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ABSTRACT

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHURCH

by Alicia DeRocke O’Brien

Using Charles Long’s hermeutic tool, “signification” (a term derived from African American ), this paper explores the development of the Gullah church during the era of . Slaves on the expressed autonomy despite their oppression by organizing religious communities that produced a new orientation in the ultimate sense, as, through , Gullah people made sense of their new place in the world. The Gullah church is an independent regional expression of that allowed its followers to define themselves through religious practices as they created an independent slave culture. The stories, songs and rituals produced exemplified the vitality of this expression of religion. Functioning first in the Invisible Church and later within the Praise House the church served as a community center, adding to the empowerment of the group, and providing a means of socio-religious agency that served as a foundation for continued forms of resistance. The Development of the Gullah Church

A Thesis

Submitted to the

Faculty of Miami University

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Department of Comparative Religion

by

Alicia DeRocke O’Brien

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2006

Advisor Dr. Peter W. Williams

Reader Dr. Lisa J. M. Poirier

Reader Dr. James C. Hanges

©

Alicia D. O’Brien

2006

Table of Contents

Dedication iv

Acknowledgements v

Introduction 1

Chapter One 10

Chapter Two 21

Chapter Three 41

Conclusion 56

Sources Consulted 60

iii

For Edith

iv Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Virgil Alfaro, Dr. Neil Draison, Dr. Robert Foster and all of the others that have helped me see over the last few years. They have been some of the most important, patient, determined and understanding people I my life and I am truly lucky to have such wonderful people looking out for my continued visual health.

Thanks to my family for being supportive in all of my efforts. You have been very understanding and a source of inspiration. I love you.

Many thanks to Jane Odell, Jennifer Peterson, Renee Hebert, Brenda and Robert Rush, and Camden Bowman. You have been sources of support, encouragement and lasting friendship through the good and bad days. I love each one of you as though you were my family.

Thanks to Dr. Lisa Poirier, Dr. Peter Williams and Dr. James C. Hanges. I cannot say enough.

Thanks to The National Trust for Historic Preservation and Drayton Hall for all of the work you do to preserve the American historic landscape and in particular for supporting African American history and places and making them important to others. Personally, I thank the Drayton Hall site for supporting me in my undertakings, especially to Peggy Rieder, Timothy Chesser, Janice Boast, Wade Lawrence, Ian Purches, John Kidder, and Dr. George McDaniel.

Thanks to Jordan Ridgeway, Adam Ridgeway and especially MacLean Ridgeway. You are creative, encouraging, fun, trusting and compassionate gentlemen and I am honored to be working with you.

Thanks to the Starbucks crowd: Natalie, Ruth, Katy, Tom, Conrad, James, Roy, Sean, Sam, Randy, Sweet Willie, John, John, Tricia, David, Joe/Ralph, Brian, Landis, Chris Jones and all of the others. You have been great sources of encouragement, diversion and humor. I have learned so much from you all and appreciate your tolerance of my studiousness amidst your levity.

I would especially like to thank Chris Nolan for all of his support and for volunteering his artistic and intellectual efforts through the last phase of this project. You are a friend.

Lastly, I would like to thank all of the people who served their masters as slaves. You are remembered.

v Introduction

The port of Charlestown, South Carolina was vital to the colonial American slave trade and a large majority of African slaves brought to America passed through her harbor. The Lowcountry’s dependence on rice cultivation led slave acquisition in the region to take on atypical characteristics. For economic reasons, plantation owners on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and preferred to purchase slaves that came directly from the Windward, or Rice, Coast of and continued this practice until the abolition of slavery.1 As a result, the Sea Islands were constantly assimilating native Africans—people torn from their families, possessions and homelands and forced into slavery.

While being massed with fellow Africans who shared similar experiences but very different backgrounds, these individuals faced a seemingly overwhelming number of obstacles, including loss of personal freedom, , linguistic heritage, kinship and agency. The oppressors labeled these individuals, who represented different tribes, countries, , traditions and religious backgrounds, as one, subordinate people. Needing to make sense of their oppression and of their displacement from their homelands, these people carved out a new identity for themselves. Religion served as a creative act that empowered African on the Sea Islands to make sense of the situations facing them.

From its beginning, the Lowcountry was an area of religious pluralism. Enlightenment philosopher John Locke directly influenced the Fundamental Constitution by drafting the document as secretary to Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, one of the colony’s eight Lords Proprietors.2 It included religious tolerance to slaves, adding that slaves’ Christian conversion did not affect their status as slaves, and gave the Freemen of Carolina “…absolute power and authority over Negro slaves…” beginning 1669.3 To this it also added, “yt heathens, Jues and other dissenters.”4 Locke’s drafts of the constitution promoted a religious openness while at the same time subscribing to what Charles H. Long refers to as the European myth of conquest in which God’s providence enabled the European people to dominate lesser peoples. This mythic concept makes the relationship and resulting balance of power appear to be divinely sanctioned.5 Although never fully ratified, due to the fact it also stipulated the Church of England as the official church, Locke’s influence upon the constitution did establish a lasting direction.6

1 This fact is an important consideration in light of the fact that International slave trading was outlawed in America beginning in 1810 and enforceable by 1811. 2 Peter Wood, Black Majority, 18-19.; RM Miller, “Roman Catholics,” Religion in South Carolina. Charles H. Lippy, ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 82.; McKever-Floyd, “Pluralism,” Religion in South Carolina. Charles H. Lippy, ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993) 154.; Robert Rosen, A Short History of Charleston. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992), 10-11. 3 Wood, 18-19.; Rosen, 10. 4 Rosen, 40. 5 Charles H Long, Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion. (Aurora: The Davies Group, 1995), 115. 6 Rosen, 40. 1 Because of this tolerance, the plurality of religious practices in colonial South Carolina was an exception to the norms of colonial Puritanism that pervaded other colonies. To those outside her borders, South Carolina exemplified a society based on hedonism and immorality. Charlestown, the hub of the Lowcountry, willingly epitomized this perception of decadence while simultaneously remaining true to the morals and values of its people.7 Although the societal elite enjoyed pastimes found by their neighbors to the north to be exceedingly decadent and frivolous, Charleston garnered the name “holy ” because of the number of churches it contained.

The established in the colonies underwent changes, or re-orientations. For some, like the Puritans of New England, the Atlantic crossing meant freedom to act on revolutionary beliefs. For other groups, the mere geographic separation of congregations from their mother churches allowed for subtle changes, some of which took place naturally with the passage of time, especially as they lacked the direct influence of close neighboring sister congregations. The religions became distinct through adaptation to new surroundings and interactions with other systems and cultures.

Like European Christianity, African religious beliefs became uniquely American in the North American colonial context. The European denominations represented in the Lowcountry ranged from those with major influences on Gullah, such as the Baptist, Methodist and Episcopal denominations, to those less influential, such as the Lutheran, Catholic, French Huguenot, Presbyterian, and Congregational. African American religion and folkways were attempts to preserve and transform African traditions, but were not without white influence.8 It is important to consider the expressions of white Christianity in relation to the Gullah church because of the impact these expressions had on the beliefs and practices of the African American slaves.

When exploring Gullah, categories and can be somewhat problematic. The word “Gullah” generally references a number of things. The origins of the word “Gullah” has been linked to both and the Gola tribe of .9 The first known use of a similar word in print was a May 12, 1739 runaway slave ad in the South Carolina Gazette that mentions a man named “Golla Harry.”10 According to Peter Wood, the term “Gullah” specifically refers to the black peoples of coastal South Carolina, whereas the term “Geechee” refers to the peoples the Georgia coast.11 In modern times, it identifies people, a culture and cultural area, a , a regional vocal accent, a tradition and a religious tradition.12

7 Rosen, 10. 8 Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South, (Chapel Hill: The University of Press, 1988), 295. 9 Rosen, 70. 10 William S. Pollitzer, The Gullah People and Their African Heritage, (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1999), 107. 11 Wood, 170. 12 Wood, 173-175. In the beginning stages of the colony, South Carolina saw first generation slaves who spoke English, having been exposed to it elsewhere. This diminished in later slaves and waves that arrived, but did serve to influence dialect that developed. p. 191. “Gullah might be described as an early, localized and intensified form of an accommodation process between separate speech traditions that has not yet run 2 When discussing the religious traditions of people in the Gullah cultural area the categorization of the religious community becomes just as complex. Gullah as a cultural term has a rich tradition of folklore, meaning that it has a body of material that includes belief, myth, tales and practices that are transmitted orally. At the same time Gullah is folklore, it is also a religion. Gullah folklore encompasses the whole body of material associated with slaves in the Sea Islands, whereas the religion addresses a large portion of that whole. Yet, regardless of whether religion is defined as orientation in the ultimate sense, or as a group whose members have a belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers as a creator and governor of the universe, such definitions do not touch on the complexities of Gullah. They do not address its unique qualities or its close relationship to the groups that influenced it. The term denomination does address unique qualities. Distinctive faith groups united by name and institutional structures are typically called denominations. However, Gullah does not fit this category because it lacks the unity and hierarchical structure that typically marks a denomination. Perhaps had it not been a religion created in oppression, it may have developed the formalized structures necessary to join this category. Gullah is not a religious movement because it was not created with the intent to change an existing belief system; it formed out of necessity rather than intent.

The term sect may seem quite appealing to describe the nature of Gullah. Gullah is a faction united by common belief and interests. It is a group of people who have formed a distinct unit with refinements or distinctions of belief or practice. Yet, sect is not the best fit for Gullah because a sect is a group of people who form their distinct unit from one larger body. Gullah pulls from many traditions, including multiple forms of Christianity. Moreover, the term sect has taken on pejorative meaning in recent history, often linked with the term cult in the America psyche, a term most recently replaced with new religious movement. Gullah is not a religious movement, as stated earlier. This leaves the term church. A church can be many things, one of which is a physical structure, which was absent from Gullah for a long period of its history. Church also means a congregation, or one of the groups of who have their own beliefs, or a specified denomination, or even public worship. Here again, the problem of denomination is encountered, as are the myriad of images associated with the term church.

Gullah, in my estimation, is most similar to a sect or a church, yet escapes the fullness of these terms. It would best fit in a category for people who have created their own distinct beliefs and practices based in multiple larger religious bodies. However, I know of no term that embodies such a definition. Therefore, for the purposes of this paper, Gullah is a church since it can be classified a group of Christians who have their own beliefs and practices.13

its course in this country.”; Pollitzer, 107., features uninflected verbs, no verb tenses, pronouns do not indicate gender and repeating words that show excitement, intensifies meaning and indicates magnitude. 13Long, 7.; Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, vol 2. (New : Harper & Row, 1960), 1006-1010. 3 In his book Significations, Charles H. Long provides a hermeneutic tool with which one can better understand the phenomenon and meaning of religion, especially in the United States14. Signification refers to a discourse between two people(s) in which the signifier uses language to objectify someone else to an end advantageous to the signifier. The objectification is executed with skill and calculation to confuse the true discourse without acceptance of responsibility for the act. The objectified someone is referred to as the signified. The resulting symbols and signs, which are always attached to words and language, represent a relationship between the signifier and the signified. Religious symbols, because of their intrinsic power and their tendency to give and spread meanings, serve to create a power relationship between significations and signs15 There is an arbitrary relationship between signifier and the signified because anyone can be either and in instances of complex significations, one can be both.

Long’s usage of signification is a term rooted in the African American culture makes it a particularly appropriate hermeneutic tool for the Gullah Church. . The statement “signifying is worse than lying” originated within the African American community to describe their awareness and opinions of being objectified by other groups, especially whites. Signifying is worse than lying because at the same time the signification may be descriptive, it is not an accurate description or identification of the signified of which both parties are aware.

In relation to slavery and religion, signifying ca16n be rather complex. A slave owner signifies his slave when he describes the slave as a lazy animal. The owner is a signifier and the slave is the object of the signifier’s signification, or the signified. This signification distances the signifier from the truth of the matter, that the slave is a human being not working to the owner’s expectation. This image of the lazy slave as sub-human, even animalistic, is based in the myth of the signifier’s culture that promotes the image of the conquered people, the other, as less developed than his own. This European or Western myth of conquest is religious in that conquerors’ God’s providence enabled their success over lesser peoples, which makes the relationship and resulting balance of power divinely sanctioned. The conqueror’s religion provided a way to make sense of the situation in which they found themselves in the New World and at the same time allowed for the construction of a mindset that provided a position of power over the conquered. In order to perpetuate the power that resulted from the myth of conquest, the American colonists, as conquerors, developed a cultural language that reinforced the symbols and images of the Western myth. This cultural language negated the slaves’ self-definition; it denied the meaning and of the slaves own cultures and .

In regard to significations in colonial America, the master and slave shared more similarities than differences. The mother country that demanded the results of their labors signified the masters. Colonists were signified as less important and less capable than their peers on the other side of the Atlantic as seen in the importation of colonial governors, officials and military units. The colonists lacked the established physical and

14 Long, 3. 15 Long, 1-2. 16 Long, 1. 4 societal structures of European England. Some groups of colonists were actual outcasts in multiple European locations, as seen with the Puritans. Such significations, based in the image of England as God’s chosen , created a sense of inferiority for the colonists. At the same time, the colonist had created for themselves a similar sense of superiority over Africa, as well as over Native Americans and the African slaves in their possession.

