Mary Jane Manigault, a matriarch among local sweetgrass basket makers whose work has been displayed nationally, died Monday at the age of 97.

Family members said she died at her home in Hamlin Beach after suffering a seizure. She had begun having seizures about a year ago and had been hospitalized several times, said Shirley Manigault, a daughter-in-law.

“Every time she would get sick and go to the hospital, when she came home, her mind was fine,” Shirley Manigault said.

Born in 1913 in Mount Pleasant, Mary Jane Manigault was schooled in the ancient African-American craft of basket-making by her parents, Solomon and Sally Coakley, according to an unpublished biography of Mary Jane Manigault by Kate Young. Young first met Manigault in 1972 when Young was an anthropology student studying African-American culture and artistry in the local sea island communities.

Manigault began weaving baskets that were good enough to sell when she was a little girl. In 1962, she set up a stand on U.S. Highway 17 north of Mount Pleasant, and in the mid-70s, she moved her business to the City Market in Charleston. In recent years, she was still making baskets on the porch at the family home in Hamlin Beach.

She was named a National Heritage Fellow in 1984 by the National Endowment for the Arts. The award recognizes American folk artists. In 2007, her portrait was among 38 displayed for a year in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill. Also on display was a portrait of the late Philip Simmons of Charleston, an ornamental iron craftsman who had been honored as a fellow in 1982, the year the fellowship was first established.

Manigault’s sweetgrass baskets have been displayed at the Santa Fe Folk Art Museum, the William Mathers Anthropology Museum at Indiana University, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and McKissick Museum at University of South Carolina, according to the biography by Young, now a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala.

Manigault’s children and grandchildren continue to make and sell sweetgrass baskets.

“I will keep the tradition going on,” said Mary Jane Habersham, Manigault’s oldest daughter, who has a basket stand on Highway 17.

Arrangements are being handled by W.M. Smith-McNeal Funeral Home.

Reach David W. MacDougall at 937-5655.

IN MEMORY – The Reverend Victoria Glover Washington, featured in the film “Bin Yah”, passed away on June 24, 2010. She was 95 years old. The filmmakers would like to dedicate the July 8th broadcast of the film to her. Her generosity of spirit and heartfelt contributions to “Bin Yah”, for which the filmmakers are extremely grateful, will always be remembered. Through her words and memories the history and culture of Gullah communities in Mt. Pleasant and throughout the Lowcountry will live on.

Screening Details: SCETV Southern Lens Website

Since 1905, the Gibbes Museum of Art has housed celebrated American artwork and has served as an intrinsic part of the visual arts community in Charleston. The organization’s notoriety and long history in the city has undoubtedly helped it maintain a donor base and flow of visitors during the recent economic strain, yet it has not escaped without making a few key changes, especially in regard to their featured exhibits.

“We don’t have the luxury to take a misstep. We have to be strategic. We have to understand what the community wants,” says Angela Mack.

Last year, Executive Director Angela Mack and staff brought Grass Roots: African Origins of American Art to the Gibbes. The traveling exhibit detailed contributions by African artists to American art through the tale of the sweetgrass basket. With the exhibit, Mack and the museum were able to showcase African work, an area that is not a large part of the permanent holdings.

“African art is not something we can readily connect through our collection,” says Mack. “We knew that this was a way we could incorporate African art through the sweetgrass basket and say ‘Oh and by the way, we have a piece by Mary Jackson.’”

Sweetgrass Pavilion Dedication Video

TODAY

This season, the Gibbes plans to feature similar exhibits in the upcoming months. Currently, the museum is housing Ancestry and Innovation: African American Art from the American Folk Museum.

“Charleston and this region are well known for their folk artists,” Mack says. “People can see a larger context that relates specifically to this region and see artists that are indigenous to South Carolina.”

The Gibbes staff is focused on finding exhibits that will continue to “take a larger view of things that are specifically related to this region.” Mack adds, “People are interested in what is unique about Charleston and the South, and what we try to do is present that through these traveling exhibitions and try to present a context for them.”

The museum has combated the pitfalls of an economic recession by increasing their partnerships with other arts organizations in the community, a trend Mack is very excited about. “People want to see that you are working with your neighbor to stretch the dollar. It only makes sense,” she says.

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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.

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Related Events

• Ancestry and Innovation @ Gibbes Museum of Art

  • July 31-Oct. 11

• Brian Rutenberg: Tidesong @ Gibbes Museum of Art

  • Oct. 23-Jan. 10

• Daufuskie Island @ Gibbes Museum of Art

  • Oct. 23-Jan. 10

Leroy Campbell, artist,

The Newspaper Series is based off of the traditions of SouthCarolina’s Gullah population, who warded off malicious spirits by papering the walls of their houses with newsprint. To that end, each piece in the collection features Campbell’s silhouetted subjects against a backdrop of newspaper. Each article intentionally transports the reader to several historic events in the African American community, most recently the 2008 presidential election.

“The pieces in the series are particularly relevant to our center’s mission and aligned with our connection to Sankofa ­- the African concept of reaching back and gathering the best of what our past has taught us in order to reach our full potential as we move forward,” said Chandra Guinn, director of the Mary Lou Williams Center, in a press release.

After the unveiling, the works will join the center’s permanent collection.

Leroy Campbell will present The Newspaper Series and give short talk Friday April 17 from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Mary Lou Williams Center.

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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.

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.