Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #gullah
Most recents (4)
It is important that as we celebrate #Juneteenth and freedom this weekend, that we also recognize how for the descendants of the #Gullah Geechee, the year 1865 marked the opposite—the broken promises and dashed dreams of freedom. A Thread:
I am a descendent of Gullah people, who were given a taste and a test of freedom immediately at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. All the white people ran scared & black folks in Beaufort and surrounding islands began to imagine freedom concretely. blackpast.org/african-americ…
That early taste of freedom called “The Port Royal Experiment” proved successful. The formerly enslaved in Port Royal (numbering about 10,000) understood that if white people would just stay gone, literally the sky would be the limit. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Roya…
Some of the African ancestors of the Gullah Geechees were Muslim. The “ring shout”—a form of religious dance where worshipers turn counterclockwise while singing, clapping, and shuffling their feet—was directly inherited from enslaved Muslim slaves brought to the Sea Islands. 
Research done by Lorenzo Dow Turner, the father of #Gullah studies, shows the worshipers recreated the circumambulation (the act of moving around a sacred object) or tawaf of #Muslim pilgrims around the Ka ́bah in Mecca. This brings to mind the #hajj, which just ended last week.
Learn more about Africanism in Gullah Geechee culture from this 2010 @SmithsonianACM exhibit on Turner’s life and work. anacostia.si.edu/resources/turn…
The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection
“The #Gullah are directly descended from the slaves who labored on the rice plantations, and their language reflects significant influences from #SierraLeone and the surrounding area.”
glc.yale.edu/gullah-rice-sl…
“The #Gullah are directly descended from the slaves who labored on the rice plantations, and their language reflects significant influences from #SierraLeone and the surrounding area.”
glc.yale.edu/gullah-rice-sl…
They speak a creole language similar to Sierra Leone Krio, use African names, tell African folktales, make African-style handicrafts such as baskets and carved walking sticks, and enjoy a rich cuisine based primarily on rice.
The Gullah Geechee people are the descendants of Central and West Africans who came from different ethnic and social groups.
They were enslaved together on the isolated sea and barrier islands that span what is now designated as the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor.
They were enslaved together on the isolated sea and barrier islands that span what is now designated as the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor.
So, that long-promised lowdown on rice and slavery. There's a couple of things to understand from the off: "jollof wars" might be playful but they indicate a long West African history with rice.
That history also means that industrial head hunting actually began during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Rice has been cultivated in West Africa for centuries although the variety native to the region was not considered to have high yields.
Soon, the WA strains were largely replaced with Asian oryza sativa strains and is now mainly cultivated in Nigeria, Mali, Sierra Leone and along the Ghana-Togo border. Locals continue to cultivate it because they consider the native rice more filling and sweeter... (call break..)
