Encyclopedia of African American History

Turner, Lorenzo Dow  269

and culture that would become paramount in the develop-

ment of his career and legacy.

From June to December 1932, and again in the sum-

mer of 1933, Turner studied the South Carolina Sea Islands

through ethnographic interactions. Turner interviewed 21

Gullah speakers in South Carolina on Johns, Wadmalaw,

Edisto, and St. Helena Islands; in Georgia on Sapelo and

St. Simons Islands; and on Harris Neck and Brewer’s Neck,

parts of a peninsula mainland area. In 1935, he immersed

himself in the study of African languages that he believed

were crucial to understanding the background of the Gul-

lah culture and language. Between 1936 and 1941, Turner

traveled across three continents to study the language pat-

terns of Africans throughout the Diaspora. He learned fi ve

languages, including those of Krio, Twi, Kimbundu, Efi k,

Fante, Ewe, Yoruba, and other groups while in England. In

Brazil, he found pride among diasporic Africans toward

their contribution to the region’s cultural elements, espe-

cially dance and language.

In 1949, his book Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect

was published and recognized as an unprecedented analy-

sis of the Gullah people and their language. In his work,

he debunked the dominant myth of Gullah as “baby talk”

English from the mouths of uncivilized, enslaved Afri-

cans. Instead, he asserted that Gullah is a creolized form,

blending elements from numerous languages of enslaved

Africans who were transported to South Carolina and

Georgia during the 18th century and the fi rst half of the

19th. He provided exhaustive lists of sounds, intonations,

names, and words in Gullah that are parallel to those in

West African languages, demonstrating that Gullah is a

language, adhering to grammatical rules and sentence

structures. Africanisms served as a model for multidisci-

plinary studies ranging from anthropology to history and

especially linguistics. Historians used the manuscript in

the development of their works regarding African Ameri-

cans; such is the case with Melville Herskovits’s Myth of

the Negro Past.

Although Turner published two more works, Th e Krio

Language of the Sierra Leone (1963) and Krio Texts: With

Grammatical Notes and Translation in English (1965), Afri-

canisms is noted as one the most infl uential works in Afri-

can American and African studies. In 1972, Lorenzo Dow

Turner died, leaving behind his two sons and widow Lois

Turner Williams, who continued the dissemination of his

this represents an orientation that was uniquely African
American and perhaps, in other ways, epitomizes the cre-
olization process.
See also: Ebo Landing; Flying African Stories; Slave Religion

Walter C. Rucker

Bibliography
Gomez, Michael. Exchanging Our Country Marks: Th e Trans-
formation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebel-
lum South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1998.
Heywood, Linda, ed. Central Africans and Cultural Transforma-
tions in the American Diaspora. New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2002.
Rucker, Walter. “Th e River Flows On”: Black Resistance, Culture,
and Identity Formation in Early America. Baton Rouge: Loui-
siana State University Press, 2005.
Stuckey, Sterling. Slave Culture: Nationalist Th eory & the Foun-
dation of Black America. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1987.
Th ompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit. New York: Vintage
Books, 1983.

Turner, Lorenzo Dow

Named the “Father of Gullah Studies,” African American
linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner (1890–1972) was born on
August 21, 1890, in Elizabeth, North Carolina. His father,
Rooks Turner, was a free black man who, aft er attending
Howard University, became an educator. Before Lorenzo
Dow’s birth, Rooks purchased three acres of land in North
Carolina, where he later built the Rooks Turner Normal
School. His mother, Elizabeth Sessoms Freeman, was born
enslaved and later raised by her African American stepfa-
ther, Anthony Freeman.
In 1910, Lorenzo Dow, like his father, entered Howard
University where he studied German, French, Latin, and
Greek and received bachelor’s degree in English. In 1917,
he received a master’s in English from Harvard University.
Seven years later, he received a PhD in English from the
University of Chicago. During the summer of 1929, while
taking time from teaching at Fisk University in Nashville,
Turner ventured to another historically black university,
South Carolina State, located in Orangeburg. It was during
this summer teaching experience that he heard “Gullah” for
the fi rst time, marking his initial interest in the language