Editing Gullah (section)

==History<!-- There is a lot of historical information in this section that is never tied back to the Gullah people. It's not clear what is specific to them vs. enslaved Africans in the US in general. For some of it it's not clear why it's here at all. I think most of it does actually belong here, but it needs to be explained why it is important to the Gullah people and culture specifically, and how it distinguishes them from other African Americans in the South.  -->==
===African roots===
[[File:African Slave Trade.png|thumb|Map of both intercontinental and transatlantic slave trade in Africa]]
[[File:WIKITONGUES- Caroline speaking Gullah and English.webm|thumb|Wikitongues: Caroline speaking Gullah and English. The Gullah language has several West African words.]]

According to Port of Charleston records, African slaves shipped to the port came from the following areas: [[Angola]] (39%), [[Senegambia]] (20%), the [[Windward Coast]] (17%), the [[Gold Coast (region)|Gold Coast]] (13%), [[Sierra Leone]] (6%), the [[Bight of Benin]] and [[Bight of Biafra]] (5% combined), [[Madagascar]] and [[Mozambique]].<ref name=":0" /><ref>[http://www.nps.gov/ethnography/research/docs/ggsrs_book.pdf ''Low Country Gullah Culture Special Resource Study and Final Environmental Impact Statement''], National Park Service, Southeast Regional Office, p. 3</ref>

Particularly along the western coast, the local peoples had cultivated [[African rice]], related to but distinct from [[Asian rice]], for what is estimated to approach 3,000 years. It was originally domesticated in the inland delta of the Upper [[Niger River]].<ref name=linares>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1073/pnas.252604599|issn=1091-6490| volume = 99| issue = 25| pages = 16360–16365| last = Linares| first = Olga F.| title = African rice (''Oryza glaberrima''): History and future potential| journal = Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences| date = 2002-12-10| pmid = 12461173| pmc=138616|bibcode=2002PNAS...9916360L|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref name=genome>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1038/ng.3044| pmid = 25064006| issn = 1061-4036| volume = 46| issue = 9| pages = 982–988| last1 = Wang| first1 = Muhua| last2 = Yu| first2 = Yeisoo| last3 = Haberer| first3 = Georg| last4 = Marri| first4 = Pradeep Reddy| last5 = Fan| first5 = Chuanzhu| last6 = Goicoechea| first6 = Jose Luis| last7 = Zuccolo| first7 = Andrea| last8 = Song| first8 = Xiang| last9 = Kudrna| first9 = Dave| last10 = Ammiraju| first10 = Jetty S. S.| last11 = Cossu| first11 = Rosa Maria| last12 = Maldonado| first12 = Carlos| last13 = Chen| first13 = Jinfeng| last14 = Lee| first14 = Seunghee| last15 = Sisneros| first15 = Nick| last16 = de Baynast| first16 = Kristi| last17 = Golser| first17 = Wolfgang| last18 = Wissotski| first18 = Marina| last19 = Kim| first19 = Woojin| last20 = Sanchez| first20 = Paul| last21 = Ndjiondjop| first21 = Marie-Noelle| last22 = Sanni| first22 = Kayode| last23 = Long| first23 = Manyuan| last24 = Carney| first24 = Judith| last25 = Panaud| first25 = Olivier| last26 = Wicker| first26 = Thomas| last27 = Machado| first27 = Carlos A.| last28 = Chen| first28 = Mingsheng| last29 = Mayer| first29 = Klaus F. X.| last30 = Rounsley| first30 = Steve| last31 = Wing| first31 = Rod A.| title = The genome sequence of African rice (Oryza glaberrima) and evidence for independent domestication| journal = Nature Genetics|date = 2014-07-27| pmc = 7036042| doi-access = free}}</ref> Once Carolinian and Georgian planters in the American South discovered that African rice would grow in that region, they often sought enslaved Africans from rice-growing regions because they had the skills and knowledge needed to develop and build irrigation, dams and earthworks.<ref name="Opala2006b">{{cite web|author1=Joseph A. Opala|title=The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection|url=http://glc.yale.edu/gullah-rice-slavery-and-sierra-leone-american-connection|publisher=Yale University|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151006082735/http://glc.yale.edu/gullah-rice-slavery-and-sierra-leone-american-connection|archive-date=October 6, 2015|date=2006}}</ref>

[[File:Bunce Island 1805.jpg|thumb|Bunce Island, a historical slave port where the ancestors of many Gullah departed to the Lowcountry]]

Two British trading companies{{which?|date=January 2025}} operated the slave castle at [[Bunce Island]] (formerly called Bance Island), located in the [[Sierra Leone River]]. Their main contact in Charleston was American [[Founding Father]] [[Henry Laurens]]. His counterpart in Britain was the Scottish merchant and slave trader [[Richard Oswald (merchant)|Richard Oswald]]. Many of the enslaved Africans taken in West Africa were processed through Bunce Island, a prime export site for slaves to South Carolina and Georgia. Slave castles in Ghana, by contrast, shipped many of the people they traded to ports and markets in the Caribbean islands.{{Citation needed|date=July 2024}}

