Gullah Geechee Preservation
When I was in fourth grade, a group of Gullah ladies came to my school to educate us about the Gullah Geechee culture, language, and their music. The Gullah Geechee are African American descendants of West and Central Africans brought to the South Eastern coast of America in the slave trade. Most South Carolina Gullah ancestors were rice growers from Angola, Sierra Leone; rice became a cash crop in South Carolina when they were brought here. Enslaved Africans were isolated on rice, cotton, and indigo plantations in Georgia, Florida, and North and South Carolina. Because of this isolation and the surrounding barrier islands, they were able to maintain their indigenous African culture and traditions. In addition to their unique foods, art, and spiritual traditions, they created the Gullah language, a creole language spoken nowhere else in the world. The language, originally a simplified form of speech for people from all over Africa to communicate, is a combination of European lang...