Research Issues

In documenting history, it is important that the individuals whose stories are conveyed be given a voice whenever possible. The Federal Writer’s Project archive facilitates just such action. In the early twentieth century, Americans across the social strata of the nation experienced great economic hardship brought on by the Great Depression. To combat the devastating affects of the stock market crash of 1929, the Federal government created programs through the “New Deal” that would help the American people secure employment in the lagging economy. One such program was the Works Progress Administration, or WPA.17

One of the many WPA legacies is an archive of American history recorded by the Federal Writer’s Project, a division of the WPA’s New Deal Federal Arts Project. It provides written records of interviews conducted with individual citizens regarding their lives and personal histories.18 The project directors made a point of documenting the lives of former slaves throughout the South.

The resulting wealth of narrative accounts provide first hand information regarding ’ life experiences prior to and following emancipation. The archive provides insight into the lives of people historians treated as transparent for centuries—insight into the lives of a large sector of the American populace that would have been forever lost if it had not been for the Great Depression!

Although it is possible to gain valuable information regarding a multiplicity of topics through examination of the Federal Writer’s Project material, this study focuses on discerning the religious beliefs, practices and experiences of former slaves in South Carolina. Therefore, the primary sources presented are often the results of these interviews conducted between 1936 and 1940. While reading a significant number of the WPA narratives for religious content, and admittedly many lacked such content, the resulting material provides a framework in which to explore questions regarding the religious experiences of former South Carolina slaves while allowing them to “speak” here in their own voices.

In that vein, these transcripts have aided scores of scholars in writing about slaves’ lives. James Mellon and Albert Raboteau relied on these kinds of sources to facilitate their scholarship on the subject. Raboteau in particular used sources such as the WPA narratives in composing the groundbreaking text Slave Religion and in doing so

17 lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/wpahome.html; lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/intro01.html 18 lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/intro02.html 5 faced serious challenges. The slaves’ religious traditions were not oral only due to a lack of writing materials or laws preventing the documenting of practices. Most of the communities in question were literate in their own contexts, where rhetorical skills and storytelling were valued over reading and writing. These communities had different worldviews and values than their oppressors, residing within a discourse created by white signifiers to conceal the meaning of what really happened in regard to slavery. This meant that Raboteau had very few, if any, records written by former slaves to work with from the specific periods in question. Slave Religion was the first text of its kind, so Raboteau was literally constructing the precedent-setting framework that so many scholars have built upon. He worked with sources such as the WPA interview transcripts and pieced together what he could, and in this context, it is a good book with some major problems from today’s scholarly perspective.

Scholars who attempt to write about slave religion tend to impose meaning on the material for several reasons. Scholars impose meaning because of the exclusion of materials that provide important background information. Another factor that adds to this interpretation is the absence of materials in the slaves own words, a complication that puts firmly in place a seemingly impenetrable barrier to research. Materials filled with culturally based rhetoric that obscures the facts of what it speaks to also facilitate the scholar’s resulting truths representing only parts of the greater whole.19 The Federal Writer’s Project African American accounts provide only one side of the conversations, making it almost impossible to discern exactly the line of questioning which evoked the responses recorded. Likewise, the method of questioning undoubtedly influenced the responses. Cultural/social barriers between the interviewers and informants, such as cultural myths and centuries of significations, influenced them as well. The project interviewers were in almost every case a member of an ethnic group and social class other than that of the informant, a factor that had an undeniably profound effect on the responses given. In the case of this study, additional factors exist. This study is an interpretation of materials whose scribes signified their subjects, read in a modern academic setting by a southern, Caucasian female that is in no way directly involved with the Federal Writer’s Project, never having been a slave nor having played a part in the formation of centuries of American religious traditions.

Furthermore, scholar James Mellon observed that the WPA interviews were unavoidably influenced by the economic situation of the nation at large. African Americans “…were among the oldest, poorest, and hungriest of Americans,” at that time, resulting in nostalgic ruminations regarding certain aspects of plantation life.20 Mellon observes that, as a whole, the interviews reflect a preoccupation with food and cooking, including experiences with food during the informants’ tenure as slaves.21 However, this might also represent a regional cultural trait that crosses racial boundaries. In addition to the complete poverty induced by starting life anew in places where the existing

19 James Clifford, introduction to Writing Culture: The Poetics and of Ethnography, James Clifford and George E. Marcus, eds., (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 7. 20 James Mellon, introduction to Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember, James Mellon, ed, (: Avon Books, 1990), xvii. 21 Mellon, introduction to Bullwhip Days, xvii. 6 population was not receptive to one’s success, the overall economic factors mattered too. The economic climate might also account for the large number of individuals making statements that imply that slavery was better than freedom. Another possibility is that the interviewers, being a part of the societal majority, unwittingly encouraged the perpetuation of the European myth of conquest.

An additional influence on the WPA narratives is cultural scripting.22 A cultural script is how and what information people of a group extend to others. It is a mode of communication that passes from generation to generation through practice, not a skill gained through formal education. Cultural scripting is fueled within the African American community by the application of signification through the clever use of language through what W.E.B. DuBois described as the “double-consciousness” of “the veil.”23 DuBois used these terms to describe the pre and post emancipation experiences of hatred and prejudice, oppression and freedom, which contributed to a sense of uncertainty for African Americans that translated into a consciousness of dual reality for the individuals, including those interviewed. Emancipation united them with the populace as Americans, but simultaneously separated them from the whole because of their race. They were acutely aware of what Charles H. Long calls their “otherness” in the eyes of their interviewers.24 Such duality affected individual’s interactions with others in society.25 Cultural scripting and the “double-consciousness”/”otherness” awareness affected the informants’ responses by acting as a cultural filter on the types of information shared, the completeness or wholeness of the information and how the information was revealed.

The narratives reviewed from the WPA archives for the purposes of this study offered unanticipated results. Initially, there were underlying assumptions regarding the types of information that would be encountered throughout the reading. One of these academic significations was that there would be a large number of “classic” conversion experience accounts. Out of the approximately four hundred pages of South Carolina specific narrative accounts reviewed, only one conversion account surfaced and it did not fit the ideal model. Another assumption related to “root” beliefs and practices, in that there would be more direct, or even indirect, discussion of it. The results were disappointing considering the number of records reviewed. It is possible that the narratives are missing this information because Gullah is ritually oriented. Very few references were made and when root was mentioned, discussion was mainly confined to the validity and results of conjure or the belief/ unbelief in . Accounts that discussed religious experience and practice were confined to a surprisingly narrow number of topics, the majority of which are in some way represented in the examples previously discussed. The number of narratives that lacked any mention of religious experience or practice was also unexpected. The naive initial expectation was that the

22 Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka, “Cultural Scripts: What are they good for?,” Intercultural Pragmatics 1-2 (2004), 153. 23 W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, (Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1929), 3.; Charles H. Long, introduction to Significations: Signs, Symbols and Images in the Interpretation of Religion, (Aurora: The Davies Group, Publishers, 1995), 1. 24 Charles H. Long, introduction to Significations, 4-5. 25 DuBois, 3-4. 7 narrative accounts recorded by the Federal Writer’s Project would be similar in content to the autobiographical accounts of former slaves previously published in independent volumes. The accounts reviewed fell short of this mark, possibly because the accounts chosen for publication fit those scholars ideal models and were therefore included in their works.

Gullah is a church created in oppression. To the Gullah Communities, religious expressions of agency manifested in the distinctive rituals of the Gullah church, hence community provided a sense of empowerment. Although similar to mainline Christianity already in existence at the time of its creation, Gullah differed from other Christianities that surrounded it. Gullah’s main influences were diverse: tribal African religions and the various forms of Christianity frequently imposed on slaves in the American colonies, such as those of the Anglican, Methodist and Baptist denominations. These influences were never static. Each Christian denomination was predisposed to getting involved in the education of slaves in different ways at different times in their own histories.

Gullah was a uniquely created church because it was an expression of Christianity with theological points, ritual expressions and sacred texts that differed from slave communities not only in other colonies, but also in other regions of Carolina. To most Africans, religion is so vital to life that it is always where the person is regardless of geographic location, and the Gullah people creatively came to terms with the ultimate significance of their place in the world.26 The combination of regional geographic isolationism, a strange Sea Island conditional independence from the prying eyes of masters, the zeal of missionaries, and the almost constant replenishment of Africans into their society created conditions ripe for inventive cultural, linguistic, and religious interpretation.27 The rich stories, songs and intricate rituals produced by this growing, highly adaptable and creative society exemplified the vitality of this new expression of religion.

The Gullah church is an autonomous regional expression of an African American Christianity specific to the Lowcountry. Because it is a new creation and not a laundry list of religious traits gathered from here and there with bits left over, as the syncretic theory puts forth, the church existed as a cohesive whole. Researchers such as Patricia Jones-Jackson and Margaret Washington Creel choose to explore Gullah from the more syncretic viewpoint.28 By employing analyses grounded in an assumption of syncretism, root rituals, narratives and music are not part of a cohesive whole, but are survivals. Survivals usually refer to single ideas or behaviors that remain essentially unchanged in a culture over time, typically due to isolation. The designation of survival does not apply in this case because the Gullah church formed by creating religious ideas and behaviors in a specific context. In other words, a perspective such as Syncretism provides a convenient way to categorize the cultural “leftovers” of blending traditions. If a religious expression

26 McKever-Floyd, 155. 27 Pollitzer, 62. 28 David Carrasco, “Jaguar Christians in the Contact Zone: Concealed narratives in the histories of religions in the ,” Beyond Primitivism: Indigenous religious traditions and modernity. Jacob K. Olupona, ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004), 131-133. 8 does not fit the pattern, one can then call it a survival rather than explore the possibility that its creators were a resourceful people who had reasons for each one of their religious practices. That is not to say that the African and European traditions that influenced the creation of Gullah and served as its founding concepts ceased to exist in the community. To the contrary, they survived within the new creation, not as an independent anachronism, but as vital components that have undergone change.

Within the context of North American slavery, there were four main possibilities of religious expression for these marginalized people. They could attempt to retain their traditional belief systems, although they would have to adapt them to a new geographic context. These systems ranged from traditional tribal religions to , and Christianity. Another option was conversion to the European expressions of Christianity as presented to them. Converting to Christianity was complex because if slaves took it wholeheartedly, including learning English and reading the Bible, whites would disapprove of their and their fellow slaves would ridicule them.29 Theoretically, they could ignore religion altogether. Lastly, they could choose to embrace forms of European Christianity while incorporating their own ideas, or essentially create their own systems of religious expression. The Gullah church resulted from a population of Africans and African Americans on the Sea Islands choosing this fourth option. The creative adaptation of Gullah is quite evident within these Sea Island slaves’ reorientation in the ultimate sense.

29 Wood, 187-189. 9 Chapter One Signifiers

Although Charlestown was established with an air of religious tolerance, such tolerance was conditional, reserved primarily for white people of faith that followed traditions formed out of the Reformation. People who came from the Jewish and Islamic traditions were largely ignored, but their presence in Lowcountry history is noted, sometimes with acclaim as with the congregation at Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim. However, an analogous acceptance was denied to Catholics because of suspicions that they may be in allegiance with Spanish foes to the south. This sometimes led to indifferent treatment, if not outright hostility toward Catholics.30 It is for this reason that South Carolina, especially Charlestown, missed out on the Catholic experience in America as seen to the north. 31 A Catholic presence settled, but its history pales in comparison to the Protestant churches that flourished in the area.

Of all the religious groups of note, the Anglican tradition exerted the most influence upon the plantation system during the early days of the colony.32 The planter elite were typical members of the aristocracy and with few exceptions, were members of the Church of England. More importantly, they were businessmen who came to the colony to generate profits from agriculture and trade.33 To accomplish this goal, they employed the use of others’ labor, primarily in the form of slave labor.34 Of course, other people assisted with daily activities in the peculiar institution, but the slaves that they traded, worked and housed performed the bulk of the hard labor. The creation of the social structure in America, especially in the south, resulted in a master/slave dynamic that signified slaves as a component of their master’s . This mythologic truth absolved the planters and their society of all psychological onuses for their actions. Slaves were a business investment that could produce material wealth for their owners over time. These slaves were vital to the success of the entire operation and the key to wealth for the planter elite. Slaves were, in most cases, the most valuable and costly, and the most significant and signified, possession that a Lowcountry planter owned, as reflected in posthumous estate inventories.35

Colonial participation in the Atlantic international slave trade operated in both North and and participation in the overarching process reached all over Europe and Africa as well. At its inception along the African coast during the fifteenth century, the enslavement of individuals had been a globally documented practice for thousands of years. As the scope of trade grew and traders began questioning their participation in the practice, justifications arose in which perception played an integral role.

30 Miller, 82. 31 Miller, 91. 32 Rosen, 40-42. 33 Rosen, 18-19. 34 Wood, 134-135. 35 In particular, the estate papers of John and Charles Drayton of Drayton Hall, Charleston, South Carolina reflect such statistics. 10 No longer under the thumb of the papacy, the British could form their own opinions regarding such ethical and spiritual matters. To answer the spiritual problem of slavery, they chose the perception, as the Spanish and Portuguese had before them, that Africans, as well as Native Americans, were not fully human, not civilized, nor Christian like themselves, so they could not possess souls.36 One such justification is what Long refers to as the myth of colonial conquest, a popular expression of dominance over people of the Americas, in particular, that included Africans through the clever use of language, through signifying.37 The problem ceased to exist through negation of the savages’ humanity. The legacy of this master/slave signification in America is in the racial divides and categorizations that pervade our linguistic and social-political landscapes.

