Gullah

The Gullah (/ˈɡʌlə/) are African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of the U.S. states of
Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina, in both the coastal plain and the Sea Islands. They developed a creole
language, the Gullah language, and a culture rich in African influences that makes them distinctive among
African Americans.

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. Today, the Gullah area is confined to the Georgia and South
Carolina Lowcountry. 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 especially
related to and almost identical to Bahamian Creole. There are also ties to 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]

Contents
Etymology
African roots
Origin of Gullah culture
Civil War period
Recent history
Customs and traditions
African influences
Cuisine
Celebrating Gullah culture
Cultural survival
Representation in art, entertainment, and media
Exhibitions
Films
Historical landmarks
Literature
Children's books on the Gullah
 Fictional works set in the Gullah region
Gullah culture
Gullah history
Gullah language and storytelling
Sciences
Music
Photography
Television
Notable Americans with Gullah roots
See also
References

Etymology
The origin of the word "Gullah" is unclear. Some scholars suggest that it may be cognate with the word
"Angola",[1][10] where the ancestors of some of the Gullah people likely originated. They created a new
culture synthesized from that of the various African peoples brought into Charleston and other parts of South
Carolina. Some scholars have suggested that it may come from the name of the Gola, an ethnic group living in
the border area between present-day Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa, another area of enslaved
ancestors of the Gullah people.[11][1] British colonists in the Caribbean and the Southern colonies of North
America referred to this area as the "Grain Coast" or "Rice Coast"; many of the tribes are of Mandé or
Manding origins. The name "Geechee", another common name for the Gullah people, may derive from the
name of the Kissi people, an ethnic group living in the border area between Sierra Leone, Guinea and
Liberia.[1]

Still another possible linguistic source for "Gullah" are the Dyula ethnic group of West Africa, from whom the
American Gullah might be partially descended. The Dyula civilization had a large territory that stretched from
Senegal through Mali to Burkina Faso and the rest of what was French West Africa. These were vast savanna
lands with lower population densities. Slave raiding was easier and more common here than in forested areas
with natural forms of physical defenses. The word "Dyula" is pronounced "Gwullah" among members of the
Akan ethnic group in Ghana and Cote D'Ivoire. The primary land route through which captured Dyula people
then came into contact with European slavers, was through the "Grain Coast" and "Rice Coast" (present-day
Liberia, Sierra Leone, Senegambia, and Guinea).

Some scholars have also suggested indigenous American origins for these words. The Spanish named the
South Carolina and Georgia coastal region as Guale, after a Native American tribe. The name of the Ogeechee
River, a prominent geographical feature in coastal Georgia and central to Guale territory, may have been
derived from a Creek Indian (Muskogee language) word.[12][13] Sapelo Island, the site of the last Gullah
community of Hog Hammock, was also principal place of refuge for Guale people who also fled slavery on
the mainland.[14]

African roots

According to Port of Charleston records, enslaved Africans shipped to the port came from the following areas:
Angola (39%), Senegambia (20%), the Windward Coast (17%), the Gold Coast (13%), Sierra Leone (6%),
and Madagascar, Mozambique, and the two Bights (viz., Benin and Biafra) (5% combined) (Pollitzer,
1999:43).[15] The term "Windward Coast" often referred to Sierra Leone,[16] so the total figure of slaves from
that region is higher than 6%.
Particularly along the western coast, the local peoples had cultivated African rice for what is estimated to
approach 3,000 years. African rice is a related, yet distinct species from Asian rice. It was originally
domesticated in the inland delta of the Upper Niger River.[17][18] Once British colonial planters in the
American South discovered that African rice would grow in that region, they often sought enslaved Africans
from rice-growing regions because of their skills and knowledge needed to develop and build irrigation, dams
and earthworks.[19]

Two British trading companies based in England operated the slave castle at Bunce Island (formerly called
Bance Island), located in the Sierra Leone River. Henry Laurens was their agent in Charleston and was a
planter and slave trader. His counterpart in England was the Scottish merchant and slave trader Richard
Oswald. Many of the enslaved Africans taken in West Africa were processed through Bunce Island. It was a
prime export site for slaves to South Carolina and Georgia. Slave castles in Ghana, by contrast, shipped many
of the people they handled to ports and markets in the Caribbean islands.

