Education - Gullah culture, language

Education & Religion

College to Host “Word, Shout, Song: Lorenzo Dow Turner Connecting Community through Language”January 4, 2012 The College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture will host the groundbreaking traveling exhibition “Word, Shout, Song: Lorenzo Dow Turner Connecting Community through Language” on view from January 12, 2012 through April 4, 2012. Curated by Alcione Amos of the Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Community Museum, “Word, Shout, Song” looks at the life, research, and scholarship of Lorenzo Dow Turner, perhaps the first African-American linguist. It also focuses on how his discoveries linked communities in Africa to the New World through language. “In assembling this exhibition, most exciting to me was how I was able to connect words from Gullah, English, and Portuguese to their African origins, eighty years later, based on Turner’s work in the 1930s,” said Amos. “His work is still relevant today.” “Word, Shout, Song” is three stories in one: scholarship and success against the odds, a quest to crack a linguistic code, and a discovery spanning continents. The exhibition presents Turner’s pioneering work in the 1930s, which established that people of African heritage, despite slavery, had retained and passed on their cultural identity through words, music, and story wherever they landed. His research focused on the Gullah/Geechee communities in South Carolina and Georgia, whose speech was dismissed as “baby talk” and “bad English.” He confirmed, however, that the Gullah spoke a Creole language that still possessed parts of the language and culture of their captive ancestors. Turner’s linguistic explorations into the African diaspora led him to Bahia, Brazil, where he further validated his discovery of African continuities.The exhibition begins with a look at Turner’s early life. Profoundly influenced by his college-educated father on the importance of academic excellence, Turner (1890–1972) obtained successively higher degrees in English from Howard, Harvard University, and the University of Chicago. Denied teaching positions at white institutions, he built his career in academia at several black colleges, including his undergraduate alma mater. A summer stint teaching at the now-South Carolina State University, however, is where he first heard the Gullah dialect that would captivate him for the rest of his career. Convinced that the speech pattern was not illiterate English but instead a distinct language incorporating words and structure from African languages, Turner focused his interest into a lifelong project.Turner studied various African languages, including Twi, Ewe, Yoruba, Bambara, and Wolof as well as Arabic, to link to Gullah vocabulary. Through his pursuit of information, he became the first African-American member of many organizations, including the Linguistics Society of America.“Word, Shout, Song” recounts his travels to South Carolina and Georgia and abroad to London, Paris and, finally, West Africa to record and compare the speech of hundreds of informants. His journeys feature fascinating stories of adventure and discovery as well as of the difficulties he encountered with bulky equipment and remote access.A major linguistic achievement occurred when Turner determined the “ring shout”, a Gullah religious dance, was a possible direct inheritance from enslaved Muslims—the name “shout” being derived from the Arabic word Sha’wt, which referred to movement around a sacred object rather than sound. Another example resulting from Turner’s early Georgia recordings is a later major discovery by scholars Joseph Opala, Tazieff Schmidt, and Cynthia Koroma who, in 1990, realized a song passed down through generations connected the Mende people of Sierra Leone to their American kin in Georgia.A section of the exhibition focuses on Turner’s research on culture in Bahia, Brazil where a much larger number of enslaved Africans had been brought than to the United States, yet featured the same languages that influenced the Gullah. The Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé heavily incorporated African survivals; and when informants recognized words in the Sea Island recordings, Turner again saw language connecting the worlds of the African diaspora.Turner’s many writings, presentations, and publications included his book, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect, published in 1949; and it is still the standard reference for Creole language research today.Highlights of “Word, Shout, Song” include:

o Turner’s recording device and special-character typewritero Rare recordings of Gullah speech and songs and rare photographs of informants produced by Turnero Audio and written comparisons of words that are similar and from languages spoken in the Americas and Africao The section “Singing for the Ancestor: A Song that Made the Roundtrip to Africa”o The section “The Black Seminole: The Gullah that Got Away” that recounts the history of fugitive slaves from Georgia and South Carolina whose descendants are now found in Florida, Texas, and Mexico and speak an ancient form of Gullah

Organized by the Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Community Museum in Washington, DC and based on one of its special collections, this traveling exhibit version of “Word, Shout, Song” was made possible by the James E. and Emily E. Clyburn Endowment for Archives & History at South Carolina State University. The Avery Research Center will hold an open night reception on January 12, 2012 at 6pm featuring special guest speakers Camille Akeju, Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Community Museum and Dr. Johnnetta Cole, Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of African Art. Tickets are now available for the reception. Call the Avery Research Center at 843.953.7609 for more information.This entry was posted in Arts, Events, Featured, General College News Office of Media RelationsMike Robertson
Senior Director of Media Relations
robertsonm@cofc.edu
843.953.5667Melissa Whetzel
Director of Media Relations
whetzelm@cofc.edu
843.953.7752« Kiplinger’s Names College a Best Value “Letters to Sala” Combines Play, Lecture and Exhibition »Contact Admissions©2009 All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy66 George Street Charleston, SC 29424General Information: 843.805.5507Emergency Information: 843.725.7246

Subject: Top 2012 Scholarships For Black Students

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Top 2012 Scholarships For Black Students:

A
AARP Foundation Women's Scholarship Program
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AWG Minority Scholarship For Women
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Davidson Fellows Scholarship
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Need-based scholarships for college students are part of the progressive movement in their community.
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For students who demonstrate a desire and ability to overcome barriers and achieve their goals.
Development Fund For Black Students in Science and Technology
For students studying science or technology at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
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Annual scholarship for high school juniors to support continued education and training beyond high school.

