The Gullah/Geechee People of Georgia
When I was three years old, my parents built a house with their own hands in the Suburbs of Pittsburgh. The municipality was called West Mifflin. The controlling White class divided West Mifflin into areas where people could live based on who they are and what ethnic group they belong to. Segregation was the name of the day. Black people could buy land and live in houses in a place called the Terrace. Blacks that could not afford to buy houses lived in a part of West Mifflin called Whitaker. Blacks in West Mifflin came from all over eastern United States. Some were full blooded Native Americans. Some were a mixture of Native Americans and Africans. Yet others were direct descendants of African people.
We went to school along with the Whites whose roots came from Eastern European Countries. In school, we learned about how the United States came to be. We learned about the Roman Empire, early Europe, the dark ages, and some of the European Wars. When it came to American History, we learned the White man’s view of things. Black people only counted when it came to the Civil War. Even then, we did not fight in it. They, the Northern Whites fought the war to help us out. Yes, they mentioned two or three Black people in the 19th Century that they believe were outstanding. So Black people graduated from the West Mifflin School District with a blank look on their faces, like we just appeared on Earth recently with no history.
But Black history in America was right in front of our faces and did not know it. My mother would talk about some of our neighbor calling them Geechee people. I thought that she was calling them names. It was only after I started learning about the different Black ethnic groups in America did I learn that some of my girlfriends that I still have dear feelings for were Geechee women. They are direct descendants of many Western African nations, captured and sold into slavery. After they came to America speaking different languages, they developed their own language so that they can communicate with one another.
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Historically, the Gullah region extended from the Cape Fear area on the coast of North Carolina south to the vicinity of Jacksonville on the coast of Florida; but today the Gullah area is confined to the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry. The Gullah people and their language are also called Geechee, which some scholars speculate is related to the Ogeechee River near Savannah, Georgia. The term "Geechee" is an emic term used by speakers (and can have a derogatory connotation depending on usage). "Gullah" is a term that was originally used to designate the language spoken by Gullah and Geechee people, but over time it has become a way for speakers to formally identify both their language and themselves as a distinctive group of people. The Georgia communities further identify themselves as either "Saltwater Geechee" or "Freshwater Geechee" depending on their proximity to the coast.
The Gullah have preserved much of their African linguistic and cultural heritage. They speak an English-based creole language containing many African loanwords and significant influences from African languages in grammar and sentence structure. Properly referred to as "Sea Island Creole," the Gullah language is related to Jamaican Creole, Barbadian Dialect, Bahamian Dialect, and the Krio language of Sierra Leone in West Africa. Gullah storytelling, cuisine, music, folk beliefs, crafts, farming and fishing traditions, all exhibit strong influences from West and Central African cultures.
If you want to learn more about the Gullah Geechee Nation in America, click on the YouTube video link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfRAB2JBDCQ&list=UUCSusyamz4CSIm197DJxMaw&feature=plcp
You can learn about the Gullah Geechee Nation from the 439 Videos on You Tube
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