After Freetown, Sierra Leone, was founded in the late 18th century by the British as a colony for poor black people from London and [[black Loyalists]] from Nova Scotia resettled after the [[American Revolutionary War]]. The British did not allow slaves to be taken from Sierra Leone, protecting the people from kidnappers. In 1808 both Great Britain and the United States prohibited the African [[History of slavery|slave trade]]. After that date, the British, whose navy patrolled to [[Blockade of Africa|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.{{Citation needed|date=July 2024}}

===Origin of Gullah culture===
[[File:Gullah1.PNG|thumb|The Gullah region once extended from SE North Carolina to NE Florida]]

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. The peoples who contributed to Gullah culture included the [[Kongo people|Bakongo]], [[Ambundu|Mbundu]], [[Vili people|Vili]], [[Yombe people|Yombe]], [[Yaka people|Yaka]], [[Pende people|Pende]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Brown |first=Ras Michael |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dPfzevzxIboC&q=mbundu |title=African-Atlantic Cultures and the South Carolina Lowcountry |date=2012-08-27 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-107-02409-0 |pages=70 |language=en}}</ref> [[Mandinka people|Mandinka]], [[Kissi people|Kissi]], [[Fula people|Fulani]], [[Mende people|Mende]], [[Wolof people|Wolof]], [[Kpelle people|Kpelle]], [[Temne people|Temne]], [[Limba people (Sierra Leone)|Limba]], [[Dyula people|Dyula]], [[Susu people|Susu]], and the [[Vai people|Vai]].<ref name=":0" />

By the middle of the 18th century, thousands of acres in the [[Georgia (U.S. state)|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.{{Citation needed|date=July 2024}}

The subtropical climate encouraged the spread of [[malaria]] and [[yellow fever]], which were both carried and transmitted by mosquitoes. These tropical diseases were [[Endemic (epidemiology)|endemic]] in Africa and might have been carried by enslaved Africans to the colonies.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_rice.htm/|author=West, Jean M.|title=Rice and Slavery: A Fatal Gold Seede|website=Slavery in America|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120206050437/http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_rice.htm|archive-date=2012-02-06}}</ref> Mosquitoes in the swamps and inundated rice fields of the Lowcountry picked up and spread the diseases to European [[settler]]s, as well. 

Because they had acquired some [[immunity (medical)|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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/geography/slave_laws_SC.htm/ |title=South Carolina Slave Laws Summary and Record |website=Slavery in America |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120318172059/http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/geography/slave_laws_SC.htm |archive-date=2012-03-18 }}</ref> [[Golden Isles of Georgia|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.<ref name="Opala2006b" /> Others lived mostly in cities such as Charleston rather than on the isolated plantations, especially those on the Sea Islands.{{Citation needed|date=July 2024}}

The planters left their European or African "rice drivers", or overseers, in charge of [[Rice production in the United States#Early history|the rice plantations]].<ref name="Opala2006b" /> 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.<ref name="Cassidy2020">{{cite journal |author1=Frederic G. Cassidy |title=The Place of Gullah |journal=American Speech |date=Spring 1980 |volume=55 |issue=1 |page=12 |doi=10.2307/455386 |publisher=Duke University Press |jstor=455386 |issn=0003-1283}}</ref>

In late 2024 underwater [[sonar]] was used to map 45 previously unknown irrigation devices used to control water flow for rice fields in conjunction with earthen dams and levees, developed by the Gullah Geechee over an area of 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of the northern end of  Eagles Island, North Carolina, US. This provided evidence of the Gullah Geechee engineering and technological skills used for rice cultivation.<ref>{{cite news| last=Walker | first=Adria R | title='I didn't realize the role rice played': the ingenious crop cultivation of the Gullah Geechee people |newspaper=The Guardian | date=21 December 2024 | url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/dec/21/gullah-geechee-rice-fields-north-carolina}}</ref>