After Freetown, Sierra Leone, was founded in the late 18th century by the British as a colony for poor blacks
from London and black Loyalists from Nova Scotia, resettled after the American Revolutionary War, they did
not allow slaves to be taken from Sierra Leone. They tried to protect the people from kidnappers. In 1808 both
Great Britain and the United States prohibited the African slave trade. After that date, the British, whose navy
patrolled to intercept slave ships off Africa, sometimes resettled Africans liberated from slave trader ships in
Sierra Leone. Similarly, Americans sometimes settled freed slaves at Liberia, a similar colony established in the
early 19th century by the American Colonization Society. As it was a place for freed slaves and free blacks
from the United States, some free blacks emigrated there voluntarily, for the chance to create their own society.

Origin of Gullah culture

The Gullah people have been able to preserve much of their African
cultural heritage because of climate, geography, cultural pride, and
patterns of importation of enslaved Africans. Enslaved persons from
the Central Western region of Africa, originating primarily from the
Mende populations of what is today Sierra Leone, and transported to
some areas of Brazil (including Bahia), the enslaved Gullah-
Gheechee people were traded in what was then Charlestowne, South
Carolina. According to British historian P.E.H. Hair, Gullah culture
The Gullah region once extended
developed as a creole culture in the colonies and United States from from SE North Carolina to NE
the peoples of many different African cultures who came together Florida.
there. These included the Baga, Fula, Kissi, Kpelle, Limba,
Mandinka, Mende, Susu, Temne, Vai, and Wolof of the Rice Coast,
and many from Angola, Igbo, Calabar, West Congo, and the Gold Coast.

By the middle of the 18th century, thousands of acres in the Georgia and South Carolina Lowcountry, and the
Sea Islands were developed as African rice fields. African farmers from the "Rice Coast" brought the skills for
cultivation and tidal irrigation that made rice farming one of the most successful industries in early America.

The subtropical climate encouraged the spread of malaria and yellow fever, which were both carried and
transmitted by mosquitoes. These tropical diseases were endemic in Africa and had been carried by enslaved
Africans to the colonies.[20] Mosquitoes in the swamps and inundated rice fields of the Lowcountry picked up
and spread the diseases to English and European settlers, as well. Malaria and yellow fever soon became
endemic in the region.

Because they had acquired some immunity in their homeland, Africans were more resistant to these tropical
fevers than were the Europeans. As the rice industry was developed, planters continued to import enslaved
Africans. By about 1708, South Carolina had a black majority.[21] Coastal Georgia developed a black majority
after rice cultivation expanded there in the mid-18th century. Malaria and yellow fever became endemic.
Fearing these diseases, many white planters and their families left the Lowcountry during the rainy spring and
summer months when fevers ran rampant.[19] Others lived mostly in cities such as Charleston rather than on
the isolated plantations, especially those on the Sea Islands.

The planters left their European or African "rice drivers", or overseers, in charge of the rice plantations.[19]
These had hundreds of laborers, with African traditions reinforced by new imports from the same regions.
Over time, the Gullah people developed a creole culture in which elements of African languages, cultures, and
community life were preserved to a high degree. Their culture developed in a distinct way, different from that
of the enslaved African Americans in states such as North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland, where the
enslaved lived in smaller groups, and had more sustained and frequent interactions with whites and British
American culture.[22]

Civil War period

When the U.S. Civil War began, the Union rushed to blockade Confederate shipping. White planters on the
Sea Islands, fearing an invasion by the US naval forces, abandoned their plantations and fled to the mainland.
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. Many Gullah served with distinction in the Union Army's First South Carolina
Volunteers. The Sea Islands were the first place in the South where slaves were freed. Long before the War
ended, Unitarian missionaries from Pennsylvania came to start schools on the islands for the newly freed
slaves. Penn Center, now a Gullah community organization on Saint Helena Island, South Carolina, was
founded as the first school for freed slaves.

