The Gullah Language

Part of our country’s growing trend toward ethnic self-awareness has been a renewed interest in Gullah, the colorful language and accompanying lifestyle that once flourished on the South Carolina sea islands from Georgetown to Daufuskie.

Researchers reported that as late as 1979, 100,000 South Carolinians spoke Gullah. Current estimates count 7,000 to 10,000 people speaking Gullah at home. Without intervention, the Gullah language will soon live only in scholarly textbooks and on fragile academic recordings.

The origins of Gullah date back to a sad chapter in America’s past. When slave traders sailed to West Africa and stuffed their ships full of men, women and children to be sold as slaves to Southern planters, Gullah was conceived. As that black culture meshed with the white, Gullah was born. A thick, lilting mix of African and English dialects, it started as a makeshift second language used among the sea island slaves, and it slowly evolved into the unwritten native tongue of their descendants.

Oddly, slavery and the antebellum South fed energy to the language. Gullah served a very practical transitional purpose, and its use and culture actually developed during those years. After the Civil War, however, the separation between the black and white cultures became highly exaggerated for nearly a century and a half. Cut off from the cultural homogenization that occurred everywhere else in America, life along the sea islands changed very little. Sea islanders still fished the coastline, shrimped the marsh, hunted for game in the woods, and spoke their native tongue unashamedly.

Gullah stubbornly survived in this splendid isolation, until the world rediscovered the islands and invested millions of dollars to develop them as resorts. Suddenly, bridges were built that introduced paved roads, indoor plumbing, better education, and access to higher paying mainland jobs. Gullah became thought of as “bad English”. Soon it was something to be ashamed of or denied. Then television, the greatest homogenizing influence of all, came along and nearly snuffed the language out altogether.

Finding true Gullah today is like finding gold. Its rare, and its kept hidden from “outsiders”. Still, there are a few islanders determined to keep it alive. There still are those who knit their own fishing nets, who still cook the Gullah recipes and serve their families whole meals fresh from the sea. Thankfully, there are those who take what’s left of the sweetgrass from the riverbanks and fashion baskets of great skill and beauty – just like their ancestors did back in Sierra Leone.

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Bin Yah: There’s No Place Like Home is a documentary for sale on this website: presented by Justin Nathanson and The ChasDOC Film Society, the film explores the potential loss of important historic African American communities in Mt. Pleasant, S.C due to growth and development. Through the testimonies of the residents themselves, the film explores the culture, the history, the importance of land and the concept of home, giving a voice to those who seldom have had a chance to be heard.

A proposed highway extension threatens to bisect these close-knit neighborhoods of cousins and kinfolk, established by freed slaves and home to generations of their families for hundreds of years. Many residents are artisans and craftspeople, practicing traditional skills including sweetgrass basketmaking, brought over from West Africa and handed down from mothers and fathers to sons and daughters. Today, Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina is the primary place in the U.S. where this grass is harvested and “sewn” into this particular type of basket.

Bin Yah will attempt to preserve – at least on film – the memories of the special places that may be lost forever as the struggle between the real “bin yahs” and the “come yahs” escalates.

Purchase The Film on DVD

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“BIN YAH” is available for resale at selected retailers. Please call 843. 225-2150.

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Bin Yah: There’s No Place Like Home is a documentary for sale on this website: presented by Justin Nathanson and The ChasDOC Film Society, the film explores the potential loss of important historic African American communities in Mt. Pleasant, S.C due to growth and development. Through the testimonies of the residents themselves, the film explores the culture, the history, the importance of land and the concept of home, giving a voice to those who seldom have had a chance to be heard.

A proposed highway extension threatens to bisect these close-knit neighborhoods of cousins and kinfolk, established by freed slaves and home to generations of their families for hundreds of years. Many residents are artisans and craftspeople, practicing traditional skills including sweetgrass basketmaking, brought over from West Africa and handed down from mothers and fathers to sons and daughters. Today, Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina is the primary place in the U.S. where this grass is harvested and “sewn” into this particular type of basket.

Bin Yah will attempt to preserve – at least on film – the memories of the special places that may be lost forever as the struggle between the real “bin yahs” and the “come yahs” escalates.

Save Jennie Moore

March, 2009 – Plans are in the works to demolish Jennie Moore Elementary  and build a new one, but it won’t go without a fight.

The school is nestled within the Sweetgrass Basket corridor on Hamlin Road in Mount Pleasant. The Community Action Group for Encouragement, or CAGE posted signs and have petitions to stop demolition plans.

The school district plans to build a three school community on the existing site.
Charleston County school officials plan to look at three design options for the new Jennie Moore Elementary and Laing Middle schools campus in Mount Pleasant.

A group of residents has lobbied district officials for more than a year to spare the existing Jennie Moore building, and two of the three options would allow that to happen. The district plans to rebuild Jennie Moore on its existing site, add a new Laing Middle building and build a kindergarten through second-grade school on the same campus.

Gullah Heritage Preservation doesn’t want to see Jennie Moore or Laing Middle torn down because both schools have historical significance to the black community, said Jeannette Lee, a member of the preservation group and resident of the Seven Mile community.

It’s especially important because most things associated with black history are destroyed, said George Freeman, a member of the group. Jennie Moore was a school for blacks, and Freeman said the intent was not educate them but to keep them isolated.

He compared the destruction of Jennie Moore to the postwar destruction of detention centers built for Japanese-Americans in World War II. Today, some people don’t know Japanese-Americans were detained in camps because they no longer exist, he said. If Jennie Moore is demolished, the history of segregated schools also will be destroyed.

He called Laing and Jennie Moore the “only remaining educational structures still standing to preserve the educational history of African Americans in Mount Pleasant.”

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Bin Yah: There’s No Place Like Home is a documentary for sale on this website: presented by Justin Nathanson and The ChasDOC Film Society, the film explores the potential loss of important historic African American communities in Mt. Pleasant, S.C due to growth and development. Through the testimonies of the residents themselves, the film explores the culture, the history, the importance of land and the concept of home, giving a voice to those who seldom have had a chance to be heard.

A proposed highway extension threatens to bisect these close-knit neighborhoods of cousins and kinfolk, established by freed slaves and home to generations of their families for hundreds of years. Many residents are artisans and craftspeople, practicing traditional skills including sweetgrass basketmaking, brought over from West Africa and handed down from mothers and fathers to sons and daughters. Today, Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina is the primary place in the U.S. where this grass is harvested and “sewn” into this particular type of basket.

Bin Yah will attempt to preserve – at least on film – the memories of the special places that may be lost forever as the struggle between the real “bin yahs” and the “come yahs” escalates.