[The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 2.4.2001] Saving the soul of a culture Gullah-Geechee way of life teeters on extinction By Jingle Davis Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer Sapelo Island -- Winter sunlight shimmers through the thick tree canopy on the north end of Sapelo Island, backlighting wispy swags of Spanish moss and a Tarzan-like tangle of wild grapevines. Deer wander here, and feral pigs, armadillos, raccoons and possums. To the east lie endless miles of ocean. To the west spread vast salt marshes, cut with deep tidal rivers and creeks, that separate the island from the McIntosh County mainland. Cornelia Walker Bailey, a Sapelo native and a resident of the island's small Hog Hammock community, is driving visitors around in a battered Chevy Blazer, talking in her rich contralto voice about the island's past and its possible future. The vehicle squeaks as it pitches over the rutted road, paved only with loose oyster shells dug from shell rings deposited by aboriginal inhabitants thousands of years ago. A published book-writer, professional storyteller and pragmatic cultural activist, Bailey suddenly begins talking about spirits. "They're behind every tree up here," she says calmly. "I can hear them talking to me now." The spirits, she says, are those of her ancestors, brought here from Africa as slaves two centuries ago. That's the way it is on remote sea islands like Sapelo and in other tiny tidewater communities on the Southeastern coast. In the space of an eye-blink, a sophisticated woman like Bailey, 55, can revert to the unique creole culture that has shaped her family for generations. Called Geechee on the Georgia coast and Gullah in coastal South Carolina, the culture is so endangered that the federal government is trying to save it. U.S. Rep. James E. Clyburn (D- S.C.) persuaded Congress to direct the National Park Service to conduct a three-year study, launched last fall, aimed at preserving the history and heritage of the Gullah-Geechee people. Nobody knows how much of the culture survives. But on Sapelo, which may have the largest concentration of Gullah-Geechee people in Georgia, the African-American population of Hog Hammock has dwindled from 500 a few decades ago to 63. The Park Service has already held public meetings on the coast from Jacksonville to Little River, S. C., and is now analyzing comments from those sessions, says Park Service study coordinator Michael Allen. Many who attended talked about losing ancestral grounds, cemeteries and access to beaches and tidal creeks because of coastal development, especially on sea islands where upscale gated communities and golf courses now occupy old plantation lands. The Gullah-Geechee people are descended from various West African ethnic groups -- Mende, Igbo, Kissi (sometimes pronounced Geegee and possibly the origin of the term "Geechee"), and others -- who were forced together on the huge antebellum cotton and rice plantations. Isolated from their white owners and speaking different languages, they developed a lilting common tongue blending European and African words and structures. Scholars think the word "Gullah" may be linked to Angola, because so many coastal slaves came from that country. The people adopted the Christian religion, mingling it with African practices, including mojo, a form of voodoo. In some Gullah-Geechee communities, Christianity blended seamlessly with Muslim beliefs. A slave named Bilali brought the Muslim faith to Sapelo when he came to the island in 1803. Bailey, like almost every African-American in Hog Hammock, can trace her lineage to this now-famous slave. Bilali, who could read and write in Arabic, was employed as the plantation's head driver, in charge of hundreds of slaves. In his 1994 book "Sapelo's People," University of Georgia professor William S. McFeely describes Bilali as a powerful, influential man. His beliefs influenced even Sapelo's Christian churches, Bailey says. "They all face east because that's the way Bilali faced when he prayed." After the Civil War, small Gullah-Geechee communities continued to practice the customs of their African homeland, crafting coiled baskets of sweetgrass and palmetto; knitting cast nets and making strip quilts; dancing "shouts" like the Buzzard Lope, accompanying their music with African drumbeats, clapping and foot-stomping. They grew African red peas, okra, and yams, cooking them with rice, seafoods and wild game into spicy gumbos. Because of their long isolation, the Gullah-Geechee people have kept more of their African cultural roots than any other group of blacks in the United States, according to William S. Pollitzer, professor emeritus of anatomy and anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Their language is also unique. Phillip D. Morgan, a historian at the College of William & Mary, says the Gullah-Geechee language is the only English-based creole still surviving in North America. But for how much longer, no one is sure. Causeways now arch across the marches to several sea islands. New highways crisscross once-rural coastal counties as the population migration continues to Sun Belt states. As property values skyrocket, so do taxes. Ironically, the success of the civil rights movement prompted many Gullah-Geechees to leave the small communities where they once scratched out a living. As they began moving into the wider world during the 1960s, some became ashamed of their old ways. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, born in the tiny marshfront community of Pin Point near Savannah, says that when he was 16 and the only black student in his class, he was self-conscious about his speech. "I had grown up speaking a kind of dialect," Thomas said in a televised question-and-answer session with high school students in December. "It's called Geechee. Some people call it Gullah now, and people praise it now. But they used to make fun of us back then. It's not standard English." On Sapelo, Bailey and others complain that their culture is still unappreciated. They say the state of Georgia, which owns and manages the bulk of the island, has made little effort to commemorate Belle Marsh, Hanging Bull and other Geechee-Gullah communities settled on Sapelo after the Civil War. Until the 1950s, Bailey and her family lived at Belle Marsh. But the late tobacco millionaire R.J. Reynolds, who once owned most of the island, pressured black landowners to swap or sell their scattered holdings and move to Hog Hammock, a 430-acre enclave on Sapelo's south end, she says. In her book with Christena Bledsoe, "God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man," Bailey says her father, Hicks Walker, now 97, was threatened with losing his job if he refused to relocate. After Reynolds' death in 1964, his widow sold his Sapelo property to the state, which manages a hunting area on the north end. The 18,000-acre island also encompasses a federal estuarine research reserve and the University of Georgia's Marine Research Institute on the south end. Many Hog Hammock people complain that the state Department of Natural Resources, which operates the only ferry to Sapelo, and the university make little effort to hire young islanders. Iregene "J.R." Grovner Jr., 21, who went to "sea school" to qualify for work on the state-run ferry boats that carry residents, employees, schoolchildren and visitors back and forth to Sapelo, says he applied repeatedly for state jobs without success. He recently took a job in Tampa, working on a barge, but says he misses home. "I would like to work here and raise a family here instead of on the other side," he says. Grovner has recently learned to make Sapelo baskets from his mother, Yvonne, who was taught by the late Allen Green; Green's coiled sweetgrass baskets are prized by art collectors, historians and museums, including the Smithsonian. For decades, Green was the only island resident who could make the baskets -- a skill he learned from his grandfather, a former slave. Although the materials vary, Green's baskets, like those made by Gullahs in South Carolina, are virtually identical to baskets still made today on the west coast of Africa, experts say. "Mr. Green was almost 90 when he taught me 12 years ago," says Yvonne Grovner, who markets her baskets over the Internet from her desktop computer. Already, she struggles to keep up with orders. "I'm working on a large basket now for a museum in St. Marys," she says. Grovner's husband, Iregene Grovner Sr., and 14-year-old daughter, Leona Monique, also make Sapelo baskets, which they work on together at night while they watch television. J.R. Grovner, whose imaginative basket-making style is already being praised by collectors, is more ambitious. "A person can make enough on baskets to live on, but not enough to live like they want to," he says on a recent weekend visit. Even his mother gets only $60 for museum-quality baskets that take her all day to weave. One day, though, J.R. hopes to come back to live on Sapelo, in sight of the sunlit marshes and salty creeks; to wild woods and empty beaches and people whose language and customs he knows. He's glad the National Park Service is doing the study, but he wonders if it will really keep his Gullah-Geechee heritage alive. "If people have to keep leaving this island to find work," he says, his dark eyes troubled, "the culture's gonna die." TODAY WHERE SPIRITS STILL WALK Historic figure has ties to Sapelo Gullah family. COASTAL CULTURE BOOK IS ON JUSTICE'S DOCKET U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says he is interested in researching and writing a book on the history and culture of the Gullah-Geechee people. WEB SITES Features the Georgia Sea Island Singers. Look up Gullah, Geechee, Sierra Leone connection at the Charleston County Library. National Parks Conservation Association site. Expert lists roots of rock and roll top 10. Sweetgrass basket tradition Gullah-Geechee Sea Island Coalition. Links to some Sapelo Island accommodations The Lodge on Sapelo Island owned by Cornelia Walker Bailey and Julius Bailey. BOOK LIST "Sapelo's People: A Long Walk Into Freedom" by William S. McFeely, W. W. Norton & Co., 1994. "God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks About Life on Sapelo Island" by Cornelia Walker Bailey with Christena Bledsoe, Doubleday, 2000. "When Roots Die: Endangered Traditions on the Sea Islands" by Patricia Jones-Jackson, University of Georgia Press, 1987. "The Black Border: Gullah Stories of the Carolina Coast" by Ambrose E. Gonzales, The Reprint Company, Publishers, 1991. "Shout Because You're Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition in Coastal Georgia" by Art Rosenbaum, University of Georgia Press, 1998. © 2001 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Try these links: http://www.co.beaufort.sc.us/bftlib/gullah.htm http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/gg_coal.htm (includes Tapes) http://users.aol.com/queenmut/GullGeeCo.html http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=46 http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/drgeraty/Gullah.htm?mtbrand=AOL_US http://babel.ling.upenn.edu/~nagy/nwav/WWWabs/Weldon.html http://www.ccpl.org/ccl/gullahcreole.html http://carla.acad.umn.edu:591/FMPro?-db=wlw&language=Gullah&-format=results4.html&-sortfield=zip&-sortfield=language&-Max=25&-Find http://www.angelfire.com/sc/jhstevens/penncenter.html http://users.aol.com/gullgeeco/Gullah_Sentinel.html http://funkmasterj.tripod.com/toasts.html