After the Civil War ended, the Gullahs' isolation from the outside world increased in some respects. The rice
planters on the mainland gradually abandoned their plantations and moved away from the area because of
labor issues and hurricane damage to crops. Free blacks were unwilling to work in the dangerous and disease-
ridden rice fields. A series of hurricanes devastated the crops in the 1890s. Left alone in remote rural areas of
the Lowcountry, the Gullah continued to practice their traditional culture with little influence from the outside
world well into the 20th century.

Recent history

In the 20th century, some plantations were redeveloped as resort or

hunting destinations by wealthy whites. Gradually more visitors went
to the islands to enjoy their beaches and mild climate. Since the late
20th century, the Gullah people—led by Penn Center and other
determined community groups—have been fighting to keep control of
their traditional lands. Since the 1960s, resort development on the Sea
Islands has greatly increased property values, threatening to push the
Gullah off family lands which they have owned since emancipation.
They have fought back against uncontrolled development on the
islands through community action, the courts, and the political
process.[23]

The Gullah have also struggled to preserve their traditional culture in Gullah basket
the face of much more contact with modern culture and media. In
1979, a translation of the New Testament into the Gullah language
was begun.[24] The American Bible Society published De Nyew Testament in 2005. In November 2011,
Healin fa de Soul, a five-CD collection of readings from the Gullah Bible, was released.[25] This collection
includes Scipcha Wa De Bring Healing ("Scripture That Heals") and the Gospel of John (De Good Nyews
Bout Jedus Christ Wa John Write). This was also the most extensive
collection of Gullah recordings, surpassing those of Lorenzo Dow
Turner. The recordings have helped people develop an interest in the
culture, because they get to hear the language and learn how to
pronounce some words.[26]

The Gullah achieved another victory in 2006 when the U.S. Congress
passed the "Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Act"; it
provided $10 million over 10 years for the preservation and
interpretation of historic sites in the Low Country relating to Gullah
Coffin Point Praise House, 57 Coffin
culture.[27] The Heritage Corridor will extend from southern North Point Rd, St. Helena Island, South
Carolina to northern Florida. The project will be administered by the Carolina
US National Park Service, with extensive consultation with the
Gullah community.

The Gullah have also reached out to West Africa. Gullah groups made three celebrated "homecomings" to
Sierra Leone in 1989, 1997, and 2005. Sierra Leone is at the heart of the traditional rice-growing region of
West Africa where many of the Gullahs' ancestors originated. Bunce Island, the British slave castle in Sierra
Leone, sent many African captives to Charleston and Savannah during the mid- and late 18th century. These
dramatic homecomings were the subject of three documentary films—Family Across the Sea (1990), The
Language You Cry In (1998), and Priscilla's Homecoming (in production).

Customs and traditions

African influences
The Gullah word guber for peanut derives from the
Kikongo and Kimbundu word N'guba.
Gullah rice dishes called "red rice" and "okra soup" are
similar to West African "jollof rice" and "okra soup" and hog
maws. Jollof rice is a traditional style of rice preparation
brought by the Wolof people of West Africa.[28]
The Gullah version of "gumbo" has its roots in African
cooking. "Gumbo" is derived from a word in the Umbundu
language of Angola, meaning okra, one of the dish's main
ingredients.
Gullah rice farmers once made and used mortar and
pestles and winnowing fanners similar in style to tools A Gullah woman makes a
used by West African rice farmers. sweetgrass basket in Charleston's
Gullah beliefs about "hags" and "haunts" are similar to City Market
African beliefs about malevolent ancestors, witches, and
"devils" (forest spirits).
Gullah "root doctors" protect their clients against dangerous spiritual forces by using ritual
objects similar to those employed by African traditional healers.
Gullah herbal medicines are similar to traditional African remedies.
The Gullah "seekin" ritual is similar to coming of age ceremonies in West African secret
societies, such as the Poro and Sande.
The Gullah ring shout is similar to ecstatic religious rituals performed in West and Central
Africa.
 Gullah stories about "Bruh Rabbit" are similar to West and
Central African trickster tales about the figures of the clever
and conniving rabbit, spider, and tortoise.
Gullah spirituals, shouts, and other musical forms employ
the "call and response" method commonly used in African
music.
Gullah "sweetgrass baskets" are coil straw baskets made
by the descendants of slaves in the South Carolina
Lowcountry. They are nearly identical to traditional coil
baskets made by the Wolof people in Senegal.
Gullah "strip quilts" mimic the design of cloth woven with Wooden mortar and pestle from the
the traditional strip loom used throughout West Africa. rice loft of a South Carolina
Kente cloth from the Ashanti and the Ewe peoples, as well lowcountry plantation
as Akwete cloth from the Igbo people are woven on the
strip loom.
A non-English song, preserved by a Gullah family in coastal Georgia, was analyzed in the
1940s by linguist Lorenzo Turner and found to be a Mende song from Sierra Leone. It is
probably the longest text in an African language to survive the transatlantic crossing of
enslaved Africans to the present-day United States. Later, in the 1990s, researchers Joseph
Opala, Cynthia Schmidt, and Taziff Koroma located a village in Sierra Leone where the song is
still sung, and determined it is a funeral hymn. This research and the resulting reunion between
Gullah and Mende families is recounted in the documentary The Language You Cry In
(1998).[29]
Some words coming from others African languages such as Yoruba, Fon, Ewe, Twi, Ga,
Mende, and Bini are still used by Gullah people.[30]