The Native American population declined dramatically early in the colony’s early history as a result of disease, the Yamessee Wars and tribes leaving the area both by choice and force, whereas the populations of African and native blacks, both slave and free, continued to grow.38 posed its own problems for the ruling class and enacted laws soon developed to limit the growth of the free black population. Regarding the oppressed, if slaves were signified as soulless, missionizing Christianity among them became a moot point, so their ‘strange superstitions’ were either tolerated or extinguished by force.39 That is not to say that there were not Christian missionaries that tried to reach the ‘godless’ slaves with gospel education in the early years of the colony, but the typical slave was unlikely to encounter these men. Interestingly, African slaves originated in countries where not only tribal religious flourished, but so did Christianity, Islam and, although to a lesser extent, Judaism.

In the context of the British colony of South Carolina, slavery provided the labor needed to transform a wilderness into a land of mass agriculture. The coastal region realized great crop success growing the finest indigo found in the world, thanks to the processing advancements developed by sixteen-year old Eliza Lucas Pinckney, and with wet field grown Carolina Gold rice.40 Touted as the best in the world, the long-grain rice’s secrets lay in the rich soil of the Carolinas and in the knowledge of the slaves that tended it.41 The cyclical agricultural processes mirrored those used in the Mangrove rice fields engineered along the West coast (the Rice Coast) of Africa, not in the systems found in Asia, as the planters mythically promoted through their choices of art and décor in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.42 For this reason, Lowcountry planters began preferring the slaves they purchased to have originated along this coast, especially from

36 Boles, introduction to Religion in South Carolina, Charles H. Lippy, ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 2.; Wood, 135.; Rosen, 67-69. The word negro originated with the Spanish word for black. 37 Long, 115. 38 Rosen, 17. 39 Randall M Calhoon, “Social Order,” Religion in South Carolina, Charles H. Lippy, ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 170. 40 Rosen, 21. 41 Wood, 36. 42 Judith Carney, Black Rice, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 78-82.; The idea that Lowcountry rice cultivation originated in Asia is still perpetuated in twenty-first century Charleston society, few having been educated that rice was even grown in Africa. 11 the area around , rather than the earlier preference of Angolan slaves, because Rice Coast slaves brought with them the knowledge of these fields and the technologies that made the maintenance and harvest of the crop successful.43

In the early seventeen hundreds, the initial push to survive, settle and re-engineer the land ebbed and people started paying more attention to the little things that make a ‘civilized’ society. Architectural design, religion, arts, entertainment and the reinforcement of social stratification became greater priorities in the thriving port city of Charlestown.

As early as 1702, the Anglican Church began sending missionaries to the colony to propagate the fold with the arrival of The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG).44 Although the organization’s goal was to spread the gospel among the unchurched in the colony, missionary attempts to reach slave populations went largely unrealized.45 Predictably, there were success stories. Such was the case with Thomas Harrell who baptized or converted eight or nine of eight-hundred slaves in St. Thomas Parrish in the eleven years he was there. Minister Brian Hunt’s experience was more typical. After five years in St. John’s Parrish, Hunt converted, baptized or taught catechism to not one slave out of a population of one thousand five hundred.46

There were a few ministers who made concerted efforts to convert slaves, like Harrell, the “Associates of Dr. Bray” and Francis LeJau at Goose Creek, but they often found many roadblocks standing in their way.47 One of the more formidable was the owners themselves.48 Some thought baptism would change slaves’ attitudes regarding their social function and make them less productive; baptism might also re- them into a category outside the master/slave schema. Rev. Charles Martyn of South Carolina commented on some of the baptized slaves being difficult when he made the signifying statement “[they] became lazy and proud, entertaining to high an opinion of themselves, and neglecting their daily labor.”49 The planters became more concerned with the idea that even if these ‘soulless’ slaves did indeed possess souls, conversion could lead a slave to ideas of freedom, which would be entirely unacceptable to the plantation systems and the men who ran them.50 Ministers realized that their career and material success lie in the hands of these same men, a type of earthly master whose demands somewhat

43 Phillip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998)., 72.; Carney, 90. 44 Nancy Ashmore Cooper, “Africa American,” Religion in South Carolina, Charles H. Lippy, ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 121. 45 Wood, 141.; Charles H Lippy, “Future,” Religion in South Carolina, Charles H. Lippy, ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 199-200. Episcopalians claimed they wanted to Christianize Africans, but did little to that end. Not only did tribal traditions continue, but so did Islam until the nineteenth century among slaves. 46 Wood, 141. 47 Wood, 134.. Boles, introduction to Religion in South Carolina, 4. 48 Wood, 134-135. 49 Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 123. 50 Wood, 134-135.; John B. Boles, introduction to Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord, John B. Boles, ed., (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1988), 2-3. 12 conflicted with their heavenly master. Most missionaries relinquished any hopes of slave missions. Some even became slave owners.51

As political dissatisfaction with England grew, so did the colony. By the 1730’s the slave population exceeded the numbers of the white colonists. The mid-eighteenth century introduced a wide variety of immigrants who brought their religious beliefs with them. Baptists were influential from the formation of the Carolinas and were joined by a host of Protestant churches including Presbyterians, Huguenots, Congregationalists, Lutherans and Methodists.52 The presence of these congregations and in particular a big, white meetinghouse along a one-mile stretch of road in town provided the thoroughfare with the name Meeting Street.53

It is the widespread belief that the of the 1740s-1750s solely caused the popularity of the evangelical traditions in South Carolina, but three other factors contributed to the intense evangelical growth of the period. First, there was an increase in settlers attracted to Baptist and Methodist traditions. Second, there was the increased success of Baptist and Methodist mission work directed toward slaves. Third, post-Revolutionary War anti-British sentiment provided another reason with a decline in .54 Each of these groups had opinions regarding the institution of slavery, some vehemently against it.55 The planters held enough sway over the region that, in the end, most denominations made South Carolina the exception to their rules regarding congregants’ participation in slavery.

After visiting the Lowcountry between 1736 and 1737, Charles and John Wesley became strong opponents of slavery and the slave trade.56 However, the prominent evangelical Methodist ’s views were different. The Bryan family of St. Helena’s Parish, South Carolina, was among his most fervent followers and as a result, Whitefield accommodated them by adapting his teachings to suit the area’s socio-cultural norms and signification patterns.57 Through the Bryans, Whitefield taught to the black and the white, both slave and free, that Jesus’ teachings of salvation were true for all people in such a way as to support slavery.58 During his visits to the Carolinas and Georgia between the years 1738 and 1770, Whitefield bought the Providence plantation

51 Wood, 136-137. 52 Lippy, 200.; Erskine Clarke, “Reformed Tradition,” Religion in South Carolina, Charles H. Lippy, ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 68.; Cooper, 122. 53 Clarke, “Reformed Tradition,” Religion in South Carolina, 68., The name Meeting Street comes directly from The White Meeting House established by English and New England congregations that settled in Charles Town. 54 Lippy, 200.; Cooper, 122. 55 Charles Joyner, Down by the Riverside, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 141-143. 56 Morgan, 422. 57 Alan Gallay. “The Great Awakening,” Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord. John B. Boles, ed. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1988), 20.; John B. Boles. introduction to Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord, John B. Boles, ed. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1988), 8. Morgan, 423. 58 Boles, introduction to Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord, 8. 13 and slaves in the Savannah River area as a means by which to support his Orphan House in Bethesda.59

During this time, more attention was placed on the day-to-day activities of slaves by their signifiers, especially during off-times inherent in the task-system of slavery employed in the Lowcountry. Some planters, but more often, plantation mistresses, had taken to educating select house slaves in reading, writing, and more importantly, Christianity. From 1743 to 1763, the SPG operated a mission school for slave children run by two male slave teachers the missionaries had trained.60 Slowly, new laws whittled away the few freedoms slaves had previously been allowed, such as provisional gardens, the use of skills on off time to earn a small income, learning to read, and community gatherings for feasts or other activities such as worship. By doing this, the master/slave relationship was re-enforced upon a society that increasingly allowed for the possibility of humanity within the slave population, a shift in perception that subtly weakened the mythological mindset regarding the ruling class and insinuated psychological burden upon participants. At the same time, the laws reiterated to the slaves themselves the oppression under which they existed. The was the death knell of any such freedoms for slaves in the region and, along with an overarching sense of paranoia among the citizens of South Carolina, even more oppressive laws resulted. Master/slave significations were blatantly restated.

The American Revolution ignited many changes within the newly forming nation of the . Some changes in the state of South Carolina were subtle, yet loaded with defiant meaning, such as the name change of Charles Town to Charleston in 1783.61 Other changes were more substantial. The Revolution had a profound effect on the religious landscape of the region. Membership in the Anglican Church became a liability because of its direct and undeniable ties to England, an orientation of liability. It had to change its name to the Protestant Episcopal Church and reorganize on all levels, from congregations to the national level.62 Following the Civil War, Episcopal congregation numbers declined to a single known congregation located in Charleston and the denomination has struggled in its effort to regain the prominence experienced prior to this war.63 The ever-present Baptist denominations rose in numbers and became dominant influences on society.64 Methodist and Presbyterian participation rose as well. Even with the suspicions cast upon Catholics, their numbers rose too as time passed.

59 AV Huff, “ The Evangelical Traditions II: Methodists,” Religion in South Carolina, Charles H. Lippy, ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 36.; Morgan, 582. During his visits, Whitefield also witnessed a group of South Carolina slaves gathered around a fire in the woods dancing. Morgan does not distinguish between dancing and Shouts, so it is not clear, yet possible, that Whitefield witnessed a Shout while in the colony. 60 Cooper, 122.; Wood, 187-189. Slaves were coming from an oral tradition, so reading proved to be a complex issue. 61 Wood, xvi. 62 Donald S. Armentrout, “ The Liturgical Traditions I: Episcopalians,” Religion in South Carolina, Charles H. Lippy, ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 50. 63 Armentrout, 45-55. 64 Helen Lee Turner, “The Evangelical Traditions I: Baptists,” Religion in South Carolina, Charles H. Lippy, ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 25.; Lippy, 200. 14 Toward the close of the eighteenth century, perceptions regarding slaves began changing as well. More planters accepted missionaries’ intent to spread Christianity onto their plantations with an air of ambivalence. Social discussion regarding the souls of slaves increased as did concerns regarding missionaries and the education of slaves. The increasing tendency to view slaves as human beings resulted in yet another reframing of the significations toward the slave population and the myths that held the institution together.65 However, slaves were no equals to the whites that owned them. It is interesting to note that very few missionaries ever took the time to understand what the existing beliefs of the slaves were. More often than not, such inquiries resulted in responses that surprised the inquisitor. A missionary writing on slave theology observed:

I find some of our neo-pagans have a notion of God and of a Devil, and dismal apprehensions of apparitions. Of a God that disposes absolutely to all things. For asking one day to a neo-pagan woman how she happened to be made a slave, [she] replied that God would have it so and she could not help it. I heard another saying the same thing on account of the death of her husband. And a Devil…who leads them to do mischief, and betrays them, whereby they are found out by their masters and punished.66

Such changing perceptions caused even more problems for white denominations in the region. Ideas of equality as popularized in The Declaration of Independence spurred some congregations and even denominations to denounce slavery as a sign of barbarism in society.67 This line of thinking was denounced by the governing class of South Carolina (the majority of whom were utterly reliant on the institution of slavery, either directly or indirectly, for their material success) who argued that slavery was a sign of .68 The denominations that prospered in the state compromised regarding theological positions against slavery, often disregarding anti-slavery stances all together. These theological compromises denied the opacity of slaves by perpetuating perceptions of the enslaved people that signified them as godless.

As missionizing to slaves increased, so did the planters’ concerns over the potential effect Christianity could have on their slaves’ behavior. Planters generally agreed that a properly contrived Christian education for slaves was fine as long as their business interests took priority.69 As a result, a catechism that excluded texts such as Exodus and stressed obedience and subservient behavior was developed for use to plantation slave populations. Slave owners hoped that this doctrine of submission could instill in slaves a sense of contentment regarding their situation, and faith that those who suffer on earth experience salvation in the next world.70 Ministers were concerned with

65 Armentrout, 45-48., Seventeenth and early Eighteenth century slave owners tended to resist the baptism of their slaves, afraid of the implications the ritual would have upon the legal status of the baptized individual. This attitude changed with legal clarifications made in 1712, which stated that baptism did not physically free a slave. 66 Raboteau, 122. 67 Joyner, 141-143. 68 Fox-Genovese, 197-198. 69 Wood, 134-135. 70 Joyner, 141-142. 15 the moral regulations associated with Christian society, especially regarding marital pairs and as such, preventing sex outside of marriage and/or .71

Missionaries’ attempts to educate the slaves failed for various reasons. Ministers that were not successful in communicating the ‘wondrous’ message of Christianity generally blamed a lack of time, language barriers, too many rules or too many roadblocks.72 In some instances, slave owners either put little stock in religion themselves, believed it would incite slave uprisings, or did not want to ‘waste resources’ educating their slaves in Christian tenets. Some even felt the slaves were undeserving and could not possibly comprehend the beauty of Christian teachings.73

In contrast to the days of LeJau, who denied a slave baptism because, after twenty years in South Carolina, he could not speak English and that would impede his ability to confess and participate in Christianity, thoughts regarding slave literacy changed.74 It was now understood that literacy skills such as reading and writing should be entirely avoided for fear that slaves would be able to read biblical texts in their entirety and incite a mass uprising of slaves, a genuine fear of which was on the rise after the Stono Rebellion. Access to language would diminish the power and advantage in the wordplay of signification. Laws made it illegal to teach slaves reading and writing skills, but some individuals defiantly continued such lessons. James Singleton, child of a former slave, commented on his father’s literacy:

My pappy, he had a stole ejucation. ‘At was ‘cause his misstress back in South Ca’lina helped him to learn to read an’ write, ‘fo he lef’ there. You see, in dem days, it was ag’inst de law for slaves to read.75

Although there was never a great amount of such literacy amongst the slaves, every individual that received an education had a large impact on the general population because they shared their knowledge. This slow-growing literacy of slaves hastened Americanization of Africans and allowed their own significations of their oppressors to resound more clearly in white society.

