Before the Civil War, the most important dividing line in the South was not between black and white, but between slave and free. Nearly 500,000 Gullah/Geechee people inhabit a 500 mile stretch between Jacksonville, North Carolina and Jacksonville, Florida today. This resulted in the slave-holders moving away from their plantations, and, in turn, some slaves were bestowed titles such as “foreman” while their masters stayed away from the rice fields. In fact, the Gullah diet is based on the resources available from the water and land that surrounds them. One woman described the experience of typing in her great-grandfather’s name, finding him, and then having to call over the librarian to go through the handwritten enumeration form with her—she had to ask the librarian what “MUL” meant, not knowing it meant he was mulatto, or of mixed race. Ultimately, this was the beginning of the Gullah people; the intermingling of the variety of African backgrounds as well as the different dialects spoken created a new space for the slaves to come together and uphold their African culture as best as they could within the circumstances. Explore beautiful Pawleys Island, S.C., with a free getaway for two. 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. Charleston was one of the most important ports in North America for the Transatlantic slave trade. I chose families that lived in different parts of the South that became white at different points in American history and from different social positions. The Gullah language is considered a English-based creole language. When the U.S. Civil War began, the Union rushed to blockade Confederate shipping. Click here for Travel Health and Safety Information …. Garden City Beach • Murrells Inlet • Litchfield • Pawleys Island • Georgetown. 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. So wealth and privilege trumped race. Many Gullah people can be seen at festivals or even set up on the side of highways selling their beautiful creations. And thanks to the warm, humid climate of South Carolina and Georgia, diseases such as malaria and yellow fever thrived among the plantations. By the early 1700’s, the population of white people was overwhelmed by the black slave population. He previously worked as a senior editor for the Washington Post and for Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. Continue Those categories track each other, but not perfectly, and what really mattered above all to most people when they had to make a choice was that slavery as an institution had to be preserved. The Gullah/Geehcee people still inhabit coastal areas from North Carolina to Florida. It is also said that, to this day, Gullah cuisine is influenced by the rations that slaves would receive on a weekly basis. Sounds crazy, right? Stephen Wall is interesting in part because at work he was always known as African-American, but eventually, at home everyone thought he was Irish. You note that an early 18th-century governor of South Carolina granted the Gibsons, who clearly had African-American ancestry, permission to stay in his colony because “they are not Negroes nor Slaves.” How did the governor reach such a nebulous conclusion? That involved reading a lot of histories and memoirs, and then moving from there to dozens and dozens of court cases where courts had to determine whether people were black or white, and from there to property records and census records and draft records and newspaper accounts. In those days, men who were too old or in bad healthy used to weave large utilitarian baskets for the plantation work. Long before the War ended, Quaker missionaries from Pennsylvania came down to start schools for the newly freed slaves. Keep up-to-date on: © 2020 Smithsonian Magazine. The Gullah language is what linguistic scholars call an English-based creole language. And I developed a list of dozens, even hundreds of families that I could be writing about, and then narrowed it down. WE LOOK FORWARD TO WELCOMING YOU BACK TO BEAUFORT SOON! Right now as I am typing this, the Gullah culture exists as a living, breathing community not-too-far from where I am sitting. White planters on the Sea Islands, fearing an invasion by the US naval forces, abandoned their plantations and fled to the mainland. But don’t be fooled; while the dishes tend to be more on the simplistic side, the way in which the Gullah people get their food is not so simple. In recent years the Gullah people—led by Penn Center and other determined community groups—have been persistent in keeping control of their traditional lands. It is said that the Gullah people formed their cultural cuisine from African roots, making do with what they have, creativity, and adaptability. It seems that the secrets of many generations are no match for the Internet. Many Southern communities accepted individuals even when they knew those individuals were racially ambiguous—and that happened even while those communities supported slavery, segregation and very hard-line definitions of race. Thank you! But when they arrived in South Carolina there was a lot of anxiety about the presence of this large mixed-race family. Give a Gift. I began by trying to find as many of these families as I could in the historical record. I think the idea that race is blood-borne and grounded in science still has a tremendous amount of power about how we think about ourselves. They speak an English-based creole language containing many African loanwords and significant influences from African languages in grammar and sentence structure; Gullah storytelling, cuisine, music, folk beliefs, crafts, farming and fishing traditions, all exhibit strong influences from West and Central African cultures. Slavery and the Civil War in South Carolina - 1525-1865; Reconstruction and Restoration in South Carolina - 1865-1900; Modern Era - 1900-present; Heritage, Not Hate? Basically, then, Gullah is a complicated mash-up between English and African languages from the slaves’ homeland. And why was such flexibility necessary, both then and later? For a while they were in Georgetown [the Washington, D.C. neighborhood], surrounded by other Irish families. Photo Source: GullahGeecheeNation.com. Advertising Notice Vote Now! But does that assumption hold? The hype surrounding the rice plantation industry kept growing, and white plantation owners continued to purchase slaves for labor. And it seems that the governor determined that they were skilled tradesmen, that they had owned land in North Carolina and in Virginia and—I think most important—that they owned slaves. Sources: Yale.edu; Gullah.tv; UltimateGullah.com. You will not be bored! Gullah Traditions of the South Carolina Coast. If you are ever traveling in South Carolina or Georgia, make sure to stop by and check out the gorgeous quality of these baskets and ask about the hard work that goes into crafting them. Other art includes Gullah paintings which tend to be very bright and portray images of the Gullah people and community. IN COLLABORATION WITH BAHA, THE SAFE COMMITMENT HAS BEEN LAUNCHED TO ENSURE THE CLEANLINESS AND SAFETY OF ALL BEAUFORT EMPLOYEES AND CONSUMERS. And how did those families come to know about their ancestry? Gullah men traditionally take on the hobby of woodcarving, and Gullah women tend to partake in quilt making similar to that found in Africa. US National Park Service's Reconstruction Era Monument. Some Gullah traditions also came from the white slave owners. There are people in the Gullah community that are thought to have the power to protect people from evil. 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. When it comes to arts and crafts, the Gullah people are well-known for their sweet grass baskets. South Carolina had a major role in that history, from the Slave Market in Charleston to black trailblazers such as Matilda Arabella Evans and Harvey B. Gantt. Photo Source: SmithsonianMag.com. Penn Center, now a Gullah community organization on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, began as the very first school for freed slaves. While this article touches on many main aspects of the Gullah culture, it is suggested to do further reading in order to fully grasp the uniqueness of this community. In fact, many Gullah words can be traced to specific African groups and tribes. For a second, you probably thought that the word “language” was misspelled there. But what I found was, plenty of people became recognized as white in areas where their families were well known and had lived for generations, and many could cross the line even when they looked different. The African substrate languages have influenced the grammar, sentence structure, pronunciation, and some vocabulary of the Gullah language. In these prisons, the slaves were introduced to Africans from different tribes and regions. Traditions like this no long exist among the Gullah people, but it shows, like their language, how the culture of their new land as well as their roots meshed together in order to create something new and suitable for their lives in a new land. But where did these people come from? Even as we understand how much racial categories were really just a function of social pressures and political pressures and economic pressures, we still can easily think about race as a function of swabbing our cheek, looking at our DNA and seeing if we have some percentage of African DNA. While the Gullah people were converted to Christianity by their masters, they kept true to their celebratory African style. For much of their history, Americans dealt with racial differences by drawing a strict line between white people and black people. Cookie Policy After emancipation, though, women took to making smaller baskets for things such as holding food or for decoration. Over the years, the Gullahs have attracted many historians, linguists, folklorists, and anthropologists interested in their rich cultural heritage. The family moved around a lot. 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 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.