188 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the Presentthis belief in transmigration was linked to the ability of the
soul to fl y, swim, or fi nd other means of conveyance across
the Atlantic Ocean to, in essence, make a reverse Middle
Passage.
In the context of Igbo beliefs in transmigration, the
claimed ubiquity of Igbo suicides, and displacement in the
Americas, tales of Africans who had the supernatural ability
to fl y back home were frequently told among the Gullah and
Geechee of the Lowcountry. Th en in the year 1803, a pivotal
event occurred at Dunbar Creek, a tributary of Frederica
River on St. Simons Island, Georgia, which added a new set
of possibilities to folktales based on the belief in transmi-
gration. In May 1803, a group of about 75 Igbo slaves ar-
rived in Savannah, Georgia, by ship and were purchased by
two coastal planters—John Couper of Cannon’s Point on St.
Simons Island and Th omas Spalding of Sapelo Island. Aft er
the purchase, the Igbo were then loaded onto another ship—
a schooner named York—for transport to St. Simons Island.
Aft er this point, accounts vary widely regarding the ulti-
mate fate of the Igbo. In one account, they rebelled against
the ship’s crew and drowned aft er jumping overboard. In
another version, they were successfully disembarked from
the ship, and while in chains and engaged in a group song,
they walked into Dunbar Creek and drowned. Yet another
version contends that they walked into the water aft er re-
ceiving a severe whipping by an overseer.
Although the actual historical accounts diff er, the
meanings derived from these events by Gullah and Geechee
generally do not. Floyd White, an ex-slave resident of St.
Simons Island recounted in the 1930s that the “Ibo” dis-
embarked from the slave ship, engaged in a group song,
and marched to Dunbar Creek on their way back to Africa.
In another version told by Wallace Quarterman of Darien,
the Igbo—aft er receiving a beating from an overseer—fl ew
back to Africa instead of walking across the Atlantic Ocean.
In both cases, the idea conveyed is that the Igbo commit-
ted mass suicide in order to release their souls from earthly
bounds (Goodwine, 1998).
In conjunction with the fl ying African stories, the Ebo
Landing account may allow for an understanding of why
only African-born slaves could fl y, walk, or swim back to
Africa. If the soul of a deceased individual returns back to
former companions and friends, that would mean that the
souls of African-born slaves would have to “fl y” or “swim”
across the Atlantic to get back home. Th is was an impos-
sible feat for slaves born in the Americas. Th eir families and(1987) all were grounded in Du Bois’ instructive notion of
double consciousness as it manifested itself in the experi-
ences of African Americans socially, educationally, politi-
cally, psychologically, and culturally. It truly was an idea
that was ahead of its time.
See also: Du Bois, W. E. B
David L. BrunsmaBibliography
Asante, Molefi K. Th e Afrocentric Idea. 1987. Reprint, Philadel-
phia: Temple University Press, 1989.
Carmichael, Stokely, and Charles V. Hamilton. Black Power: Th e
Politics of Liberation in America. New York: Penguin Books,
Ltd., 1969.
Du Bois, W. E. B. Th e Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. Philadel-
phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998 [1896].
Du Bois, W. E. B. Th e Souls of Black Folk. 1903. Reprint, New York:
Dover Publications, 1994.
Fanon, Frantz. Th e Wretched of the Earth. Jackson, TN: Grove
Press, 1965.
Woodson, Carter G. Th e Mis-Education of the Negro. 1933. Re-
print, Lawrenceville, NJ: Africa World Press, 1990.
Ebo Landing
Among the peoples living in the Sea Islands and coastal
regions of Georgia and South Carolina, a unique set of
forces combined over time to produce Gullah and Geechee
cultures. Both cultures were combinations of various At-
lantic African language cohorts, with solidly West-Central
African and Sierra Leonian foundations. Other cultures
and language cohorts found expression within Gullah and
Geechee, even those cultures brought to the Lowcountry
by the numerically insignifi cant Igbo-speakers of the Niger
River Delta (modern Nigeria)—who represented about
8 percent of all African imports into the region during the
18th century. Because of their alleged propensity to com-
mit suicide, folktales about fl ying Africans have been linked
by a range of scholars to Igbo-speaking imports in South
Carolina and Georgia. However, versions of these tales
can be found in other diasporic locales, including Jamaica,
Cuba, and Brazil. Like many Atlantic African groups, Igbo-
speakers embraced the notion of the transmigration of souls,
believing that upon the death of the physical body, the soul
returns to inhabit ancestral lands to await rebirth. In the
case of Africans dispersed into the Western Hemisphere,