Eighteenth century Baptists were a growing population in the state. They had opposed slavery as a rule and both blacks and whites had traditionally worshipped together in South Carolina’s Baptist churches.76 However, by the nineteenth century, the Baptists grew and gained more popular support, especially among yeoman farmers and artisans who became its largest faction.77 The institution of slavery also experienced continued growth, gaining a stronger hold on the state. As a direct result of the increased acceptance of slavery and the denominations’ desire for continued growth, Baptists began

71 Wood, 141. 72 Wood, 142. 73 Boles, introduction to Religion in South Carolina, 5. 74 Wood, 176. 75 James Mellon, Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember, James Mellon, ed, (New York: Avon Books, 1990), 197. 76 Huff, 36. 77 Huff, 36. 16 openly supporting slavery. Leaders like Richard Furman justified this point of view by asserting that, “those who owned slaves were doing the will of God if they shared the story of Jesus with them.”78 With the official acceptance of slavery and the subsequent formation of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845, the overall tone of services changed from inclusion to segregation justified by the will of God as evidenced in the countless explanations and mythological constructs of leaders such as Furman.79

As with Baptists, Methodist church membership rose as their attitude toward slavery shifted. This became especially clear when they lifted a denomination wide, self- imposed 1784 ban on slave ownership by Methodists’ in 1804. As a direct result, rapidly became one of the largest denominations in South Carolina and yet their acceptance of slavery remained a source of constant irritation to the group’s governing body.80

By the nineteenth century, ministers successful at evangelizing to slaves went to great lengths to document their work in the area of slave religious education. Generally, a planter who desired religious education on his plantation employed a Baptist or Methodist clergyman to conduct religious services, especially tailored for slaves.81 In 1825, Methodist minister William Capers became responsible for supplying missionaries for slaves at the request of the owners and did so with purpose. Capers’ philosophy upheld the normative significations in relation to slaves and missionaries in his missionary/slave dynamic: “…we hold that a Christian slave must be submissive, faithful and obedient…We would employ no one in the work who might hesitate to teach thus.”82 Many of the ministers employed for this purpose traveled among many plantations, contributing greatly to the cause. Methodist pastor James L. Belin of Murrells Inlet spent a total of forty years as a slave missionary from 1819 to 1859.83 The Episcopalians of All Saint’s Parish employed rector Alexander Gleannie in 1828. The result of Gleannie’s efforts was an active slave congregation totaling five hundred twenty nine, growing from a original paltry membership of ten.84 Masters ensured attendance at services throughout the parish by calling roll before any slave could leave the building. Those not accounted for in some official fashion received punishment.85 In addition to his congregation’s scheduled services, he conducted four to six services on individual plantations per week. This usually resulted in conducting a Saturday afternoon service at a plantation within the parish and a Sunday evening service on yet another, such that Gleannie was able to visit every plantation in the parish at least once a month.86

78 Turner, 28. 79 Turner, 24-32. The policy of segregation adopted by Southern Baptists officially continued uninterrupted until the mid-twentieth century. 80 Huff, 38. 81 Blake Touchstone, “ Planters and Slave Religion,” Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord, John B. Boles, ed. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1988), 112.; Rosen, 67 & 70., Three out of four heads of household owned slaves in Charleston based on 1820 and 1840 household counts. 82 Huff, 39. 83 Touchstone, 154. 84 Touchstone, 154. 85 Touchstone, 130-133. 86 Touchstone, 154. 17 Unlike Gleannie, who moved across spaces to educate slaves, Charles Colcock Jones, founder of the Liberty County Association for the Religious Instruction of the Negroes, concentrated his efforts by writing. He asserted that the religious teachers of slaves should “confine themselves to the religious instruction of the Negroes wholly.”87 As such, these teachers were forbidden to “intermeddle with the concerns of the plantation in any manner, nor repeat abroad what their ears hear, or their eyes see on them.”88 He felt that, “a missionary may be employed to take a general supervision of the whole, occupy Sabbath stations, preach also during the week on plantations, and assist on courses of instruction.”89

Many southern theologians, like Jones and his contemporaries William Capers and Benjamin Palmer, further fulfilled the planters’ needs by developing popular catechisms tailored to the instruction of slave populations. Such slave catechisms became popular tools throughout the South for those attending to the religious education of slaves because they reinforced the proper master/slave dynamic and directly signified the position of slaves upon them.90 Armed with a slave catechism text and several books of sermons, it became possible for even planters to lead their slaves’ religious education themselves, which allowed for some expiation of guilt a planter may begin might feel regarding the institution, and a simple solution to geographic isolation. Some planters that chose this method personally conducted Sunday schools, prayer meetings and services for their slaves.91

Like those of his contemporaries, Jones’ catechism stressed a doctrine of submission in which unjust masters were to be patiently obeyed, tolerated and endured. He incorporated the message that masters and slaves held important places in society that included tremendous responsibilities.92 His instruction featured a doctrine of God very specific in its design, stressing the attributes of God such that it would serve as an influence upon the day-to-day behavior of slaves through intimidation:

Q. Is God present in every place? A. "Yes." Q. What does he see and know? A. "All things." Q. Who is in duty bound to have justice done Servants when they are wronged or abused or ill-treated by anyone? A. "The Master." Q. Is it right for the Masters to punish his servants cruelly? A. "No." Q. What command has God given to Servants, concerning obedience to their Masters?

87 Erskine Clarke, Wrestlin’ Jacob, (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1979), 25. 88 Clarke, Wrestlin’ Jacob, 25. 89 Clarke, Wrestlin’ Jacob, 25, 28. 90 Touchstone, 114-15.; Clarke, Wrestlin’ Jacob, 50., William Capers, of Charleston, completed a brief catechism for the Methodist mission to slaves in South Carolina, intended primarily for small children. Benjamin Palmer at the Congregational Church in Charleston had prepared a catechism for the Blacks in his congregation. 91 Touchstone, 115. 92 Clarke, Wrestlin’ Jacob, 32. 18 A. “Servants obey in all things your Masters according to the flesh, not in eye-service as men-pleasers, but in the singleness of heart, fearing God.” Q. What are Servants to count their Masters worthy of? A. “All honor.” Q. How are they to do their service of their Master? A. “With good will, doing service unto the Lord and not unto men.” Q. How are they to try to please their Masters? A. “Please them well in all things, not answering again.” Q. Is it right in a Servant when commanded to be sullen and slow, and answer his Master again? A. “No.”93

In the course of his work, Jones also developed a series of sermons for slave education regarding the duties of servants to earthly masters referencing biblical stories about slaves. His intent was to “inculcate respect, obedience and fidelity to masters, as duties, for the discharge of which they as servants would have to account to God in the great day.”94 For example, one of Jones’ sermons focused on the story of Abraham’s servant and model slave, Eliezer. Eliezer embodied all a good master could want: he was faithful, diligent and tended Abraham’s property with care and refused to offend God with thievery. His reward was great in both heaven and on earth, where he was the chief among Abraham’s slaves.95 In contrast, Jones drew on Gehazi, Eliezer’s servant, as a warning to all who chose to be disobedient and unfaithful slaves. An untrustworthy, lying thief, Gehazi was all that a good master could disdain and as such, God punished him for his sins by making him a leper, an outcast wanderer of the desert places. At the end of the oration, Jones warned his slave congregation that there was “no escaping God, for the Heavenly Master saw even secret sins.”96

The issue of religious education for slaves reached its zenith in 1845 when ministers and planters alike convened in Charleston to formulate a universally acceptable content. Over time, many Southerners developed an opinion of religious training as an opportunity to improve the morality of slaves. Religious educators promised obedience and orderly behavior while also providing a deterrent for lying and stealing, the last of which proved to be one of the strongest selling points for the religious instruction of slaves.97 The vast majority of the planters in attendance believed that the conversion of slaves would not only save their souls, but also improve the master-slave relationship by defining the duties of both parties as sanctioned in the Bible (as seen in the work of Jones). By clearly defining roles in this way, the planter’s financial interest would benefit through the religious encouragement of slaves, inspiring them to be honest and diligent laborers. The educational measures would simultaneously promote public safety by redirecting the slaves’ passions, and refute abolitionist criticism by demonstrating that the slavery utilized in the South was a Christian institution.98 The most striking recurrent

93 Clarke, Wrestlin’ Jacob, 31-32. 94 Clarke, Wrestlin’ Jacob, 40. 95 Clarke, Wrestlin’ Jacob, 40. 96 Clarke, Wrestlin’ Jacob, 40. 97 Touchstone, 103. 98 Touchstone, 101., The basis of this particular argument can be traced back as early as the 1820’s. It appears in its infancy in both Richard Furman’s Exposition of the Views of the Baptists Relative to the 19 theme in the argument for the religious instruction of slaves was that Christianity would make slaves happy, content, faithful and loyal, thereby promoting control and preventing rebellion. Whereas planters had once feared religious education as a mechanism that would incite rebellion, by 1845 this was rarely an issue and for many, quite the opposite.99 The content for the religious education of slaves agreed upon by those in attendance at the 1845 meeting in Charleston was accepted and subsequently spread throughout the South.100

All of this planning for proper religious education worked well for planters and the ministers who dutifully served them, but not necessarily for those that it signified. Former slave and plantation preacher Reverend Anderson Edwards once said of his experience with the topics included in slave religious education:

I’s been preaching the Gospel and farming, since slavery time. I jined the chu’ch eighty- three years ago, when I was a slave of Master Gaud. Till freedom, I had to preach what they told me to. Master made me preach to the othe niggers that the Good Book say that if niggers obey their master, they would go to Heaven. I knew there was something better for them, but I darsen’ tell them so, ‘lest I done it on the sly. That I did lots. I told the niggers--- But not so Master could hear it--- that if they keep praying, the Lord would hear their prayers and set them free.101

Colored Population of the U.S, as well as in an address by Charles Coatsworth Pinckney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, to his fellow planters regarding the wisdom of Christian training for slaves. 99 Touchstone, 106. 100 Touchstone, 101. 101 Mellon, Bullwhip Days, 191. 20 Chapter Two Signified

The pioneering colonial plantation owners of South Carolina established their agricultural system utilizing a work force of slaves that originated, for the most part, from Africa. They resorted to the myth of conquest to justify the practice of importing slave labor and thereby negated the humanity of the enslaved individuals with through significations. Signification refers to a discourse between two people(s) in which the signifier uses language to objectify someone else (the signified) to an end advantageous to the signifier, without acceptance of responsibility for the act. The resulting symbols and signs, which are always attached to words and language, represent a relationship between the signifier and the signified. Religious symbols, because of their intrinsic power and their tendency to give and spread meanings, serve to create a power relationship between significations and signs102 The Western myth of conquest provided a way to make sense of the situation the colonists found themselves in and allowed for the construction of a mindset that provided a position of power. In order to perpetuate the power that resulted from the myth of conquest, the American colonists, or conquerors, developed a cultural language that reinforced the symbols and images of the Western myth. This cultural language negated the slave’s opacity; it denied the meaning and value of the slaves own cultures and languages.

These imposed meanings dictated that their slaves were less than human, were not civilized and were not Christians and as such could not possess souls through and the establishment of the master/slave dynamic.103 Yet, as slavery grew in the colonies during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the influx of new slaves into the population, as well as the high turnover of individuals and varying economic conditions experienced by the white population, ensured the improbability of slave encounters with European forms of Christianity. Nonetheless, laws were enacted denying freedom to those slaves who converted to Christianity during this period, re-enforcing the master/slave relationship and restating the resulting significations.104 At the same time, the religious beliefs of the slaves in South Carolina went largely unregulated until the early to mid eighteenth century so long as their beliefs and practices did not interfere with the prosperity of the plantation; hence, the creation of a conditional religious tolerance between master and slave was established.105 This early signification of proved vital to the development of slave cultures, language and independent traditions, including the autonomous creations of religious beliefs and expressions.