Cuisine

Rice is a staple food in Gullah communities and continues to be cultivated in abundance in the coastal regions
of Georgia and South Carolina. Rice is also an important food in West African cultures. As descendants of
enslaved Africans, the Gullah continued the traditional food and food techniques of their ancestors,
demonstrating another link to traditional African cultures. Rice is a core commodity of the Gullah food system:
a meal was not considered complete without rice. There are strict rituals surrounding the preparation of rice in
the Gullah communities. First, individuals would remove the darker grains from the rice, and then hand wash
the rice numerous times before it was ready for cooking. The Gullah people would add enough water for the
rice to steam on its own, but not so much that one would have to stir or drain it. These traditional techniques
were passed down during the period of slavery and are still an important part of rice preparation by Gullah
people.[31]

Celebrating Gullah culture

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 century on St. Helena Island. Born into a Gullah family, she was the first African-American woman
director to produce a feature film.
Gullah people now organize cultural festivals every year in towns up
and down the Lowcountry. Hilton Head Island, for instance, hosts a
"Gullah Celebration" in February. It includes "De Aarts ob We
People" show; the "Ol’ Fashioned Gullah Breakfast"; "National
Freedom Day," the "Gullah Film Fest", "A Taste of Gullah" food and
entertainment, a "Celebration of Lowcountry Authors and Books," an
"Arts, Crafts & Food Expo," and "De Gullah Playhouse". Beaufort
hosts the oldest and the largest celebration, "The Original Gullah
Festival" in May. The nearby Penn Center on St. Helena Island holds
"Heritage Days" in November. Other Gullah festivals are celebrated Play media
on James Island, South Carolina and Sapelo Island, Georgia. VOA report about an exhibit about
Gullah culture
Gullah culture is also being celebrated elsewhere in the United States.
The High Art Museum in Atlanta has presented exhibits about Gullah
culture. The Black Cultural Center at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana conducted a research tour,
cultural arts festival, and other related events to showcase the Gullah culture. The Black Cultural Center
Library maintains a bibliography of Gullah books and materials, as well. Metro State College in Denver,
Colorado recently hosted a conference on Gullah culture, called The Water Brought Us: Gullah History and
Culture, which featured a panel of Gullah scholars and cultural activists. These events in Indiana and Colorado
are typical of the attention Gullah culture regularly receives throughout the United States.

Cultural survival

Gullah culture has proven to be particularly resilient. Gullah traditions are strong in the rural areas of the
Lowcountry mainland and on the Sea Islands, and among their people in urban areas such as Charleston and
Savannah. Gullah people who have left the Lowcountry and moved far away have also preserved traditions;
for instance, many Gullah in New York, who went North in the Great Migration of the first half of the 20th
century, have established their own neighborhood churches in Harlem, Brooklyn, and Queens. Typically they
send their children back to rural communities in South Carolina and Georgia during the summer months to live
with grandparents, uncles, and aunts. Gullah people living in New York frequently return to the Lowcountry
to retire. Second- and third-generation Gullah in New York often maintain many of their traditional customs
and sometimes still speak the Gullah language.

