Holding on to Gullah Culture

A Smithsonian curator visits a Georgia island to find stories of a shrinking community that has clung to its African traditions

  • By Erica R. Hendry
  • Smithsonian magazine, March 2011, Subscribe
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Cornelia Bailey
"You didn't learn your history, you lived it," says Cornelia Bailey, who grew up on Sapelo. (Gregory Foster)

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“That’s Uncle Shad, all right,” Bailey says, straining to hear his words. “Sure is.”

Bailey and Nettye Evans, 72, a childhood friend, identified four pictures in Amos’ collection. “I think that might be your husband’s great-grandmother, Katie Brown,” Evans says, pointing to a picture of a proud-looking woman wearing mostly white.

Bailey drove Amos around the island in a boxy utility van, pointing out houses and fields and slipping into island dialect: binya is a native islander, comya is a visitor.

In the back seat, Bailey’s grandson, 4-year-old Marcus, played with plastic toy trucks. He doesn’t use those words. And while he knows some traditional songs and dances, Marcus will likely follow the path of Sapelo’s three most recent graduates, who attended high school on the mainland and went on to college, with no plans to return. “My daughters would love to live here. Their heart is in Sapelo,” says Ben Hall, 75, whose father owned the island’s general store until it closed decades ago from lack of business. “But they can’t. There’s nothing for them.”

The Sapelo Island Culture and Revitalization Society is working to build a Geechee Gullah Cultural Interpretative Village—an interactive tourist attraction recreating different time periods of island life. It would bring jobs and generate revenue, Bailey says. The society, however, needs $1.6 million to move forward with the project.

Meanwhile, at the museum, Uncle Shad’s voice, now identified, relates the island’s history. The culture is too strong to ever die out completely, Bailey says. “You’ve got to have hope there’ll always be somebody here.”


If a slave died while cutting rice stalks in the wet paddy fields on Sapelo Island, Georgia, those laboring with him were not permitted to attend to the body. The buzzards arrived first.

But at night, the deceased’s companions would gather to mourn. Dancing to the steady beat of a broom or stick, a circle of men would form around a leader—the “buzzard”— whose hands depicted the motion of the bird’s wings. He would rock closer and closer to the ground, nose first, to pick up a kerchief, symbolizing the body’s remains.

Cornelia Bailey, 65, is one of a handful of people still living on the 16,000-acre barrier island along Georgia’s Sea Coast. She remembers the “buzzard lope,” as the ritual was called. Growing up, she says, “you didn’t learn your history. You lived it.”

African-American linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner (1890-1972) was also privy to that history. In 1933, he conducted a series of interviews with Sea Coast residents—recorded on a bulky device powered by the truck engine of Bailey’s father-in-law. Thus he introduced the world to a community, known as Gullah or Geechee, that still retains music and dances from West Africa. Turner also studied the islanders’ unique dialect, which outsiders had long dismissed as poor English. But Turner’s research, published in 1949, demonstrated that the dialect was complex, comprising about 3,800 words and derived from 31 African languages.

Turner’s pioneering work, which academics credit for introducing African-American studies to U.S. curricula, is the subject of “Word, Shout, Song: Lorenzo Dow Turner Connecting Communities Through Language” at Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum through July 24. Exhibit curator Alcione Amos says the Washington, D.C. museum acquired many of Turner’s original notes, pictures and recordings from his widow, Lois Turner Williams, in 2003. But Amos knew if she wanted to supplement Turner’s work, she would have to act quickly.

Today, only 55 Sapelo natives, ages 3 to 89, live in the island’s lone village, Hogg Hummock. “I wake up in the morning and count heads, to make sure nobody died overnight,” Bailey says.

“I knew there wasn’t much more time before the people who recognize the people in these photographs, and remember the culture they represented, are gone, too,” Amos says.

So she retraced Turner’s steps, traveling across the island conducting interviews. Sitting in Bailey’s kitchen, Amos played recordings on a laptop. A man’s voice sounds faded and cracked beneath the steady hum of the truck generator.

“That’s Uncle Shad, all right,” Bailey says, straining to hear his words. “Sure is.”

Bailey and Nettye Evans, 72, a childhood friend, identified four pictures in Amos’ collection. “I think that might be your husband’s great-grandmother, Katie Brown,” Evans says, pointing to a picture of a proud-looking woman wearing mostly white.

Bailey drove Amos around the island in a boxy utility van, pointing out houses and fields and slipping into island dialect: binya is a native islander, comya is a visitor.

