Representations and portrayals of Gullah Geechee culture in art and media
The Gullah are African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of the U.S. states of Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, in both the coastal plain and the Sea Islands. They developed a creole language, also called Gullah, and a culture with some African influence.
Historically, the Gullah region extended from the Cape Fear area on North Carolina's coast south to the vicinity of Jacksonville on Florida's coast. The Gullah people and their language are also called Geechee, which may be derived from the name of the Ogeechee River near Savannah, Georgia.[1]Gullah is a term that was originally used to designate the creole dialect of English spoken by Gullah and Geechee people. Over time, its speakers have used this term to formally refer to their creole language and distinctive ethnic identity as a people. The Georgia communities are distinguished by identifying as either "Freshwater Geechee" or "Saltwater Geechee", depending on whether they live on the mainland or the Sea Islands.[2][3][4][5]
Because of a period of relative isolation from whites while working on large plantations in rural areas, the Africans, enslaved from a variety of Central and West African ethnic groups, developed a creole culture that has preserved much of their African linguistic and cultural heritage from various peoples; in addition, they absorbed new influences from the region. The Gullah people speak an English-based creole language containing many African loanwords and influenced by African languages in grammar and sentence structure. Sometimes referred to as "Sea Island Creole" by linguists and scholars, the Gullah language is sometimes likened to Bahamian Creole, Barbadian Creole, Guyanese Creole, Belizean Creole, Jamaican Patois and the Krio language of West Africa. Gullah crafts, farming and fishing traditions, folk beliefs, music, rice-based cuisine and story-telling traditions all exhibit strong influences from Central and West African cultures.[6][7][8][9]
Over the years, the Gullah have attracted study by many historians, linguists, folklorists, and anthropologists interested in their rich cultural heritage. Many academic books on that subject have been published. The Gullah have also become a symbol of cultural pride for blacks throughout the United States and a subject of general interest in the media. Numerous newspaper and magazine articles, documentary films, and children's books on Gullah culture, have been produced, in addition to popular novels set in the Gullah region. In 1991 Julie Dash wrote and directed Daughters of the Dust, the first feature film about the Gullah, set at the turn of the 20th century on St. Helena Island. Born into a Gullah family, she was the first African-American woman director to produce a feature film.
film trilogy about race and culture in the Deep South, consists of three tales, "The Half-Pint Flask", "Neighbors", "Ashes". "The Half-Pint Flask", written in 1927 by DuBose Heyward, is a ghost story that takes place among the Gullahs of the Sea Islands.[10]
A Civil War film, features a short conversation between Union Gullah troops, and members of the 54th Massachusetts, including several Gullah words and phrases.
film directed by Julie Dash, Gracenote, Inc. Members of a Gullah family plan a move from the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina to the mainland in 1902.
1992
Home Across the Water
Film by Benjamin Shapiro.
1998
The Language You Cry In: The Story of a Mende Song
Film saga from 18th century Sierra Leone to the Gullah people of present-day Georgia.[12][13]
A made-for-television movie, focused on the Gullah culture of St. Helena Island and surrounding South Carolina Sea Islands, featuring the Hallelujah Singers.
As mentioned above, the characters in Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus stories speak in a Deep South Gullah dialect. Other books about or which feature Gullah characters and culture are listed below.
Straight, Susan (1993). I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots. New York: Hyperion.
Reichs, Kathy (1999). Death du Jour. New York: Scribner.
Gullah culture
Campbell, Emory (2008). Gullah Cultural Legacies. Hilton Head South Carolina: Gullah Heritage Consulting Services.
Carawan, Guy and Candie (1989). Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of Life: The People of Johns Island, South Carolina, their Faces, their Words, and their Songs. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Rosenbaum, Art (1998). Shout Because You're Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition in Coastal Georgia. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Rosengarten, Dale (1986). Sea Grass Baskets of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Columbia, SC: McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina.
Twining, Mary; Keigh Baird (1991). Sea Island Roots: The African Presence in the Carolinas and Georgia. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press.
Young, Jason (2007). Rituals of Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry South in the Era of Slavery. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University.
Gullah history
Ball, Edward (1998). Slaves in the Family. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Smith, Mark M. (2005). Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
Wood, Peter (1974). Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. New York: Knopf.
Gullah language and storytelling
Bailey, Cornelia; Christena Bledsoe (2000). God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks about Life on Sapelo Island. New York: Doubleday.
Geraty, Virginia Mixon (1997). Gulluh fuh Oonuh: A Guide to the Gullah Language. Orangeburg, SC: Sandlapper Publishing Company.
Jones, Charles Colcock (2000). Gullah Folktales from the Georgia Coast. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Mills, Peterkin and McCollough (2008). Coming Through: Voices of a South Carolina Gullah Community from WPA Oral Histories collected by Genevieve W. Chandler. South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press.
Montgomery, Michael, ed. (1994). The Crucible of Carolina: Essays in the Development of Gullah Language and Culture. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Sea Island Translation Team (2005). De Nyew Testament (The New Testament in Gullah). New York: American Bible Society.
Stoddard, Albert Henry (1995). Gullah Animal Tales from Daufuskie Island, South Carolina. Hilton Head Island, SC: Push Button Publishing Company.
Turner, Lorenzo Dow (1949). Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
Sciences
A pseudoscorpion species (Neocheiridium gullahorum) from South Carolina was named after the Gullah people and culture.
A lichen species (Bacidia gullahgeechee) from South Carolina was named in honor of the Gullah communities in the region where the lichen grows.[18]
Music
"Gullah" is the third song on Clutch's album Robot Hive/Exodus (2005).
"Kum Bah Yah" is a Gullah phrase, and as such, the song is claimed to have originated in Gullah culture
The folk song "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" (or "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore") comes from the Gullah culture
Photography
Historical photos of the Gullah can be found in such works as:
Georgia Writer's Project (1986). Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Johnson, Thomas L.; Nina J. Root (2002). Camera Man's Journey: Julian Dimock's South. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
Millerton, Suzanna Krout. New York: Aperture, Inc.
Weems, Carrie Mae. Sea Islands Series. 1991–92.
Miner, Leigh Richmond; Edith Dabbs (2003). Face of an Island: Leigh Richmond Miner's Photographs of Saint Helena Island. Charleston, South Carolina: Wyrick & Company.
Ulmann, Doris; Willis-Thomas, D. (1981). Photographs by Doris Ulmann: the Gullah people [exhibition June 1-July 31, 1981]. New York: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library Astor Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
^Lendemer JC (2018). "Bacidia gullahgeechee (Bacidiaceae, Lecanoromycetes) an unusual new species potentially endemic to the globally unique Ashepoo-Combahee-Edisto River Basin of southeastern North America". The Bryologist. 121 (4): 536–546. doi:10.1639/0007-2745-121.4.536. S2CID91258875.