Memorial Waterfront Park friendly to visitors, not basketmakers

By Jessica Johnson for The Post and Courier

Trucks and cars pass above Mount Pleasant’s new Memorial Waterfront Park and some of them slow to follow signs directing them from the bridge to the town’s new waterfront gateway that opened July 3.

Visitors have found that the park is a great place to fish, take a nap on a bench or find a backdrop for their photos. Residents say the park beneath the footings of the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge — complete with a fishing pier, cafe, war memorial, playground, visitor center and Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Pavilion — boosts home values.

Charla Henderson, of Harbour Watch neighborhood, a mile bike ride from the park, said she and her children have enjoyed the fishing opportunities and playground. “It adds to our property value and it’s a great place for kids,” Henderson said.

Prior to the its opening, a park across the street from Alhambra Hall on the opposite side of Mount Pleasant, was the closest playground to Henderson’s home.

The nine-acre $14 million waterfront park has also attracted people from outside Mount Pleasant. On a recent afternoon, Linda Bowles of Ladson visited the park with her family while children made use of the playground.

“It’s a nice use of land under the bridge as long as no one …,” Bowles said pointing to the passing traffic and flipping her hand indicating the possibility that something could flip or be thrown from the bridge above.

The only complaint so far has been from sweetgrass basketmakers. Ruth Wright set up outside the Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Pavilion for a week and failed to sell a single basket.

Normally she operates a stand outside the Charleston Federal Courthouse where she’s sure to attract a passing shopper. During peak tourist season she sells about 10 baskets a week.

“If I don’t sell a basket, at least I sell a wreath,” she said.

Tourists have stopped at the park, but Wright said they rush into the visitor center, pick up some forms and leave.

“You can’t even sell roses here,” Wright said. “I can’t make gas money.”

The pavilion is open daily 9 a.m.-5 p.m. But it is to be closed to sweetgrass basketmakers during town events and closes before evening concerts that Charleston County Parks and Recreation holds at the pier.

One basketmaker suggested allowing them to stay through the events to boost sales.

Most often the basketmakers set up along U.S. Highway 17 and don’t need much advertising because they lure tourists traveling the highway as they pass between Charleston and Myrtle Beach.

But at the park, that traffic roars right over the park in a rush of claps and rumbles.

“I don’t know if people know we are here or not,” Wright said.

Reach Jessica Johnson at 937-5921 or jjohnson@postandcourier.com.

For more video on Sweetgrass Basket Making culture, see “Bin Yah”.

Sweetgrass basketmaking culture, preserved on the sides of Mount Pleasant’s roadways for generations, has been given a special place in a new park near the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge.

The park, complete with a visitor’s center, war memorial, cafe and fishing pier, sits along Wingo Way just under the U.S. Highway 17 approach to the bridge.

The pavilion, an open-air structure with sliding barn-like doors and shaded porches, offers an exhibit of sweetgrass basketmaking history and room for basket sewers to sell their wares.

Michael Allen, National Parks Service Gullah/Geechee coordinator, said that erecting a building has been a process that began in 1997 when the town first recognized the significance of the roadside basket stand by placing a historical marker along U.S. 17 at the intersection of Hamlin Road.

The location is thought to be near the site of the first basket stand on U.S. Highway 17 in Mount Pleasant.

The structure can serve as a model for how other communities can preserve and promote history along the Gullah-Geechee corridor, he said. “This is a representation and acknowledgement of the sacrifice, contribution and heritage of three centuries of history that has been put in a place and that can be experienced by all,” Allen said.

Mount Pleasant Councilwoman Thomasena Stokes-Marshall, taking a sneak preview of the facility, couldn’t stop smiling and said she was a little overwhelmed.

The interior of the structure includes historical photographs, information on basketmaking history and area stories including that of Peter and Pearl Ascue, who have amassed one of the area’s largest collections of sweetgrass baskets. Peter Ascue started the collection in the 1970s when he accepted baskets as payments for vehicle repairs.

Exhibit planner Carol Poplin, who is senior project manager of The History Workshop, said designing an exhibit within the building posed an interesting challenge because the barn doors slide open to let the breeze through and she didn’t have much wall space to work with. Instead, she created three movable kiosks trimmed with wood panels and tin roofs to resemble basket stands.