In the back seat, Bailey’s grandson, 4-year-old Marcus, played with plastic toy trucks. He doesn’t use those words. And while he knows some traditional songs and dances, Marcus will likely follow the path of Sapelo’s three most recent graduates, who attended high school on the mainland and went on to college, with no plans to return. “My daughters would love to live here. Their heart is in Sapelo,” says Ben Hall, 75, whose father owned the island’s general store until it closed decades ago from lack of business. “But they can’t. There’s nothing for them.”

The Sapelo Island Culture and Revitalization Society is working to build a Geechee Gullah Cultural Interpretative Village—an interactive tourist attraction recreating different time periods of island life. It would bring jobs and generate revenue, Bailey says. The society, however, needs $1.6 million to move forward with the project.

Meanwhile, at the museum, Uncle Shad’s voice, now identified, relates the island’s history. The culture is too strong to ever die out completely, Bailey says. “You’ve got to have hope there’ll always be somebody here.”


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Comments (7)

This site has been so helpful to me. I am studying the Gullah culture to find my own roots. My Gr.Gr. Grandfather was named Sharik (Shadrick, Shade) and I have often wondered where he got his name. I see that a derivative of that name was used in one of the narratives. He did originate in North Carolina and I hope he too was from Gullah folks.

Posted by Joan Holbert Hubert on January 20,2012 | 11:11 PM

Friends,
Being a native of New Orleans,La.,poet, educator and African American,I really appreciated Erica R. Hendry's article entitled "An African Island in Georgia". I will surely share it with my students and friends of all races.
Arthur C. Ford,Sr.
wewuvpoetry@hotmail.com

Posted by Arthur C. Ford,Sr.,poet on March 21,2011 | 03:24 PM

I finally had to write. Although Smithsonian editors are good about including stories about the history of people historically oppressed in the United Stated, I regularly see writers referring to Afrikan Descendants as "slaves" as if this adequately represents who and what they were. As a white person, I for one would welcome a cultural change in our language to more accurately reflect our history. People from Africa were not slaves. We did not go there and find slaves - we didn't even "find" them, we sought them out and ENSLAVED them. They became enslaved people. This language conveys the fact that they were ACTED UPON - enslaved, stripped of their culture and denigrated, as opposed to the passive idea that their entire identity can be summed up in the word "slave." I and others would greatly appreciate if the Smithsonian editors, curators and writers would make a note to use the more accurate language. The purpose is not to make people feel "bad" but rather to correctly represent this sad history so we can better understand the impact of that history today. We will never get beyond that history if we don't begin teaching it and speaking of it accurately. The truth will set us free.

Posted by Dianne Lyday on March 9,2011 | 04:11 PM

Whatever happened to the children's television show (non-animated) that was based on Gullah culture? It might have aired on PBS, and some kids I babysat in the mid-1990s watched it. It was a good, happy show with songs and life lessons, called "Gullah Gullah Island." I remember bits of the opening song: "Come, and let's play together/In the bright, sunny weather/Let's all go to/Gullah Gullah Island." There was also a muppet-like creature called "Binya Binya" who lived in a banyan tree.

Posted by Heather Edwards on March 8,2011 | 04:52 PM

For an amazing movie about Gullah culture, rent "Daughters of the Dust." It was released in the 1990s.

Posted by AK on February 28,2011 | 11:17 AM

I didn't tell you how much I look forward to every issue of the Smithsonian. It is much more than entertaining, although it is certainly that. I like the educational aspect of the articles greatly. Thank you for all your efforts to publish such a quality product, and for making it so afforable.

Sincerely yours,
Anne Lewis

Posted by anne lewis on February 24,2011 | 09:34 PM

I wish to point out that Gullah was known about and used in "Nights with Uncle Remus"; Daddy Jack would visit the plantation occasionally, tell stories, speaking in Gullah all the while. My grandmother, although white, had a feel for language and when she read to me I could always tell when Daddy Jack was narrating a tale. Joel Chandler Harris gathered these folk stories in the late 19th and early 20th century, some time before the estemmedl Mr. Turner recorded the dialect. I have heard nothing of Mr. Harris' work in years; I suppose they are not 'PC' enough.
Howsomever, I will give you q quote from 'How the bear nursed the alligators":to illustrate some phoneticized Gullah. I often quote the verse to my children and grandchildren, hopefully to enable them to distinguish a dialect from carelessness. {or a poor educational system].
Yarrah one, yarrah narrah,
Yarrah two 'pon top er tarrah.
Yarrrah t'ree pile up tregarrah!

Can you translate? It isn't too hard, but allow me:

Here is one, here's another;
Here are two on top of t'other;
Here are three piled up together.

Please include Mr. Harris' work in your efforts to preserve some of the Gullah dialect.
Most sincerely yours,
Anne Guffey Lewis

Posted by anne lewis on February 24,2011 | 09:24 PM



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