The slaves arriving in the colony were from a variety of cultural areas that included tribal religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism. There was an early preference in the Lowcountry for slaves from Angola, but prescribed preferences shifted with the establishment of viable cash crops toward Gambia, Congo, , and with the addition

102 Long, 1-2. 103 Boles, introduction to Religion in South Carolina, 2.; Wood, 135. 104 Boles, introduction to Religion in South Carolina, 3. 105 Calhoon, 170. 21 of rice, Sierra Leone.106 Slaves, no longer part of their communities of origin and signified by their oppressor as sub-human, had to create a new identity for themselves and form a community through the process of self-identification and re-orientation. It is my belief that the Africans brought to the Sea Islands began a cult of affliction—a traditional tribal religious response to crisis—during their passage to deal with the difficulties they faced. Upon introduction to South Carolina, the atmosphere among these individuals and their oppressors ensured the creation of new religious expressions. Those individuals landing on the Sea Islands who eventually chose to embrace European- American Christianity while incorporating their own ideas and practices created a new variety of religion, or a Christian church, called Gullah. Religion, this orientation in the ultimate sense, served as a mode, a method and an opportunity to express and deal with their sense of loss and establish themselves in the world.

Practical agricultural concepts coupled with social considerations led to planter mobility and multiple land holdings.107 Planters rotated crops to rest the soil, which occasionally meant leaving one entire plantation temporarily abandoned up to a year or more. Resources, including slaves, moved to the locations where they were most useful as to maximize their contributions to overall planter wealth. The planters and their families moved frequently according to the season, land usage, epidemics and whim. Town homes and multiple plantation homes per family provided plenty of options. More often than not, Sea Island planters spent much of the year offsite because of the oppressive heat and threat of . The result was a slave population left with much less supervision than found elsewhere in the South.108

Geographic and social isolation from whites allowed Sea Island slaves the opportunity to exchange and establish an autonomously crafted plantation slave culture. The addition of the off-times inherent to the task system used in the Lowcountry, including at least a half day of time to cultivate provisional gardens among the slave quarters, sew for themselves, socialize or travel among nearby plantations, promoted exchange and growth of the communities.109 Even further, the ambivalence of outsiders to the religious activities of the community allowed for the continued development and distribution of unique religious beliefs and practices.

When slaves began adapting their lives and creating fresh methods and means to make sense of a new world, the effects touched all facets of their existence. Although it is the case that early on, slaves who chose not to reject religion continued with the beliefs and practices brought with them from their countries of origin, certain inherent changes occurred if for no other reason than because of change of location. New spaces, a lack of ritual objects and texts, new flora, new fauna, all required adjustments. Included among such developments were changes to music, song and healing practices. Changes that

106 McKever-Floyd, 156.; Carney, 90.; Opala, The Gullah: Rice, Slavery and the Sierra Leone- American Connection, The of Sierra Leone were particularly well represented in the Lowcountry.; Morgan, 72. 107 Fox-Genovese, 106. 108 Fox-Genovese, 295.,Generally, North American slaves lived close to whites and were a minority, except in the , and the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia. 109 Wood, 138. 22 affected music and song were focused in content and instrumentation. In many cases, the rhythm and of the African religious songs influenced the creation of new music that reflected the beliefs of the newly forming Gullah religion. For example, there were ceremonial drums and religious fetishes that stressed death and kinship in the Congo that are reflected in Gullah music.110

During the seventeenth century, there were two main religious figures for slaves: diviners, who were religious leaders and conjurers, and diagnosticians of evil and/or disorder.111 Like many tribal African beliefs, healing and religious beliefs were interdependent in many early slave societies.112 Once in the colonies, the traditional pharmacopeias were altered to fit the current regional resources. Out of the reciprocal information exchange regarding the healing arts among the Native American, African and European systems and the developing religious beliefs of slave communities in the Lowcountry, came the creation of root tradition.113

Root, a form of , assumes that a ritual specialist, a Root Doctor or Root herbalist, is able to manipulate a particular situation to achieve a desired end. Often compared to the Voodoo traditions of and the Caribbean or the Vodun tradition of the Yoruba people, root practice differs most notably because it lacks a defined pantheon of gods employed in rituals.114 The power source for executing a root, or manipulation of situational factors to affect an outcome, stems from a wide variety of origins. A ritual specialist can tap into the power of the spirit world using words, or powerful items, such as goofer dust (grave dirt), or though beseeching God. The root worldview assumes that there is a total coherence in the operation of the world. It is obvious to believers that events are causally linked because the outcomes are greater than accidental and less than divinely planned. Root tries to influence the various factors for good and evil, hence influencing events and people.115 Root traditions often revolve around group rituals, as well as private, individual rituals.116

There are two main types of Root practice. The first is natural, or herbal, folk medicine with its direct cause and effect influence. The second is the magico-religious, or occult, folk medicine where there exists an influence over an agent other than the doctor or patient.117 In relation to Western Medical practices, conjure, magic, alternative or folk medicine are problematic terms because they are Eurocentric and are significations in and of themselves. Within this schema, Root fits in the folk category. For example, in South

110 Pollitzer, 34. 111 Calhoon, 170-171. 112 Pollitzer, 101. 113 Wood, 120-121.; Fox-Genovese, 171. 114 Bruce Jackson, “The Other Kind of Doctor: Conjure and Magic in Black American Folk Medicine,” African-American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture, Timothy E Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau, eds, (New York: Routledge, 1997), 421, 423. 115 Jackson, 418-421.; Faith Mitchell, Hoodoo Medicine: Gullah Herbal Remedies, (Columbia: Summerhouse Press, 1999), 35. 116 Jainie Gilliard-Moore, “A James Island Childhood: Among Families of the Sea Islands of Charleston, South Carolina,” Sea Island : African Presence in the Carolinas and Georgia, M. A. Twinning and Keith E. Baird, eds. (Trenton: Africa World Press, Inc., 1991), 111. 117 Jackson, 425, 426. 23 Carolina it is legal to practice Root by conjure on someone or to reverse a conjure, even if the result is death, a signification that negates the verity of the practice by willfully ignoring the fact that to conjure is practicing a form of medicine. Yet, to administer herbal Root remedies is illegal because it is considered practicing medicine without a license and is a punishable offense.118

To the Root believer, illness has three distinct origins, each of which requires the appropriate attention and specialist. A natural illness stems from natural causes such as a cold or injury and is generally best treated by an herbalist. Spiritual illness is the result of a misdeed on the part of the individual and is best attended by a ritual specialist such as a member of the religious community or a Root Doctor. Occult illness is usually the result of a root placed on the individual at the request of another person. In these cases, a root doctor is the only effective means of healing the afflicted.119

Through Root, slaves expressed their beliefs and asserted their own religious practices while adapting them to fit within the context of slavery. This type of religious activity continued without much interference by whites until the early to mid eighteenth century. At that point, missionaries turned their intentions toward Christianizing slaves and the Anglican planter elite became increasingly concerned that conversion to Christianity could lead to ideas of freedom among converts, a direct challenge to the myth they upheld. Although the earliest of attempts met little success, as time passed, more slaves began accepting Christianity, or at least a signified version of it created for them. Missionaries also became more aware of what obstacles they faced regarding their new congregants. For instance, some slave communities threw parties in their quarters toward the end of their time off, often placing such gatherings on Saturday night.120 Missionaries complained that such free time would be better spent on sanctioned religious activities. As a result, slaves began losing their free time, but not necessarily to focus it on religion—to the chagrin of many ministers. Instead, masters put slaves to work during such times.121

As slave communities developed and more slaves arrived in the Lowcountry from the Rice Coast of Africa, the secret society concept brought with them helped shape aspects of the culture and religion.122 Throughout much of Africa, a highly developed sense of law recorded within the oral traditions of tribal lore exists; Secret Societies like the and Sande Societies within Sierra Leone put forth religious, societal and ethical sanctions, serving a quasi-governmental role.123 The Mende people, who were well represented in South Carolina, supported Poro groups.

118 Roger Pinckney, Blue Roots, (St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 1998), 50. 119 Mitchell, 35. 120 Fox-Genovese, 167. 121 Wood, 139.; Morgan, 582. 122 Opala; Wood, xiv,170-171., Between 1700 and 1775, more than forty percent of all slaves brought to the British mainland colonies arrived in South Carolina. Quarantined for a short time on Sullivan’s Island, the arrival experience for African slaves entering South Carolina was culturally and linguistically similar to the experience of Europeans arriving in New York City as immigrants. 123 Little, The Mende of Sierra Leone, (New York: The Humanities Press, 1967), 8.; Opala; Pollitzer, 30. 24 Poro societies are individual to their community, yet function ritualistically in the same way across the country.124 Fundamentally, the Poro is a religious group that serves the tribe in a checks and balance capacity with the tribal chief, a secular ruler, analogous to the way that judicial system of the United States provides checks and balances to the presidency.125 Comprised of men of the community who have come of age, including the chief, the Poro is responsible for matters of justice and specific tribal rituals that involve the spiritual realm.126 Any involvement in ritual by the chief is only in a ceremonial capacity, as he holds no additional weight in Poro matters than his counterparts.127 Unlike the United States justice system, however, the Poro is inherently religious, as are its members. In essence, all positions within a tribe are religious in some way because throughout much of tribal Africa, to be a part of the community is to be religious.128 All involved in Poro are sworn to secrecy regarding every aspect, including membership. Meetings occur in the community’s sacred bush, usually a clearing surrounded by trees.129 Ritual specialists attain their position with experience using special ritual objects during group proceedings and as a result are usually tribal elders. Poros convene in response to a specific tribal issue or event and disband when the issue is resolved.130 Such types of community groups undoubtedly served as at least a partial model for the Invisible Church gatherings and functions of Gullah.

As outsiders became more concerned with the activities of slaves, especially where off times were concerned, slaves became increasingly creative in hiding their actions. In many cases, what they wanted most to hide from the prying eyes of masters and missionaries were the religious gatherings they held. The creative response to this problem was the Invisible Church. Held in clearings within the bush, like the Poro, these secret meetings allowed slaves the opportunity to openly express themselves religiously in secretive environment. Wet blankets hung on branches to muffle the sounds of music and song from the all-night meetings that dispersed only when slaves could, “Let mornin’ star greet you on yo prayin’ groun’.”131 Invisible church meetings occurred throughout the colonies in slave communities and often share many similarities. Yet, the specific practices and beliefs that were associated with a particular community, region or religious orientation differentiate groups from one another. Community rules and rulings, rituals, songs and stories developed out of these gatherings. It is within the Invisible Church that the Gullah church actually formed.

124 Little, 244, 247. 125 Little, 185., The lack of the chief’s religious attributes is balanced by the public presence and support of the Poro during ceremonies. In return for the Poro’s support, the chief agrees to uphold all Poro interests in the event that they come into conflict with the interests of others. The Poro recognize his invaluable service and his position as chief at every session held by the society, usually the services of a society initiate on his rice farm. No one can come to power regardless of lineage, without the Poro’s support. 126 Little, 184. 127 Little, 184. 128 McKever-Floyd, 155. 129 Little, 185, 244. 130 Little, 185, 244. 131 Cooper, 123. 25 According to historian Bernard Powers, during slavery there was an established slave religion that focused its eschatological hopes not in The Book of Daniel or The Revelation of John as the white denominations did, but on the forbidden Christian text of The .132 Through consciously focusing their eschatological hopes in this text, slaves created a Gullah theology that provided powerful agency to the community by promising a restructuring of the world; salvation promised a time when they would be free from the bonds imposed on them by their oppressors. It was a conscious commentary on the master/slave relationship and signification upon white culture while serving as a means to make sense of their situation in the world.

The Gullah church is essentially an orally transmitted tradition that elegantly entwines prayer, music, song, dance and storytelling into a cohesive whole. Consequently, it emphasizes the importance of the rhetorical skills of the church leaders. Rhetorical skills were often well developed among the Sea Island people because they were a mark of being properly educated within the community.133 Memorized Christian Biblical passages, coupled with moral narratives of various origins form the sacred texts of Gullah oral tradition.

By stimulating the congregation’s imaginations with the enthusiastic relation of vivid narratives especially meant to elicit active group participation, Gullah rituals emphasize the role of the congregation. In the practice of the call-and-response style of worship, the celebrant calls a statement out and the congregation either repeats or replies loudly and often rhythmically.134 Such involvement provides a mode of religious expression and provides all congregants with an active and vital role in the proceedings.

