described the “insuperable difficultiesby every-day planters who had as toolsonly the axe, the spade, and the hoe,in the hands of intractable negro menand women, but lately brought fromthe jungles of Africa.”

Starting in the mid-1970s,however, historian Peter H. Wood,author of Black Majority, paved theway for thecurrent under-standing thatslaves providedmuch of theknowledge thatmade initial ricecultivationsuccessful inNorth America.

In a 2001book, JudithCarney, ageographer at theUniversity ofCalifornia, LosAngeles, takesthis argumentfurther, illustrat-ing that virtually all of the crucialearly innovations and techniques ofantebellum rice culture had anteced-ents or inspiration in West Africa.

“There is a very strong probabil-ity that the early technology of ricegrowing in this country should beattributed to Africans who broughtover knowledge from the rice-growing

areas,” says Richard Porcher, abotanist at The Citadel and acollaborator with Carney. “Africanshad grown rice in all kinds ofenvironments.”

There were three major stagesin the history of lowcountry ricecultivation. Before 1700, SouthCarolinians began growing rice ondry upland soil, using rainfall towater their crop.

Next, planters found thatgrowing rice in irrigated inlandswamps would yield larger crops andgreater profits. With slaves’ expertiseand backbreaking labor, plantersbuilt earthen dams to contain waterfrom rainfall or natural springs ininland swamps, creating reservoirs.Within the dam walls, plantersinstalled wooden structures called“trunks,” which could be opened orclosed to manipulate water flow.

The first trunks used in Carolinawere hollow logs with plugs.

To create rice fields in adjacentwetlands, slaves cut down massivecypress-gum forests, drained off thewater, and also enclosed them withdikes.

Thus were formed side-by-sidebroad, shallow earthen bowls: the

reservoir and the rice fields. Waterflows were manipulated via trunksamong the earthen bowls. By the1720s, profitable rice plantationswere using this form of inlandcultivation.

Slaves would begin sowing inApril or May, pressing seeds coatedwith clay into the mud with theirheels. When the field was flooded,clay-coated seeds were heavier andwould not float to the surface, thusallowing the seeds to germinate. InJune, slaves drained the fields to hoeor pick weeds. From reservoirs, slaveslater flooded the fields again toprovide moisture for the rice plants.

At harvest, slaves processed thegrain, carefully pounding rice withmortar and pestle, which required arefined touch because grains wereeasily broken and ruined. Usingcoiled baskets, slaves would winnowthe chaff from the rice.

The techniques and tools usedto cultivate and process rice in thelowcountry, writes Carney, wereidentical or very similar to thoseemployed in West Africa long beforePortuguese explorers arrived in themid-15th century.

Before European contact, WestAfricans already knew how to growrice in dry upland areas; how to growit in irrigated wetlands; how to plughollow tree trunks as flood-controldevices; how to coat rice seeds withclay; how to winnow rice from thechaff with baskets; and on and on.

Only the third major stage ofrice production—building rice fieldsirrigated by tidal rivers beginning inthe 1750s—was an innovation thatblended European and Africantechnical expertise, says Carney. YetEuropeans may have been imitatingAfrican engineering techniques inthis case as well. “Even the tidalsystem was widely used by Africansin mangrove (coastal) areas of WestAfrica,” says Carney.

Rice planters had slaves build reservoirs to flood rice fields. ShawnHalifax, interpretive coordinator at the Caw Caw Interpretive Centerin Charleston County, stands on a dike between a reservoir and aformer rice field, now a cypress swamp. PHOTO/WADE SPEES

14 • COASTAL HERITAGE

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