#gullah-geechee

[yearningforunity]

RING SHOUT, St. Simon's Island, Georgia, ca. 1940

The ring shout, rooted in the ritual dances of West Africa and forged by the Atlantic slave trade, is believed to be the oldest surviving African-American performance tradition of any kind. Centered in the Gullah-Geechee region of the coastal South, it differs from traditional Black Religious Music in repertory, style, and execution.

[llucerophotography]

Gullah demonstration & storytime

Middleton Place. Charleston, SC. September 2013. Photo by Lorien Lucero.

[idyllicbby]

happy Gullah-Geechee & Hoodoo heritage month!

[blackyouthproject]

The Black church isn't one-dimensional either: How Gullah-Gechee people subvert Christianity to retain Black history

The Black church isn’t one-dimensional either: How Gullah-Gechee people subvert Christianity to retain Black history

By Ari Colston-Johnson To many, the Black Church calls to mind horror stories of cisheteropatriarchy and theologies shaped by colonialism, white supremacy, and respectability politics. But coming of age in the Gullah-Geechee African Methodist Episcopal (AME) tradition, the Black Church was a foundation for my radical politics, a space for community and afrocentric syncretism, and one of the last…

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[lettenho]

Tax targeting Gullah-Geechee landowners on Sapelo Island could force land loss

The effort to reassess the Hogg Hummock property is the latest move that could force Gullah-Geechee descendants from Georgia island.

[yasbxxgie]

Gullah-Geechee Community: Hear Us On Climate Change

Ed Atkins Jr., 68, is proud of his family tradition. He’s a third-generation fisherman and owner of Atkins Live Baits and Local Oysters, which was started by his mother and father. But Atkins is worried that the effect of climate change on the waters are hurting not only his business, but also the traditions of his Gullah-Geechee community.

“I’m out there every day, and mostly every night,” says Atkins, who has been catching fat shrimp, oysters and mullet since he was a child. But now the warmer waters are sharply affecting the fishing that has been not only a tradition, but central to the existence of the African American community descended from enslaved West Africans that has lived on the coast in the Lowcountry for four centuries.

“The last several years there’s been a lot of changes. People wonder how I catch live shrimp year-round. That’s because the water temperatures have warmed up, and the shrimp don’t migrate to deeper waters like they did in the past,” Atkins says.

Then, there’s the oyster problem.

“The oysters are depleting because you get a lot of bacteria in the water. In the years before now, when cool weather comes it kills a lot of the bacteria in the water. But if it doesn’t get cold enough, now the bacteria remain in that water all year round and it kills the oysters,” explains Atkins. “Once the oysters die the bed dies and you get more pollution in the water.”

For a people that have survived on farming and fishing in a coastal area that used to be isolated, the changes are threatening the survival of the Gullah-Geechee people, who are proud of the way they have retained their cultural heritage.

“Black people in the 1960s and ’70s, that’s all they depended on. They made it fine—even during the Depression back in the ’30s. They made a living, didn’t go hungry and had someplace to get something to eat—either farming of fishing,” Atkins remembers. “But if [climate change] continues, you’ll be able to farm a little bit, but you won’t be able to fish too much.”

Queen Quet, chieftess and head of state for the Gullah-Geechee nation, says her community has been sounding the alarm about the dangers of climate change for more than 20 years.

“Most people in the world are mainlanders, and island people have very unique, distinct cultures and traditions and we know we can’t live without what’s going on with the water. Everything in our life has to do with it,” Queen Quet says, noting that warnings about obvious signs like damaged trees standing in saltwater along the shorelines of the Sea Islands have fallen on deaf ears amid an increased focus on now-expensive waterfront property.

“The trees are laying down along the shoreline. They’re not standing up. They’re laying down and there’s no storm, no wind, there’s something wrong,” Queen Quet says, adding that the general response from local governments was “‘Yeah, you know we’ve got other priorities.’ Until you lose 10 to 20 feet of shoreline and then you have people, especially in the gated communities around here saying they want a permit to build a wall to protect their property.”

Queen Quet, an activist, historian and computer scientist, has spoken before the United Nations and many other organizations, including Congress. She says the Gullah-Geechee community is doing all it can to protect itself and its land.

“We’re working with global partners because we get a lot more global partners than we do United States partners with the work we do, especially as related to climate change, and sea level rise and ocean acidification,” Queen Quet says, ticking off other danger signs. “We’re seeing flooding on clear days; on sunny days, why are roads flooding? Then you realize: because the sea level is higher by several feet than it used to be. Not only is the temperature of the water changing, but we also had the salinity of the water changing.”

Tropical biologist Carlos Chacon, manager of Natural History at the Coastal Discovery Museum on Hilton Head Island, S.C., says warmer weather and warmer water is affecting plants, sea turtles, shrimp and oysters among many other creatures, particularly in sea level communities in the Lowcountry.