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Sends faculty and professionals abroad each year to lecture and conduct research.
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H
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Provides travel opportunities for students of color who are traditionally underrepresented in such programs.
J
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Provides fellowships to students who excel in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
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To increase diverse students' access to talent development opportunities through teacher training.
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For low-income women who have a vision of how their education will benefit themselves and their community.
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K
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For college-bound students who can demonstrate financial need, and have a GPA of at least 2.75.
L
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A writing contest pertaining to the life and times of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War era.
M
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Designed to assist pharmacy students who plan to continue their education.
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National Achievement Scholarship
Established in 1964 to provide recognition for outstanding African American high school students.
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Designed to help women and girls find funding for college education, and more.
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Available to full-time students who are majoring in science, math, technology, engineering, and more.
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Established for students in the field of project management or a project management related field.
R
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Seeks to identify African American high school seniors who will make significant contributions to society.
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S
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U
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INDEPENDENT SCHOLARS

J. Herman Blake

J. Herman Blake , Commissioner Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor
Sociologist:
Scholar in Residence
University of South Carolina Beaufort
Johns Island, SC 29457-0846
[p ]843-521-3138
[e] blakej at gwm.sc.edu
Founder The Sea Islands Institute at The University of South Carolina Beaufort honoring people of the Gullah/Geechee culture. "Primary focus is the study and preservation of Gullah culture through a program of scholarship, curriculum development, and community development."
Also see: 1963 Malcolm X interview of el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz University of California Berkeley

Sound Structure in Gullah:
The Narratives in Turner’s 'Africanisms' as a Linguistic Resource By Thomas B. Klein & Meta Y. Harris 1/2001
To date, the narratives in 'Africanisms' have had a relatively minor influence on Gullah language studies. In contrast, this paper demonstrates that close study of these narratives contributes significantly to the understanding of phonological patterns and phonological variation in Gullah.
First, it is shown that there are mismatches between the description of Gullah phonology in the body of 'Africanisms' and the phonology of the narratives. Thus, a number of patterns described in the main text are not represented in the transcription conventions of the narratives. On the other hand, close study of the narratives reveals patterns that are not described in the text, such as Nasal Velarization (NV) and the deletion of unstressed syllables in pre-stress position (PSD) in English cognates.
In addition, the transcription of the narratives often provides phonological variants, thus enabling the study of phonological variation in Gullah.
As shown in this paper, NV in the narratives in 'Africanisms' transforms an etymological alveolar nasal into a velar nasal after the diphthong /aw/. Similar patterns are found in related Creoles such as Jamaican, Guyanese and Trinidadian/Tobagonian Creole English.
However, Gullah shows a dissimilatory effect in that NV does not occur if there is a velar consonant elsewhere in the word, whereas NV applies across the board in other creoles.
This paper also shows that the narratives in 'Africanisms' provide evidence for variable PSD. The overall rate of deletion is high. It is also shown that PSD differs by location and is heavily gender-graded.
In sum, this paper demonstrates that the close study of the narratives in 'Africanisms' can make a number of significant contributions to Gullah language studies. First, the uncovering of previously undescribed phonological patterns is enlightening for the linguistics of Gullah. Secondly, the demonstrated difference between different locations and men’s and women’s speech has significant implications for the dialectology and sociolinguistics of Gullah. Thirdly, the understanding of the connection between Gullah and other Creoles is enhanced by the similarities and subtle distinctions found in patterns such as NV. The match in the highly frequent and socially graded occurrence of PSD in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and Gullah versus the absence of NV in AAVE provides evidence which future discussions of the connection between AAVE and Atlantic Creole languages should take into account.

Gullah and Geechee Traditions
The first Gullah residents were brought to the United States and enslaved from many African nations, including Angola. Another myth the Queen Quet dismantled pertains to the way Gullah people speak. Gullah is an authentic language, not merely a dialect as some self-proclaimed experts claim, she said.

Lessons Learned from the Gullah Experience: Powerful Forces in Educating African-American Youth [Mass Market Paperback]

Thomas J. Brown

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The Georgia Geechee Shouters performing at the Geechee Kunda Cultural Center; Riceboro, Georgia. This ceremonial dance was performed before the Craft Organization Development Association, a group of international festival and event organizers and leaders from across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Camille Ronay, Project Manager for Georgia Made Georgia Grown LLC, and Jim Bacote, Director, Geechee Kunda Cultural Center, had been planning this "experience" for nearly a year. And it was well worth the effort...

CODA was celebrating its 20th Annual Conference in Savannah, Georgia (http://www.codacraft.org) and chose the Cultural Center as its destination for the final session for this years convention.

The weather was perfect and the food, served in typical Geechee Kunda tradition was enjoyed by all. This will be an experience remembered by everyone...

As Jim Bacote said, "We are all family now."