The Gullah custom of painting porch ceilings haint blue to deter haints, or ghosts, survives in the American
South. Having also been adopted by White Southerners, it has lost some of its spiritual significance.[32]

Representation in art, entertainment, and media

Exhibitions
Finding Priscilla's Children: The Roots and Branches of Slavery [Multimedia cultural exhibition
November 8 - March 1, 2006] (http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1184
&context=adan). New York City: New York Historical Society. 2006.

Films
Conrack (1974), film based on Pat Conroy's autobiographical book The Water is Wide (1972)
Tales of the Unknown South (1984), 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 [2] (https://www.apnews.com/1d55fdec23450d973fda6ca184a0f935)
A Soldier's Story 1984 film adapted by Charles Fuller's from his Pulitzer Prize-winning Off
Broadway production A Soldier's Play
Gullah Tales (1988)[33]
The Civil War film Glory (1989) features a short conversation between Union Gullah troops, and
members of the 54th Massachusetts, including several Gullah words and phrases.
Family Across the Sea (1990)
When Rice Was King (1990)]
Daughters of the Dust (1991), Julie Dash's feature film portrays a Gullah family at the turn of the
20th century, as the younger generation moves off the coastal South Carolina island.
Home Across the Water (1992), a streaming video
God's Gonna Trouble the Water (1997)
The Language You Cry In (1998)
The Patriot (2000), a Gullah village in South Carolina is featured
Bin Yah: There's No Place Like Home (2008)

Historical landmarks
"Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor" (http://www.nps.gov/guge/index.htm). National
Park Service. 2006. "Designated by Congress in 2006, the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage
Corridor extends from Wilmington, North Carolina in the north to Jacksonville, Florida in the
south."

Literature

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.

Children's books on the Gullah

Branch, Muriel (1995). The Water Brought Us: The Story of the Gullah-Speaking People (http
s://archive.org/details/waterbroughtusst00bran). New York: Cobblehill Books.
Clary, Margie Willis (1995). A Sweet, Sweet Basket. Orangeburg, Sc: Sandlapper Publishing
Company.
Geraty, Virginia (1998). Gullah Night Before Christmas. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing
Company.
Graham, Lorenz (2000). How God Fix Jonah
(https://archive.org/details/howgodfixjonah00grah). Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mill Press.
Jaquith, Priscilla (1995). Bo Rabbit Smart for True: Tall Tales from the Gullah. New York:
Philomel Books.
Krull, Kathleen (1995). Bridges to Change: How Kids Live on a South Carolina Sea Island (http
s://archive.org/details/bridgestochangeh00krul). New York: Lodestar Books.
Seabrooke, Brenda (1994). The Bridges of Summer. New York: Puffin Books.
Raven, Margot Theis (2004). Circle Unbroken (https://archive.org/details/circleunbrokenst00rav
e). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Siegelson, Kim L. (1999). In The Time of The Drums (https://archive.org/details/intimeofdrums0
0sieg). New York: Jump At The Sun/ Hyperion Books for Children.
 Siegelson, Kim L. (2003). Dancing The Ring Shout (https://archive.org/details/dancingringshout
00sieg). New York: Jump At The Sun/ Hyperion Books for Children.

Fictional works set in the Gullah region

Dash, Julie (1999). Daughters of the Dust. New York: Plume Books.
Gershwin, George (1935). Porgy and Bess (https://web.archive.org/web/20061026025919/htt
p://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/jb/wwii/gershwin_1). New York: Alfred Publishing.
Archived from the original (http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/jb/wwii/gershwin_1)
on 2006-10-26.
Heyward, Dubose (1925). Porgy (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/PORGY/porgy.html).
Charleston, SC: Wyrick & Company. Critique.
Hurston, Zora Neale (1937). Their Eyes Were Watching God (http://www.zoranealehurston.ucf.
edu/biography.php). New York: Harper Perennial.
Kidd, Sue Monk (2005). The Mermaid Chair (https://archive.org/details/mermaidcha00kidd).
Viking Press.
Naylor, Gloria (1988). Mama Day. New York: Ticknor & Fields.
Satterthwait, Elisabeth Carpenter (1898). A Son of the Carolinas, A Story of the Hurricane upon
The Sea Islands. Philadelphia, PA: Henry Altemus. ISBN 978-0-8369-9062-1.
Siddons, Anne Rivers (1998). Low Country (https://archive.org/details/lowcountrynovel00sidd_
0). New York: HarperCollinsPublishers.
Siegelson, Kim (1996). The Terrible, Wonderful Tellin' at Hog Hammock (https://archive.org/det
ails/terriblewonderfu00sieg). New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Straight, Susan (1993). I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots. New York:
Hyperion.