Prayer, especially in the call-and-response style, is an important element of Sea Island religious ritual. None of the tradition’s prayers are written; the person who offers it creates all of the prayers with individual purpose and the ability to offer public prayer is a special rhetorical gift. Church members trained in the prayer-giving tradition perform their designated tasks at specified times during the service.135 These chanted prayers are as short as a few seconds and as long as half an hour. They are inspired by those skilled in the uses of alliteration, word order and other devices that promote a rhythmic beat to stimulate spontaneous appreciative exclamations from the congregation. This style of prayer is also found in various West African tribes.136

Singing, an activity believed to benefit the spirit, body and soul, is an integral part of both the daily life of Gullah culture and the ritual life of the Gullah church. “Singing is as close to worship as breathing is to life…They reflect an old African dictum: ‘The Spirit will not descend without song.’”137 The traditional African circle dances brought to

132 Powers, 189. 133 Patricia Jones-Jackson, When Roots Die: Endangered Traditions on the Sea Islands, (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1987),77. 134 Jones-Jackson, 77.; Interview with Phillip Ridgegill, , 14 September 1998. 135 Jones-Jackson, 77.; Mada P. Johnston, ed., Songs of Zion, preface by William B. McClain. (Nashville: Abington Press, 1981), 73. 136 Jones-Jackson, 78.; Johnston, 75. 137 Johnston, ix. 26 South Carolina with the slaves served as a framework for the creation of the “Shout” tradition of the Sea Islands.138 When the drums used in the traditional circle dances were outlawed by the plantation owners as a means of social control, intricate hand clapping and foot stomping patterns were developed to create the steady beat.139

Even as this new musical style formed, served as the music of the Gullah Invisible Church. According to Wyatt Tee Walker, spirituals served as, “…the fuel of the ‘invisible church’…constantly fed by the oral tradition.”140 They illustrate the principles and worldview of the believers, forming within the oral tradition, a theological basis for the system. This basis asserts a theology of the oppressed by asserting that, “God is on the side of the oppressed.”141 The materials used to create the texts of the spirituals came from nature, personal and community experiences, and narratives, featuring recurring themes of suffering, death and salvation.142 Originators of the hymns drew heavily on the Old Testament, texts intentionally excluded from the religious education of the slaves by their oppressors, and as such served as a signification upon their oppressors. W.E.B. Dubois opined that this Sea Island music is, “the most original and beautiful expression of human life and longing yet born on American soil.”143

Like white Christians, Gullah participants believe in a tripartite division of the self. However, the Gullah construct of self consists of an earth-bound body, a wandering spirit and a heavenly-bound soul.144 This differed from the Pauline-Christian construct promoted by white Christianity of the body of mortal flesh, the rational mind, or soul, and the immortal spirit raised to heaven.145 In Gullah religion, the heaven-bound soul is quite different from the earth-bound body and spirit. The spirit, in addition to aiding the functionality and existence of otherworldly entities within the Gullah system, is able to influence the living through a variety of means. Patricia Jones-Jackson, in her text When Roots Die: Endangered Traditions on the Sea Islands, wrote:

Islanders have delineated this three-part concept very precisely. A very religious Sea Island man described it to me as follows: Listen to me good now: when you die in this world, you see, the…the…the…soul of a man go home to the kingdom of God, but your spirit still’s here on earth… And if you was… the devil in all your days… your spirit, after you dead, your spirit can do the same thing. Your soul up there, but your spirit de right down here with the body… And that’s the one gone… gone do the effect to

138 God’s Gonna Trouble the Water, (Beaufort: WJWJ Beaufort, SC and SC ETV, 1997) Video.; Johnston, 75.; Pollitzer, 115., The term “shout” could be related to the Arabic word “shaut” which means to around the Kaaba on the pilgrimage to Mecca until exhausted. 139 God’s Gonna Trouble the Water.; Jones-Jackson, 30-31.; Johnston, 75. 140 Johnston, 73. 141 Johnston, x. 142 Johnston, 75-76.; Morgan 591. 143 Cooper, 125. 144 Jones-Jackson, 24. 145 The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books NSRV, Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy eds. (New York, Oxford University Press, 1994), “A Letter of Paul to the Romans” 7:21-25, 8: 1-4, “The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians” 15:35-58. 27 you. You see now…now that’s, that’s why I say this now. A lot of people don’t believe. Say, say…. say is not . Is ghost there.146

Gullah ritual specialists occasionally invoke such earth-bound spirits to aid them in contacting both good and bad spirits for the successful completion of Root rituals.147 As in much of Africa, on the Sea Islands, there exists no line between magic, healing and religion.148 According to Pollitzer, who applies the syncretic theory to Gullah, African religion features one remote, high, creator god and strong belief in ancestorhood. People like the Yoruba attribute complementary status to gods outside of their own pantheon. is therefore rational in light of the worldview to the degree that blacksmiths, the most highly specialized artisans, were attributed with magical powers that led them to be both respected and feared.149 They were highly regarded and the most often consulted members of their communities.

Like Yoruba Vodun, the Gullah church features a creator God as well. Ancestors are remembered and are able, when proper death rituals are not followed, to interact with the physical world. Root practice holds magic as part of a rational worldview where those who can manipulate causal relationships are held in high regard. A belief of Africans like the Yoruba facilitated the creation of Root, but unlike Pollitzer posits, they are two different traditions. In Root, the Root doctor, not the blacksmith, was the pivotal figure for Gullah slaves. For some Christian slaves, preachers replaced the need for Root doctors, yet they remained important community figures.150 Root practitioners have diverse roles. They serve as spiritual advisors, herbal healers for illnesses of both body and spirit and, depending on personal orientation, a root doctor can deal with an unlimited amount of situations.151 In the Root practitioner’s world, God or nature causes natural afflictions whereas forces such as magic cause afflictions that are unnatural.152 The practitioners’ power can originate from various sources such as education, god or the devil.153 For practitioners within the Gullah church, power originates from the Trinity, making the power base one of Christian origin.

Not all Root doctors are associated with Christianity or the Gullah church and all are diverse in their individual range of practices. Some will fix, or afflict, individuals with an ailment on the request of a patron. An individual is a Root Man or Root Woman if he or she utilizes roots for harm rather than healing. The preventative to being fixed is usually contained in a small bag, sometimes called a bodyguard, which functions as a protective amulet.154 Salt and sulfur may also serve as fix protection.155 Personal items connected with the body are dealt with carefully, especially hair and nail clippings,

146 Jones-Jackson, 25. 147 Jones-Jackson, 24-25.; Mitchell, 35. 148 Pollitzer, 143. 149 Pollitzer, 29, 34. 150 McKever-Floyd, 158. 151 Interview with Phillip Ridgegill, College of Charleston, 14 September 1998. 152 Gilliard-Moore, 112-113. 153 Jackson, 426. 154 Gilliard-Moore, 112-113. 155 Gilliard-Moore, 115. 28 because these kinds of items can be used in fixing an individual.156 For example, Sea Islanders believe that leaving clothes overnight on a clothesline leaves too much of an opportunity to someone who wishes to harm you by using the items in a fixing spell.157 As a result, many unique preventative measures developed and have remained a part of the daily lives of Sea Islanders, as seen in the example of Janie Gilliard Moore who wrote long after she had left the area, “After combing my hair, I still would not carelessly discard the combings, but would burn them.”158

That said, many slaves were not believers in Root. Many former slaves disregarded the practice as Sabe Rutledge did by saying, "Conjur? Wouldn't turn a hucks bread for 'em. (Give a crust.)”159 Some denials attributed events to acts of God, as Sarah Brown did in her account:

No, Lord, I never believe nothin bout dat but what God put here. I hear some people say dey was conjure, but I don' pay no attention to dey talk. Dey say somebody poison em for sometin dey do, but dere ain' nobody do dat. God gwine to put you down when he get ready. Ain' nobody else do dat.160

Still, others outright denied its existence, especially those from outside the Sea Islands. Those who were not personally acquainted with conjure had incontestable opinions of those who were and such significations were the norm outside of Gullah culture. There was awareness among many in the Midlands and upstate of South Carolina that conjure practitioners were concentrated in the Lowcountry and Sea Islands, and they avoided people from the area for that reason. Former slave George Woods shared such an opinion with an interviewer, who recorded of the conversation:

He also stated he had never heard of anybody being "conjured" either. He said that all the niggers in his section were scared of the niggers from way down in South Carolina, for their reputation as conjurers was against them, so they always fought shy of them and didn't have anything to do with the "niggers from way down in South Carolina.161

Gullah, being an oral tradition, has a rich tradition of folklore. The topics of the stories are of a wide variety and include popular topics such as agriculture, Root remedies, and religion. Sierra Leone holds a strong connection to their development and there are important Mende influences among the ritual and cultural elements featured.162

156 Gilliard-Moore, 112.; interview with anonymous, College of Charleston, 22 March 1999. 157 Gilliard-Moore, 112. 158 Gilliard-Moore, 108.; Roberta Hughes Wright and Wilber B. Hughes III, Lay Down Body, (New York: Visible Ink Press, 1996), 101-102.; same idea from interview with anonymous, College of Charleston, 22 March 1999. 159 search.ancestry.com/cgi- bin/sse.dll?ti=0&server=search&searchengine=sse.dll&db=slavnarr&database ID= 4342&f7=&f5=&f4=South%20Carolina&f6=conjure&Title=Slave+Narratives 160 search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?&db=slavnarr&gs=&srvr=search&ti=0&se=sse.dll&searchengine= sse.dll&server=search&database id=4342&databasename=slavnarr&f7=g4&type=p&title=slave+narratives &gss=angs&fh=3060 161 http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?&db=slavnarr&gs=&srvr=search&ti=0&se=sse.dll&search engine=sse.dll&server=search&databaseid=4342&databasename=slavnarr&f7=g5&type=p&title=slave+ narratives&gss=angs&fh=430 162 Pollitzer, 125. 29 These tales have distinct influences from both African and European sources, yet illuminate the values and morals of the particular slave communities they serve.163 These stories intend to entertain as well as educate the audience and often serve as socio- political commentary regarding their place in the world and how it operates. Such commentaries deal with the master/slave relationship in a satirical way and often signify whites and their culture.

In addition to people and personified animals, Gullah stories feature an ensemble of supernatural entities. Haints, Hags, Jack Mullatters and Plat-Eyes are the most interesting of them. Gullah Haints, or Haunts, are the spirits of the dead that return to trouble the living, analogous to the Haitian Zombie or the Zumbi of the Congo.164 Characteristic red faces, long hair and long robes as well as the ability to pass through matter and to appear most often during full moons make them quite recognizable.165 Burial rituals practiced by the Gullah were structured in the hopes of preventing this sort of encounter.166

To believers, the color blue possesses the power to ward off spirits and entities such as Haints. The dregs of Indigo dye from boiling pots were the first source of blue stain for window and door decorations. Application on house trim, especially windows and doorways, is a protection aimed at warding off bad luck or the evil spirits tempted to enter through the portals.167 Eventually, the color appeared in Gullah graveside decorations as well.168 Today, Sherwin-Williams even produces a shade of paint called ‘.’

Sea Island Hags are individuals with the ability to become invisible.169 Although they are invisible, they feel like a piece of raw meat to the touch.170 There are two main types: Hag-Hags and slip-skin Hags.171 Hag-Hags are unembodied, total spirit entities that roost during the day.172 Slip-skin Hags are usually older women that leave their skins behind at night, slipping them off like gloves and storing them in drawers or closets for safekeeping. Some say that hags are elderly family members who want to get back at a person for wronging or annoying them.173 Hags typically hide their skins under staircases, by backdoors, or under trees. Once caught, the Hag may be destroyed by burning in a barrel of tar.174 Mrs. Janie Hunter said of hags:

163 Fox-Genovese, 295. 164 Joyner, 150. 165 Joyner, 151-152. 166 Joyner, 152.; Jones-Jackson, 26. 167 God’s Gonna Trouble the Water.; Pinckney, 72.; interview with anonymous, College of Charleston, 22 March 1999. 168 Pinckney, 72. 169 Gilliard-Moore, 113. 170 Pinckney, 77. 171 Pinckney, 76. 172 Pinckney, 76-77. 173 Hughes Wright and Hughes, 21. 174 Joyner, 151. 30 But hags, that’s real. When you get to old age, you turn a hag. Hags come to your house and hag your children. Children can’t sleep, or a hag take somebody child and put ‘em under the bed. Sometime a hag sit on you and keep you from getting up, try to smother you.

But you could tell a hag. I heard my old people say, if you want to tell a hag, put a broom ‘cross your door. If that’s a hag, he going to take up that broom, ain’t going step across it.

If a hag bother you, use salt and pepper. Sprinkle either by your bed or ‘cross your door and they won’t come in. The salt burn their skin.175

Theories concerning Hags’ nocturnal hagging activities vary, with one common element being that the victim feels paralyzed by a heavy weight on his or her chest, as seen in Mrs. Hunter’s account.176 These theories range from a hag simply “riding” her victim, to hags sucking the blood of sleeping victims, causing them to cry out. In some instances, blood sucking Hags sell the blood they gather for a profit. This Hagging-for- profit belief led to the label of Hag for many a cash-strapped neighbor who spoke frequently about visits to distant places.177

A dim light left on during the night can prevent a hag from entering the room.178 To keep hags from riding, sleeping on one’s back with all the windows closed will help.179 Hags seem to be obsessed with counting, so a kitchen sieve placed over the keyhole of a closed door causes a Hag to stop and count all the holes in the sieve as she passes through the hole. Notorious for frequently loosing count and starting over, the sieve prevents the Hag from riding because she will keep counting until dawn, or day- clean, and have to leave.180 Matchsticks left on the floor or newsprint on the wall achieves the same effect.181

Hags will continue hagging until caught. A surefire way to do this is to salt and pepper a Hag’s skin while she is out of it.182 This shrinks the skin, so when she returns she cannot fit back in her skin or it becomes too itchy. A root doctor armed with incense or a specialized powder can also ward them off.183

A Hag carrying a lantern on a journey becomes a Jack Mullater, possibly coming from the name Jack-o-Lantern. Jack Mullaters generally do not bother other travelers since they have limited time to get back and forth before day clean, but they can do it faster than humans can because they fly. Never follow a Jack Mullater because they can sense one’s presence and lead one into danger.184

175 Guy and Candie Carawan, Ain’t You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?, (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1966), 108. 176 Gilliard-Moore, 113.; Joyner, 150.; Carawan, 108. 177 Hughes Wright and Hughes, 21. 178 Joyner, 151. 179 Hughes Wright and Hughes, 101-102. 180 Joyner, 151. 181 Jackson, endnotes #26, 430.; Interview with Joann Diaz, College of Charleston, 18 January 1999. 182 Joyner, 151. 183 Pinckney, 76. 184 Pinckney, 76. 31 Most feared of all the Gullah entities are Plat-eyes. They are malicious spirits capable of shape shifting. Often taking the form of animals or people, Plat-eyes lure their victims into a seemingly safe situation to deftly rob them of their senses. Found in and around crossroads and graveyards, or streets where dead bodies have crossed, they wait to manipulate unsuspecting victims.185 Mr. James Mackey describes his encounter with a Plat-eye:

Some people died, their spirit walk around. If a person died happy, they don’t bother you. But, people died bad, well, they’ll knock you off your foot.