===Civil War period===
When the [[American Civil War|U.S. Civil War]] began, the Union rushed to blockade [[Confederate States of America|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 [[1st South Carolina Colored Infantry Regiment]]. The Sea Islands were the first place in the South where slaves were freed. Long before the War ended, [[American Unitarian Association|Unitarian]] missionaries from [[Pennsylvania]] came to start schools on the islands for the newly freed slaves. [[Penn Center (Saint Helena Island, South Carolina)|Penn Center]], now a Gullah community organization on [[Saint Helena Island, South Carolina|Saint Helena Island]], South Carolina, was founded as the first school for freed slaves.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Nielsen |first1=Euell |title=The Penn Center (1862- ) |url=https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/penn-center-1862/ |website=Blackpast.org |date=August 2016 |access-date=30 November 2023}}</ref>
[[File:1893 sea islands hurricane damaged houses.jpg|thumb|right|[[1893 Sea Islands hurricane]]-damaged houses in Beaufort County.]]
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 [[1893 Sea Islands Hurricane|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.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Gullah Geechee People |url=https://gullahgeecheecorridor.org/thegullahgeechee/ |website=Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission |access-date=30 November 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Gershon |first1=Livia |title=The Cosmopolitan Culture of the Gullah/Geechees |journal=Politics and History |date=2022 |url=https://daily.jstor.org/the-cosmopolitan-culture-of-the-gullah-geechees/ |access-date=30 November 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Johnson N. |first1=Michelle |title=1893 Sea Islands Hurricane |url=https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/1893-sea-islands-hurricane/ |website=New Georgia Encyclopedia |publisher=University of Georgia Press |access-date=30 November 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Kukulich |first1=Tony |title=The Great Sea Island Hurricane devastated Beaufort County 130 years ago |url=https://www.postandcourier.com/hurricanewire/the-great-sea-island-hurricane-devastated-beaufort-county-130-years-ago/article_7a0dbcbc-41e6-11ee-8cdf-db3991422700.html |access-date=27 February 2024 |agency=The Post and Courier |date=2023}}</ref>

===Since late 20th century===
[[File:Gullah basket.JPG|right|thumb|Gullah basket]]

In the 20th century, some plantations were redeveloped as resort or hunting destinations by wealthy whites.{{Citation needed|date=June 2022}} 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 greatly increased property values, threatening to push the Gullah off family lands which they have owned since [[Emancipation Proclamation|emancipation]]. They have fought back against uncontrolled development on the islands through community action, the courts, and the political process.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-1044360911.html/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140924065945/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-1044360911.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=24 September 2014|title=Gov. Sanford to Sign Heirs Property Bill at Gullah Festival, US Fed News Service, May 26, 2006|access-date=25 September 2014}}</ref>

[[File:July 4, 1939.jpg|thumb|A Fourth of July celebration, St. Helena Island, South Carolina (1939)]]

The Gullah have also struggled to preserve their traditional culture in 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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://blog.wycliffe.org/tag/gullah/|title=Gullah {{!}} Wycliffe Bible Translators USA|website=blog.wycliffe.org|access-date=2016-07-21|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160919083958/https://blog.wycliffe.org/tag/gullah/|archive-date=2016-09-19}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web | title=De Gullah Nyew Testament|year=2005 | url=http://www.gullahbible.com/ | access-date=21 December 2024}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.islandpacket.com/living/religion/article33442776.html|title='Healin fa de Soul,' Gullah Bible readings released |first=CATHY|last=HARLEY|publisher=The Island Packet|date=6 November 2011}}</ref> 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 the most extensive collection of Gullah recordings, surpassing those of [[Lorenzo Dow Turner]].<!-- This seems to assume the reader knows who Lorenzo Dow Turner is, without ever introducing him anywhere. Perhaps he deserves a mention in his own right somewhere in this section? --> 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.<ref>{{cite news| last=Smith | first=Bruce | title=Gullah-language Bible now on audio CDs |newspaper=Savannah Morning News | date=27 November 2011 | url=https://www.savannahnow.com/story/news/2011/11/27/gullah-language-bible-now-on/13413492007/}}</ref>
[[File:Coffin Point Praise House.jpg|thumb|Coffin Point Praise House, 57 Coffin Point Rd, St. Helena Island, South Carolina]]

The Gullah achieved another victory in 2006 when the U.S. Congress passed the "[[Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor|Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Act]]"; it provided [[US$]]10&nbsp;million over 10 years for the preservation and interpretation of historic sites in the Low Country relating to Gullah culture.<ref>{{cite news| title=Bill Will Provide Millions for Gullah Community|first=FARAI|last=CHIDEYA|publisher=National Public Radio| date=17 October 2006 | url=https://www.npr.org/2006/10/17/6283153/bill-will-provide-millions-for-gullah-community|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801095328/https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6283153/|archive-date=1 August 2020}}</ref> The Act provides for a [[National Heritage Area|Heritage Corridor]] to extend from southern North Carolina to northern Florida in a project  administered by the US [[National Park Service]] with extensive consultation with the Gullah community.
[[File:Charleston-city-market-shed-sc2.jpg|thumb|Old City Market shed entrance along Church Street in Charleston. The vendors on the left are selling Gullah sweetgrass baskets. (2010)]]

The Gullah have also been in contact with [[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 Legacy''.<ref>{{cite AV media| title=F. Priscilla's Legacy|year=2014|website=Vimeo | url=https://vimeo.com/124400212|url-access=registration|medium=30' video}}</ref>