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.
Conroy, Pat (1972). The Water Is Wide (https://archive.org/details/wateriswideconr00conr).
Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Creel, Margaret Washington (1988). A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community Culture
among the Gullahs. New York: New York University Press.
Cross, Wilbur (2008). Gullah Culture in America. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Joyner, Charles (1984). Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (https://arc
hive.org/details/downbyriversidea00joyn). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Kiser, Clyde Vernon (1969). Sea Island to City: A Study of St. Helena Islanders in Harlem and
Other Urban Centers (https://archive.org/details/seaislandtocitys0000kise). New York:
Atheneum.
McFeely, William (1994). Sapelo's People: A Long Walk into Freedom (https://archive.org/detail
s/sapelospeople00will). New York: W.W. Norton.
Parrish, Lydia (1992). Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands. Athens, GA: University of
Georgia Press.
Robinson, Sallie Ann (2003). Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way. Charlotte: University
of North Carolina Press.
 Robinson, Sallie Ann (2006). Cooking the Gullah Way Morning, Noon, and Night (https://archiv
e.org/details/cookinggullahway00sall). Charlotte: University of North Carolina 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.
Carney, Judith (2001). Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (http
s://archive.org/details/blackriceafrican00carn). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Fields-Black, Edda (2008). Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Littlefield, Daniel (1981). Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South
Carolina. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Miller, Edward (1995). Gullah Statesman: Robert Smalls from Slavery to Congress, 1839-1915.
Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
Pollitzer, William (1999). The Gullah People and their African Heritage. Athens, GA: University
of Georgia Press.
Smith, Julia Floyd (1985). Slavery and Rice Culture in Low Country Georgia: 1750-1860 (http
s://archive.org/details/slaveryricecultu0000smit). Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
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.
Jones-Jackson, Patricia (1987). When Roots Die: Endangered Traditions on the Sea Islands (h
ttps://archive.org/details/whenrootsdieenda00jone). 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.[34]

Music
"Gullah" is the third song on Cluch'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
The band Ranky Tanky specializes in playing modern arrangements of Gullah folk music

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.

Television
Gullah Gullah Island (1994-1998) Program on Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. programing block.
"There Is a River" (https://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/about/episode_1.html). This Far by Faith
(episode 1). PBS. 2003.
Vice News documentary on Gullah peoples' plight in the face of exploitation of land for resorts
and housing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqDTJogdWmA)
Daughters of the Dust (1991) film directed by Julie Dash. (c) Gracenote, Inc. Members of a
Gullah family plan a move from the Sea Islands to the mainland in 1902.

Notable Americans with Gullah roots

Robert Sengstacke Abbott Jim Brown[35]
 Emory Campbell Mary Jackson
Charlamagne Tha God James Jamerson
Julie Dash Michelle Obama[36]
Sam Doyle Joseph Rainey
DJ Homicide Philip Reid
Trick Daddy Chris Rock
Edda L. Fields-Black Tony Rock
Joe Frazier Eden Royce
Candice Glover Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor[37]
Marquetta Goodwine Clarence Thomas[38]
Gullah Jack Denmark Vesey
Kemba Walker

See also
Atlantic Creole
Bilali Document
Black Seminoles
Bristol slave trade
Coastwise slave trade
Colonial South and the Chesapeake
First Africans in Virginia
Virginia Mixson Geraty
Ambrose E. Gonzales
Great Dismal Swamp maroons
Igbo Landing
Joseph Opala
Port Royal Experiment
Slavery in the colonial history of the United States
Stono Rebellion
Peter H. Wood

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