“I think we are in a position that is way more vulnerable just by the fact of being at sea level and ocean front,” Chacon explains. “This is where the storms hit, and it is more vulnerable for the sea-level rise that is triggered by climate change. We are having serious problems. Coastal areas, sea level areas, island—all of those places are having dramatic effects.”

Chacon says climate change is causing dramatic changes globally, particularly for plants, insects, reptiles and animals whose reproductive cycles are triggered by length of day as well as the temperature of the water and the air. The severity of storms including hurricanes is increasing in the Lowcountry, and beach erosion is on the rise as well.

“Everything is changing, and I can’t say what is going to happen because nobody knows. It never happened before,” Chacon says.

He also has some thoughts about why some don’t realize the seriousness of the problem. The changes are happening now, he says, within a single generation. Things like glaciers, coral reefs and polar bears may become the subject of tales and history, like dinosaurs.

“It’s a very complicated and very big problem, and then obviously politics are involved and unfortunately politicians don’t usually think in a big time frame,” Chacon says, “they think on their next election cycle. It’s not something you can fix in four years, and most voters don’t want to learn that their houses are in peril.”

Queen Quet says one possible solution is following the traditions of the Gullah-Geechee community, which already lives in balance with the land and the waterways.

“We have never overfished. We do not do building patterns that build into the coastline. We are not people who go out and derby fish, meaning to try and take everything you can out of the creek. We are communal people,” Queen Quet says. “One of the critical things is just trying to encourage our younger people to get with the elders so that they know how to live in the traditional way that we live, because that will sustain them. It has been sustaining us and our ancestors for over 400 years.”

Photographs:

Queen Quet stands among damaged trees on Hunting Island, S.C.

[thechanelmuse]

The Gullah Geechee People Are Fighting For Their Land, Like #NoDAPL Standing Rock

Descendants of freed African slaves are fighting to save their traditional Gullah way of life and ancestral land in South Carolina.

Descendants of West African slaves in South Carolina are fighting to prevent their land from being confiscated and auctioned. Can they save a traditional way of life that has survived for the one and half centuries since emancipation?

The first Lillian Milton knew about it was when she arrived at the local council offices to settle her tax bill. She was told her home had been sold because she had not paid a $250 levy for a sewer service. She was shocked - at that point she had not even been connected to the sewer system.

"They had sold everything, the property, the house and all and when I offered to pay them with a cheque, they told me I couldn't. I had to get cash money - 880 some dollars that I had to pay them to get my place back. It's like they were saying if I didn't get on the system I wouldn't have no place to stay."

Milton suspects the heart attack she suffered in January was brought on by the stress of trying to get her home back.In the end, she says, "my boss lady gave me the money," and she was able to pay the court fees to redeem her property.

Many of her friends and neighbours in Jackson Village, one of three black communities in Plantersville, South Carolina, face losing their homes in a similar way if they don't pay the tax for a sewer they say they didn't want and don't need.

Last week 20 homes were put up for auction.

Most residents are the direct descendants of West African slaves, who bought land on the former rice plantation, or were deeded it by the government, after emancipation in 1865. Property ownership had special meaning for these former slaves, known as Gullah Geechee, and the land has been proudly passed down through the generations, as a safe haven to raise families and farm.

But America's seemingly insatiable appetite for coastal living and the money that can be made from buying up cheap former plantation land is a potential threat. The only people we see are the developers," says the Rev Ben Grate, gazing at the empty road that snakes through Jackson Village.

"We call them 'strangers' and we are afraid of them. Because they come to take your land. They are millionaires, in big cars, driving slow, staking out property, dreaming on what it would be like to have a motel on the river right here."

With its neat brick-built bungalows, set back from the road in their own plots of land, and protected from the roar of Highway 701 by a dense forest, Jackson Village feels secure and cushioned against change.

But few residents here have deeds to their homes. The freed slaves who originally bought the land were mistrustful of the legal system, or excluded from it, and did not leave written wills.

The land is held in common. The families are entitled to live on it under "heir's property rights" - but so are all of the descendants of the original owners. Ben Grate estimates that more than a million people, spread out across America, have a share of land in Plantersville, whether they know it or not.

If one of them decides to sell their share of their parents' or grandparents' home, a court can order the entire property to be sold at auction.

So although they are living on prime real estate, much sought after for holiday homes, golf courses or country clubs, they cannot simply sell up for a fat profit.

The residents can also have their home seized and sold off if they don't pay their taxes.

Lillian Milton's property, which was valued at $46,700 by the Georgetown county assessor, was sold at a delinquent tax sale to a real estate developer for $1,236, according to documents seen by the Georgetown Times. Residents who have their homes taken in this way have a year to redeem them, as Milton did.

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