“It really captures the essence of it,” Stokes-Marshall said of the exhibit.

The pavilion also can be seen as a monument to the growing relationship between the basketmaking community and the town of Mount Pleasant and surrounding area, Allen said. In addition to the historical marker, legislators have named a portion of U.S. Highway 17 the Sweetgrass Basket Maker Highway. Mount Pleasant and Charleston County implemented a basketmaker overlay district that allows basket sewers to keep their stands along the highway right of way from Long Point Road to Porchers Bluff Road.

The community’s roughly 500 basketmakers will be allowed to set up and sell their baskets from the pavilion 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily on a rotating schedule.They will also stream movies and media, including the lowcountry film by Justin Nathanson, “Bin Yah”.

The Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival Association has leased the facility from the town and has selected which basket sewers will work when through a lottery drawing system with basketmakers who have volunteered and supported the festival association getting first draw, said Stokes-Marshall. Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival project director Cambridge Jenkins II, will serve as the pavilion’s manager.

The town is the first to have a physical structure to recognize the Gullah/Geechee culture along the corridor, a national heritage area, Allen said.

For more video on Sweetgrass Basket Making culture, see “Bin Yah”.

Gullah / Geechee News & Events – Fall 2009

What’s happening on the Gullah / Geechee national calendar!?  Please check back often as we continue to add events.

Got an event? Submit by email HERE

Listed by state, alphabetically

Boston

“TALES FROM THE LAND OF GULLAH”
September 19 – December 31, 2009
Families are immersed in the world of the Gullah people who lived on isolated islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina from their days as slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries until today. Many common nursery rhymes, popular sayings and children’s songs like Michael Row Your Boat Ashore come from the Gullah people. Children will participate in the daily life and rituals of a Gullah family from the 1950s before bridges and high speed boat travel united the islands with the mainland. Children will play Gullah games, learn to tell Gullah time, go fish netting with a Gullah fisherman, cook a Gullah meal, and much more as they learn about this special culture.
Boston Childrens Museum

California

African American Life on the Gullah/Geechee Coast: Photographs by Greg Day, 1970-1977

Fowler Museum at UCLA - September 20, 2009 to January 3, 2010
In the 1970s, photographer Greg Day lived in the African American basket-making communities along the Gullah/Geechee Coast, documenting a way of life on the verge of change. Casting for shrimp with nets made as they are still made in Africa, making sweet grass baskets, scraping bristles off a freshly slaughtered hog, dancing at a juke joint on a Saturday night—these rural pastimes would soon be displaced by suburban sprawl, hastened by the destruction of Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
Designated by Congress in 2006, the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor extends from Wilmington, North Carolina through coastal South Carolina and Georgia to Jacksonville, Florida. It is home to one of America’s most unique cultures, a tradition first shaped by captive Africans brought to the southern United States from West Africa and continued in later generations by their descendents. Today many African Americans, including First Lady Michelle Obama, trace their ancestry to this region. Once identified with the Creole language spoken by African Americans in the region, today the term Gullah refers to a whole range of customs and beliefs, cuisine, domestic architecture, and arts, including the sweetgrass baskets in the exhibition Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art, opening October 4.
310/825-4288

Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art

Fowler Museum at UCLA - October 4, 2009 to January 10, 2010

In Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art humble yet exquisitely crafted coiled baskets demonstrate one of the enduring contributions of African peoples and cultures to American life. Featuring more than two hundred objects including a myriad of baskets made in the American South and Africa, African sculptures, watercolors from the Charleston Renaissance, historic photographs, and videos of basket makers in South Carolina’s Gullah/Geechee region demonstrating their techniques and telling their stories, the exhibition shows how a simple farm tool once used for processing rice has become a highly collectible work of art and an important symbol of African-American identity.
310/825-4288

Illinois

“GODS GONNA TROUBLE THE WATER” Narrated by Ruby Dee, this 1998 documentary recounts the history of the Gullah people, who emigrated from West Africa to the Sea Islands off the coastline of Georgia and South Carolina, and were later taken as slaves.       57 mins.  Sunday, October 11

DuSable Museum of African American History 740 E. 56th Pl. Chicago, IL 60637 773-947-0600 dusablemuseum.org

South Carolina

MOJA FESTIVAL

September 24 – October 4, 2009
2009 marks Charleston’s 26th annual MOJA Arts Festival:  A Celebration of African-American and Caribbean Arts.  Selected as one of the Southeast Tourism Society’s Top 20 events for many different years, the 2009 MOJA Arts Festival promises an exciting line-up of events with a rich variety of traditional favorites.

