Gullah 203surveyed residents as part of the 1930s Works Progress
Administration (WPA) Georgia Writers’ Project, native
Africans and other former slaves were still alive to share
folkways passed down from recent African ancestors.
Th e Gullah people’s contact with Africans reinforced
beliefs and practices passed down centuries before; how-
ever, dramatic events of the 19th century also contributed
to the development of Gullah culture. Immediately follow-
ing the American Civil War, many whites abandoned their
Sea Island plantations, leaving large numbers of slaves and
freedmen with unregulated access to land. Precipitated by
the arrival of Union troops and Northern aid workers, the
islands became a testing ground for postwar programs that
sought to integrate freedmen into free society. As white
fl ight to the mainland further isolated the islands, inland
blacks seeking land brought language and culture from
the outside to the region. Although some whites regained
rights to their land aft er the war, the experiences of war-
time land ownership helped limit the eff ects of black out-
migration aft er emancipation. Th e Gullah language consists
of a mixture of English and African grammar and vocabu-
lary. Scholars are divided as to the origins of the word; some
trace “Gullah” to the Gola people of present-day Sierra
Leone, and others to the Central African republic of An-
gola. Whatever its origins, the Gullah language represents
a blend of European, Caribbean, and African elements ac-
quired during three centuries of Atlantic trade. Contrary
to the beliefs of19th-century Whites, Gullah is not a sim-
plifi ed version of English, but a complex blend of English
and several African languages. It is distinct from African
American Vernacular English and Standard English, and in
it linguists have identifi ed elements of African languages,
including Ewe, Hausa, Igbo, Kikongo, Mende, and Yoruba.
Scholars have also identifi ed similarities between Gullah
and Krio, a West African English-based Creole language
spoken in present-day Sierra Leone.
Gullah consists of several regional dialects and is gen-
erally unintelligible to English speakers. Colonel Th omas
Wentworth Higginson, abolitionist and author of Army Life
in a Black Regiment, was among the many Northerners who
remarked on the unique grammatical cadence and vocabu-
lary of the Gullah people during and immediately aft er the
Civil War. Higginson cited a “spicy” and “head-over-heels”
arrangement of pronouns in speeches and songs such as
“Ride in, Kind Saviour.” He noted that renditions of the
song’s fi nal stanza vacillated between “we” and “me.” ByTh ompson, Robert Farris. “Kongo Infl uences on African-
American Artistic Culture.” In Africanisms in American Cul-
ture, ed. Joseph Holloway, 148–84. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991.
Gullah
“Gullah” refers to the culture, language, and inhabitants of
the Sea Islands of South Carolina, Georgia, and northern
Florida, where economic and social isolation bred a unique
Creole culture and society. In Georgia, Gullah people are
sometimes referred to as the Geechee, a name derived from
the nearby Ogeechee River.
Th e history of the Gullah people began with the large-
scale migration of West Indian planters to the South Caro-
lina and Georgia Sea Islands in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Relocating en masse, with their newly enslaved Africans
and seasoned slaves, planters reestablished absentee planta-
tions, where interactions between blacks and whites were
limited. As early as the fi rst decade of the 17th century,
slaves and free black people outnumbered whites in the
region; and by the 19th century, the number of slaves in-
habiting the islands had grown to 80 percent of the local
population and over 95 percent in rural pockets along the
coast. Plantation agriculture—particularly cultivation of
indigo, rice, and long-staple cotton—contributed to the
increase in the number of slaves. In 1860, the average Sea
Island plantation had two hundred bondsmen and women
residing on plantations of 90,000–100,000 slaves. Th e un-
usually large numbers of Africans and African Americans
in the region played a central role in the development of the
Gullah culture and language.
Th is black majority combined with other factors, such
as the relative isolation of the Sea Islands, to foster the de-
velopment of Gullah culture and language. Th e Sea Islands,
which consist of several hundred low, fl at isles that hug
the South Carolina and Georgia coast, range in size from
the small and uninhabitable to larger islands located off the
coast of urban centers, such as Charleston, South Carolina,
and Savannah, Georgia. Well into the 19th century, the is-
lands had limited contact with the mainland, creating a cul-
tural hot spot for the various peoples that gathered there.
Th e coastal isolation of the islands also facilitated the con-
tinued importation of illegally imported Africans, who were
sold to Sea Island planters as late as 1858. When folklorists