One almost knock me off my foot one night. I was coming out just about dusk-dark and something come around me like a long black snake—tie around me. It shoot up and I ain’t feel like I was onto the ground at all. Only way I came back in this world , a dog smell my scent and that dog bark. Didn’t for that, I’d been gone.186

There are various beliefs surrounding the origins of Plat-eyes, but most believe that they are mischievous, permanent members of the spirit world out to exact retribution or serve Root doctors. Another possible origin is that they are the dead, who face special circumstances. For instance, when the pirate Stede Bonnet would bury treasure, he executed the men who actually buried the treasure, leaving their bodies to scare off thieves. Their spirits would scare off anyone who came near by taking the form of headless hogs and the like.187 A mixture of gunpowder and sulfur is a known protection against Plat-eyes because the odor repels them.188 They are also fond of whiskey and people sometimes carry a pint of whiskey while they travel so that they can pour a little out if they encounter a Plat-eye, since it will stop to lap it up and allow the individual to escape.189

An absence of belief in conjure did not mean an absence of belief in the power of the spirit world. Hector Godbold of Marion County, South Carolina recalled some encounters his wife, Maggie, had with spirits:

Ain' near believe in none uv dem charms people talk 'bout an ain' know nuthin' 'bout no conjuring neither, but I know dis mucha en dat uh sperit sho slapped Maggie (his wife) one night 'bout 12 o'clock. Den annuder time me an her wuz comin' home from uh party one night en I hab uh jug uv sumptin dere wid me an Maggie ax me fa it. Say sumptin wuz followin' a'ter her. Da next t'ing I know I hear dat jug say guggle, guggle, guggle. I look back en she been pourin' it out on da ground. She say she do dat to make da sperit quit followin' her. Dat sperit sho' been dere cause I see dat licker when it disappear dere on de ground wid me own eyes.190

Such entities in story served important purposes in Gullah society. While many of the tales revealed the values and morals of the communities they served, they also functioned as a means of social control. This was accomplished by outlining socially acceptable behaviors and values largely through the prohibition of activities.

185 Pinckney, 83. 186 Carawan, 106. 187 Pinckney, 82. 188 Joyner, 150, 152-153. 189 Pinckney, 83. 190 newdeal.feri.org/asn/asn10.htm 32 Slaves were reluctant to convert from their traditional beliefs to those of Christianity, but the mid-eighteenth century continued to see an increase in the number of those who began attending Christian churches.191 The differences in African tribal traditions and Christianities present on the Sea Islands created an atmosphere of ritual diversity very similar to the pervading sense of religious plurality found in Charleston.192

In the beginning, the praise meetings took place in the woods, or in secret places, for the safety of the community. Before the 1820’s, it was illegal for slaves to congregate on their own, especially for worship. The limited Christian education of the slaves in the white churches mixed with their religious enthusiasm led to the creation of their own Gullah ceremonies during their secret meetings and was a signifying response to the religious significations directed toward them by white society. By excluding non- members of their personal religious communities from communion, they were able to assert themselves as a separate denomination unto themselves.193 These slave societies were “invisible churches.” Controlled from within, each society possessed an organized structure, authority over themselves and a sense of social cohesion that members carried everywhere they went. Membership granted full assimilation into the community. The Gullah practice of close communion, or being in a close relationship with both God and community, was important to the group. It reminded individuals of fellowship and member responsibilities, similar in nature to the primary function of the Poro and Sande secret societies.194 These secret societies, as we have previously explored, served their communities in a capacity of socialization, judiciary practices, fellowship and unity in the face of community difficulties.

Praise meetings in the Invisible Church occurred twice a week and were a time of song, prayer, and shouts. Here, the transcendent God of Christianity, African concepts of the gods and healing and the rhythmic songs of the African religious traditions allowed slaves to create a tradition that filled a void left by the religious meetings of the white churches.195 Former slave Emily Dixon gave her reasoning for the secret religious gatherings when she said:

On Sundays, us would git tergether in de woods an’ have worship. Us could go to de white folks church, but us wanted ter go whar us could sing all de way through, an’ hum ‘long, an’ shout— yo’ all know, jist turn’ loose lak.196

The Great Awakenings made the white religions more attractive to slaves. Changing perceptions about slaves now granted that slaves possessed souls and might be educable. A variety of methods for slave religious education arose and participation was compulsory. Baptist and Methodist groups were attractive because they stressed religious experience in worship. The religious zeal and exuberance generated by the Great

191 Boles. introduction to Religion in South Carolina , 5. 192 Joyner, 141. 193 Margaret Washington Creel, A Peculiar People: Slave religion and community culture among the , (New York: New York University Press, 1988), 295-296.; God’s Gonna Trouble the Water. 194 Creel, 296-297.; Little, 183, 243. 195 God’s Gonna Trouble the Water. 196 Mellon, Bullwhip Days 187-188. 33 Awakening led leaders like John Wesley to create songs for congregations that were upbeat, energetic, accessible to all Christians, and especially appealing to African Americans.197 The adaptations generated by the Great Awakenings added to the religious and emotional experiences of the community. As a result, religious enthusiasm became increasingly important Gullah the congregations’ religious practices.198

Additionally, the Great Awakenings contributed to later growth within the Gullah church. Methodists in the area were fervent followers of inspiring ministers, including Anglican Calvinist George Whitefield during his visit to the region. The religious enthusiasm of the white Protestants and their fiery sermon styles were appealing to the Gullah expression of religiosity and enhanced their own practice of shouts and call- response prayers in worship.199 Influenced by the messages of missionaries that preached the Christian gospel to them, slaves that did not reject religion altogether and had not fully embraced the forms of Christianity presented to them as a whole, had the invisible church as another viable outlet for religious expression.

Unlike the fire and brimstone style of the evangelical movement, Gullah sermons are especially full of the call-and-response type prayers that explain situations from a different perspective, a perspective of explanation and hope.200 The following is an excerpt from this style of sermon documented in When Roots Die by Jones-Jackson. It was given by Reverend Renty Pinckney of the New Jerusalem AME Church on Wadmalaw Island, South Carolina, July 1980:

God is the Bread of Life God will feed you when you get hungry Oh, yes! I know he will. All right! Yeah. Amen! Yes sir! Look on the mountain Beside the hill of Galilee My Lord! Watch his disciple Riding on the sea Yeah! Uh huh! Tossing by the wind and rain Yeah. Come up Going over the sea of temptation Uh hum Brother, I don’t know But I begin to think In this Christian life Yes! Sometime you gone be toss Yes, yeah! 201

Coupled with these call-and-response prayers are music and "shout" rituals, the combination vital to Gullah religious celebrations.202 During call-and-response prayer, the celebrant calls out a statement to which the congregation replies loudly and

197 Johnston, 1. 198 Johnston, 1-2. 199 Boles, introduction to Religion in South Carolina, 7. 200 Interview with anonymous, Medical University of South Carolina, 23 February 1999. 201 Jones-Jackson, 91. 202 Interview with Phillip Ridgegill, College of Charleston, 14 September 1998. 34 rhythmically.203 The ideal prayer reflects the call-and–response style and may be incorporated or segue into the tradition’s shouts.

Shout rituals often begin at or toward the closing of the minister’s sermon. This ritual within a ritual begins at a slow tempo with a soft sound and gradually increases to a loud, frenetic pace. Mrs. Isabel Simmons said of learning to shout:

My daddy teach we how to sing, teach we how to shout, teach we how to go fast, teach we how to go slow. And then going to meeting, or later going to church, he’ll teach we how to behave yourself when we get out to different place, before we leave home.204

The participants’ role is to sing, clap to the beat and at the same time shuffle their feet to the music, moving in a counter-clockwise circle. Shouting is not considered dancing because the participants’ feet never cross each other. If the feet cross, the activity becomes dancing and is then considered secular or “for fun” and not reverent worship of God.205 The participants attempt to keep up with the boisterous beat for the entirety of the shout, which ends when the congregation can no longer keep up with the pace.206 Mr. James Mackey discusses the shout’s effect on the mind and body:

That’s so much the most thing I could do—shout. I’ll tell you, with the spirit of God, you don’t care what pain you got. You forget about that when you shout. When I going out, I feel so painful I scarcely don’t go. But I say to myself, just as well if I go now, ‘cause will come a day when the limbs fail me.207

Shout rituals are reminiscent of the drumming and dancing rituals seen in the African cults of affliction. In modern times, congregations reserve shouts for special occasions, but remnants linger in the swaying and foot changing motions of some church congregations.208

In the invisible churches, an initiation rite into Christianity and community developed in conjunction with Christian full-immersion baptism. A slave’s conversion experience to the Gullah religious community included a seeking prior to baptism, an experience similar to that practiced in initiation rites by African Poro and Sande societies, symbolizing the death of the person that was and the birth of the person to be.209 Seeking involved a solitary journey into the wilderness, guided by a spiritual leader of the community. This journey included a prolonged period of prayer and meditation that induced an ecstatic trance state during which the seeker often conversed with natural

203 Jones-Jackson, 31.; Johnston, 73,. E. Franklin Frazier said that, “From the beginning of religious expression among the slaves,…preaching on the part of the leader was important. This preaching consisted of singing sacred songs which have come to be known as the Spirituals.” 204 Carawan, 74. 205 God’s Gonna Trouble the Water.; Hughes Wright and Hughes, 2. 206 Jones-Jackson, 30-31. 207 Carawan, 71. 208 God’s Gonna Trouble the Water. 209 Joyner, 161.; Creel, 277-293.; God’s Gonna Trouble the Water. 35 objects and God.210 When the seeker returned from this journey, the individual described the experience to the spiritual leader of the congregation.211 Former slave Ophelia Jemison described part of her conversion experience:

When I been converted, I went to Hebben in de sperrit an’ see wid de eye ob fait’. I done been dere. Hebben is as white as snow. God an’ de Holy Ghost, dey is one ‘an set at a big table wid de book stretch’ out befo’ ‘em. God’s two eyes jes’ lak two big suns shining, an’ he hair lak lamb’s wool. I walk in dere an’ look ober he shoulder. He had a long gold pen, an’ writ down de name’ ob de people down on de ert yet, an’ when he call de roll up dere in he own time, he know dem.

Oh, I joicing! I joicing! Neber de lak befo’. An angel tek me an’ show me de stars, how dey hand up dere by a silver chord, an’ de moon jest’ a ball ob blood, but I ain’t know how it hold up, an’ de sun on de rim ob all dese, goin’ round and ‘round, an’ Christ settin’ in a rocking chair ober de sun. Gabriel an’ Michael was wid ‘im---one on dis side, an’ one on de odder---holding de laws. I see eberyt’ing jes’ lak I say. Sweet Jesus, I hope I reach dat place I see.