The MOJA Arts Festival is a multi-disciplinary festival produced and directed by the City of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the MOJA Planning Committee, a community arts and cultural group and the MOJA Advisory Board, a group of civic leaders who assist with fundraising and advocacy.  MOJA, a Swahili word meaning “One,” is the appropriate name for this festival celebration of harmony amongst all people in our community.  The Festival highlights the many African-American & Caribbean contributions to western and world cultures.

MOJA’s wide range of events include visual arts, classical music, dance, gospel, jazz, poetry, R&B music, storytelling, theatre, children’s activities, traditional crafts, ethnic food, and much, much more.
Works by nationally renowned artist Jonathan Green will be the centerpiece of the 2009 MOJA Art Festival Invitational Exhibit at the City Gallery at Waterfront Park.  Jonathan Green and Protégés features 25 of Green’s original paintings along with two-dimensional and three-dimensional works by four young rising stars of the visual arts world that Green mentors: Jean Dornevil, Ryenier Llanes, Willie Leftwich and Juan Diaz.
Jonathan Green is a prodigious artist with a great vision.  His works never fail to inspire people of all ages and from all walks of life with his unique depictions of the beauty of Gullah culture.
MOJA FESTIVAL

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Avery Research Center for African American Culture

Calendar of Events

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Gullah Cooking And Living Program
September 16, Hilton Head
“Gullah Cooking and Living” program with Daufuskie Island native and cookbook author, Sallie Ann Robinson, at the Coastal Discovery Museum at Honey Horn, 3 p.m. Cooking demonstration, tasting and refreshments. Reservations required. (843) 689-6767 ext. 223.
Coastal Discovery Museum – Hilton Head Island

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The Gullah Experience: Celebrating Our Lowcountry Heritage
Through September 19
Walter Greer Gallery at the Arts Center of Coastal Carolina
“The Gullah Experience: Celebrating Our Lowcountry Heritage,” an exhibit of 80 pieces created by a dozen well-known regional artists, is on display in the Walter Greer Gallery at the Arts Center of Coastal Carolina. Free admission. 14 Shelter Cove Lane. (843) 842-2787.
Located in the heart of Hilton Head Island, the award winning regional Arts Center of Coastal Carolina is a remarkable showcase for professional performing and visual arts, as well as cultural festivals and educational outreach.  And proof that life on our legendary white sand shores is so much more than a day at the beach.

Arts Center of Coastal Carolina

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Low Country Joe’s Gullah! Gullah! Ghost Tour! – Hilton Head / Daufuskie Island
(call for dates)
Join us for an enchanting evening cruise by boat to your mind bending tour on an island full of true-to-life tales of voodoo, haints, witches, root doctors, ghosts, cemeteries, massacre, murder and mayhem all told by Low Country Joe himself!
•    Secret Gullah Cemeteries!
•    An Undertaker’s House Eaten By A Bird!
•    Speaking in Tongues & Indian Chanting!
•    Decaying Haunted Houses!
Low Country Joe’s
1-888-GHOST-123 (44678-123)
HeyJoe@LowCountryJoes.com

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

PURCHASE THE “BIN YAH” DVD

Credit Cards – Follow “Buy Now” Button.

Checks – Please mail a check for $28 ($22 plus $6 Ground shipping/handling) for each DVD to:
Bin Yah DVD c/o The Cut Company, 2120 Noisette Blvd, studio 120, N. Charleston, 29405

If you are interested in purchasing a DVD for personal use, please use the Buy Now button above. DVD’s are $22 each, + S & H.

ORGANIZATIONAL PURCHASE

If you are purchasing a DVD for a library, institution, organization, school, university, research facility, film festival, etc. please call 843. 225-2150 for additional pricing. Once the terms are agreed to we will issue you a simple email invoice and a lifetime public screening agreement.

WHOLESALE PURCHASE

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

—–

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.