When I was seeking de Lord, befo’ I converted, he place me in hell to convince me. I stay down dere mos’ a hour. Den I knowed dere a hell. Hell one turrible place. What de wicked do on dis ert, it jes’ lak dat in hell---cussing, shooting, fighting one anodder---but dey, being serrits, cain’t do any hurt. De fire down dere is a big pit ob brimstome a-roaring an’ a-roaring. It bigger dan Charleston, seem lak. I see de souls biling in de pit ob brimstone. Oh! God hab mercy on my soul. I’s a hahd believer. Neber did I t’ink dere could be a hell. But I know now, ef you don’ pray, hell go’ be you’ home. It no flower bed ob ease down dere. What you sow in wicked doings you sure reap down dere.212

If the seeker's “coming through,” or religious experience, was considered acceptable by the spiritual leaders they were then prepared for baptism. All accepted seekers prepared for the ritual by wearing the most dirty, worn clothing available and rags on their heads.213 Next was an oral examination before the congregation, a ritual conducted by the spiritual leader, or elder. The most popular examination question topics included prayer, worship, beliefs and practices. Upon passing the examination, the elders deemed the seeker ready for the next ritual step, the water burial.214

Water burial rituals took place on Sunday, during communion at a creek or river with family and friends for support. After being acknowledged as ready, the seekers entered the water while the congregation sang hymns on shore. The spiritual leader immersed the seekers in the water individually and they returned to shore.215 Next, the cleansed seekers dressed in white ritual cloaks, worn for the duration of the ritual, signifying rebirth in Christ and birth into the congregation.216

The entire congregation, including the new initiates, returned to the church where the baptism ritual was completed. This ceremony is similar to the traditional African crossing of the water in its initiatory qualities into society while utilizing the death-and-

210 Morgan, 636-649. 211 Joyner, 161.; Creel, 277-293.; God’s Gonna Trouble the Water. 212 Mellon, Bullwhip Days, 192-3. 213 Joyner, 161.; Creel, 277-293. 214 Creel, 277-293. 215 Creel, 277-293.; God’s Gonna Trouble the Water. 216 Creel, 277-293.; God’s Gonna Trouble the Water.; interview with Sadie B Green, 21 January 1999. 36 rebirth imagery of the traditional Christian baptism.217 Although it is a less popular practice now, some congregations still practice seeking as a means of initiation and preparation for baptism.218

Another important rite of passage, marriage, took place on plantations between slaves, yet went unrecognized in the state of South Carolina, as another reflection of the societal organization of master/slave that signified slaves as lesser people.219 Within the slave community, marriage marked a ritual progression to the next level in the life cycle, linked with the idea of ancestorhood, and occurred regardless of the white position on the matter and was a signification from the slave communities. The ritual usually included the couple jumping over a broomstick as a sign of union.220 Marriages among slaves took several forms. In the case of Will Dill’s parents, their wedding ceremony consisted solely of jumping over a broomstick:

“Uncle" Will said that his father and mother were married by a "jack-leg" preacher who, when told that they wanted to get married, had them both to jump backwards and forwards over a broom. He then told them that they were man and wife.221

Christmas was a popular time for marriages and clergymen occasionally conducted them as a symbolic gesture, even though the unions would not be recognized. Predictably, plantation owners or missionaries performed marriages conducted on the plantations. Occasionally, African American preachers performed the rite, as in the case of George Woods’ wedding:

Asked about marriages among the slaves, he said the ceremony was performed by some "jack- legged" colored preacher who pronounced a few words and said they were man and wife.222

Plantation marriages benefited both slaves and owners alike; Slaves experienced the acknowledgment of their new status with ritual action and owners eased any embarrassment and spiritual onus for promoting reproduction among the slave population in their possession.223

Following the American Revolution, perceptions regarding slaves continued to change, as did the significations; Slaves may be fully humans, souls included, but not ever equal to their owners. Missionaries were allowed, if not encouraged, to preach the gospel to plantation slaves. The overall increase in Christian religious education impacted slave communities, yet the greatest impact came from those slaves that were educated in

217 Creel, 277-293. 218 God’s Gonna Trouble the Water.; interview with Sherrie Thompson, 4 February 1999. 219 Rosen, 72. 220 Hughes Wright and Hughes, 33. 221 search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?&db=slavnarr&gs=&srvr=search&ti=0&se=sse.dll&search engine=sse.dll&server=search&databaseid=4342&databasename=slavnarr&f7=g4&type=p&title=slave+na rratives&gss=angs&fh=3140 222 search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?&db=slavnarr&gs=&srvr=search&ti=0&se=sse.dll&search engine=sse.dll&server=search&databaseid=4342&databasename=slavnarr&f7=g4&type=p&title=slave+ narratives&gss=angs&fh=3660 223 Joyner, 136-139. 37 reading and writing. By bringing this knowledge deemed taboo by their white signifiers to their communities, they facilitated access to the forbidden texts, such as the Old Testament.

In the nineteenth century, Christianity increasingly became a means of social and behavioral control used on slaves by planters and missionaries. Slavery’s influence over southern society was so strong by this point that South Carolina Methodists lifted their slave ownership ban by 1804. Both masters and ministers discussed the possibilities of the religious education of slaves. The resulting catechisms taught to slaves reflect lessons developed to emphasize the servile nature of man, with the intent of teaching slaves their “place” in society reinforcing master/slave signification. For some former slaves, such lessons stuck with them. Having received his early Christian education from a plantation minister while still as slave, Bob Young later explained his understanding of the Bible, which interestingly enough contains a signification upon the ruling class:

From a wee bitty baby dey teach me to serve. Befo' you serves God you is got to know how to serve man. De Bible speaks of us as servants of de Lawd. Niggers can serve Him better dan white folks, kaise dat is all dey does if dey stays whar dey belongs. Young folks and chillun being raised up real biggity like dey is now, dey can't serve nothing, kaise if you can't serve your earthly father, how is you gwine to serve your Heavenly Father?224

The overall acceptance of slaves’ religiosity allowed the Invisible Church to move indoors and become a visible church called the Praise House after the 1820’s, when gatherings for religious meetings became legal. Visible Church members attended compulsory Sunday services within the plantation owner designated white church, segregated from the white congregation by seating or hour. This half of the Visible Church had sermons that were contrived for the audience of slaves, reminding them of the values of servitude, obedience, fear of sin, humility and patience.225

The ability to demonstrate beliefs and practices more openly provided for more tangible expressions of religiosity, as seen though the primary change to Gullah during the period: the use of buildings and worship structures, although building materials varied widely. Former slave Morgan Scurry described the building materials of a nearby Praise House:

In our neighborhood, niggers had their own church dat they made of poles and brush, and called it. 'Brush Harbor'. They made seats from small logs sawed off of rough plank.226

Praise Houses were often clapboard buildings that were already in place within the community. Some plantations had a structure for weekday services and religious assemblies.227

224 search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?&db=slavnarr&gs=&srvr=search&ti=0&se=sse.dll&searchengine= sse.dll&server=search&databaseid=4342&databasename=slavnarr&f7=g4&type=p&title=slave+ narratives&gss=angs&fh=3670 225 Cooper, 124. 226 search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?&db=slavnarr&gs=&srvr=search&ti=0&se=sse.dll&searchengine= sse.dll&server=search&databaseid=4342&databasename=slavnarr&f7=g4&type=p&title=slave+narratives &gss=angs&fh=3570 38

The society that developed in the Invisible Church continued to worship God, settle community disputes and help those in need within the Praise House walls. With the move indoors, Gullah practitioners began to display publicly the power and agency they had gained by participating in the Invisible Church. Members held the community’s needs over that of self or family with elders serving as the leaders of these closed communities.228

Shouts, call-and-response prayers, song and the occasional healing “root” ritual, long established in the Invisible Church, continued in the Praise House, yet worship developed reflecting the prescribed rites for white Baptist and Methodist services. All in attendance were expected to participate and be active, a marked difference from the “sit and listen” service style of the white churches. Former slave Henry Ryan:

We used to have to wake up at sun-up and work till sundown. We didn't learn to read and write; but we had a prayer house on de plantation where we could go to sometimes, until freedom come, then we went on to it just the same. Old man Bennefield, a nigger preacher, talked to us there. 229

Proceedings began formally, shifting to an informal mode as the Holy Spirit’s participation increased. Benches were pushed aside for shouting, singing, praising and silence, from which ring shouts formed. Shouts were emotional and reserved for the meeting house.230 Occasionally, participants would collapse in ecstasy and/or exhaustion.231

This account from Tales of the Edisto typifies a signifying description of a community’s Praise House, the performance of rituals and the overall impression of events. Although very romantic in its description, it is an interesting illustration of how a Christian Root practitioner, acting within a Gullah prayer service, would heal an ailment:

The resonant boom-boom-boom of the tom-toms, the same mystic gripping rhythm that rolled down the Congo long before white men went to the jungles for slaves, still tells a story in the Low Country that the faithful of a Negro tribe are at worship. Their rites are as weird to the casual observer as the swirling dances of their forefathers when the drum beats meant war or worship along the Congo.

The Sanctify folks always welcome dawn with a blast from a horn and at high noon each day a drum beat—deep, sonorous tum-tum-tum is sounded. At the service witnessed, the Church Mother (the Priestess), an Acolyte and minister were present. Two little fellows danced until they were exhausted and then sat down beside their mothers. The tom-toms were silent.

The Acolyte read the Scriptures. The faithful testified, each in jerky sentences, the drums started— they rolled slowly at first, then faster until the crashing tum-tum-tums seemed to run together in one long, bewitching beat. The women danced, the little girls seized the tambourines. Women swayed and kept time with handclaps. Feet rose and fell in uncanny rhythm. The Priestess was dressed in a man’s

227 Cooper, 124. 228 God’s Gonna Trouble the Water. 229 search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?&db=slavnarr&gs=&srvr=search&ti=0&se=sse.dll&searchengine= sse.dll&server=search&databaseid=4342&databasename=slavnarr&f7=g4&type=p&title=slave+narratives &gss=angs&fh=3550 230 Cooper, 125. 231 Cooper, 125. 39 coat and wore a turban. She danced in her corner—swaying at first, her movements became jerky as the drums poured out constant boom-boom-boom that made muscles twitch. Feet pounded the floor with dull thuds, but each beat was in perfect rhythm. The Priestess raised her voice in high praise and danced like mad. At last the Preacher, or deacon as he calls himself, signaled that the drums cease, but the Priestess danced faster and faster. Her face convulsed and her arms jerked. She threw herself on a bench and chanted praises to Heaven.

When a woman handed her a tiny baby the spell was broken and the wild rites closed.

The flickering light of the old lanterns no longer cast their shadows over the slender, frail figures of Tyra Wright. When she died, her followers buried her back of the little church she loved, and one has to look closely to find her grave. With her death in 1942, much of the enthusiasm waned, and although a new Church Mother succeeded Tyra Wright, the meetings have almost ceased. A few of the member still live on Edisto, and they speak reverently of Tyra, but it is almost impossible to persuade them to talk of the services. Occasionally a minister from the City, as Charleston is called, holds a noonday meeting, but with little of the old rituals.232

Moving into the Praise House did not diminish the Root belief among members of the Gullah church. In addition to a nearly pervasive belief in ghosts, another widely held belief was that babies born with a “veil,” or “caul,” were able to communicate most freely with the spirit world and had highly developed psychic senses. A caul, a portion of the amniotic sac covering the head at birth, is the image DuBois utilizes for the “veil” or double-consciousness that he employs in his work. This veil allows one to experience life in two worlds, one white and one black, The nature of this veil does not allow outsiders access into the world of one’s own people. While this double consciousness makes one acutely aware of one’s otherness to the outsiders, it also provides knowledge about relationships unavailable to those who are unable to experience life behind the veil. Midwife Sara Brown describes a physical veil and some of the beliefs associated with them:

Oh, my Lord, a 'oman birth one of dem babies here bout two weeks ago wid one of dem veil over it face. De Lord know what make dat, I don', but dem kind of baby she wiser den de other kind of baby. Dat thing look just like a thin skin dat stretch over de baby face en come down low it's chin. Have to take en pull it back over it's forehead en den de baby can see on holler all it ever want to. My blessed, honey, wish I had many a dollar as I see veil over baby face. She know all bout dem kind of things.233

The double consciousness of the veil facilitated the ability of members of Gullah to live the dual religious life of slavery. On the one hand, they were often ambivalent participants in white religions. On the other, they were innovators of a religion of oppression that did make sense out of their place in the world as an orientation in the ultimate sense and provided them with a means to counter their oppressors. Gullah created a sense of agency that provided a means to signify their signifiers.

232 Nell S. Graydon, Tales of the Edisto, (Orangeburg: Sandlapper Publishing, 1955), 103-105. 233 search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?&db=slavnarr&gs=&srvr=search&ti=0&se=sse.dll&searchengine =sse.dll&server=search&databaseid=4342&databasename=slavnarr&f7=g7&type=p&title=slave+narrative s&gss=angs&fh=930 40 Chapter Three Resistance, Rebellion and Resolution

As a religion created in oppression, Gullah provided a forum for religious experience and creative religious expression for slaves in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. Gullah also provided a sense of agency to the slaves involved in the community with which they were able to achieve an autonomously created community that provided them support and hope in an oppressive situation. Prior to 1695, the majority of slaves lived on large, remote parcels of land where there was a social unit larger than a family, but where contact with other Africans was not necessarily possible.234 Yet community still existed between slaves in that they bound together by situation, experience and belief. Geographic parameters did not define community for slaves. For many slaves, being a person and being religious were inseparable.235 Community therefore referred directly to the religious bond between groups of people.236 The agency provided within their religious communities gave slaves the strength to resist and even rebel against the people and institution that oppressed and signified them. They did so in mind, body and spirit, through the veil of double consciousness, with rebellion, resistance and significations of their own.

In the early years, the colony was comprised of a predominantly white population. They were European and working to make money with the assistance of slaves that originated from outside of the mainland British colonies.237 As time passed, the slave population grew along with the number of colonists. By 1708, the population of South Carolina was about 8,000 people, fifty percent white and an equal number black.238 In the seventy-five years following 1700, more than forty percent of all slaves brought to the British mainland colonies arrived first in Charlestown, South Carolina. The majority of these arrivals were quarantined for a short time on Sullivan’s Island.239 The arrival experience for these Africans entering the port was similar to the experience of Europeans arriving later in New York City as immigrants, at least culturally and linguistically.240

Among the primary concerns for all those living in the colony were health and well-being, medical issues being of major import to all residents of the region. As a result, an unintentional reciprocity occurred between the Native Americans, slaves and whites of the colony. The yearly threat of malaria caused whites to flee the area and leave slaves on their own in the Lowcountry from May to October, contributing to the development of an independent Gullah culture.241 Although doctors from Europe came to establish medical practices in the colony, they experienced limited supplies, long

234 Wood, 47. 235 McKever-Floyd, 155.; Winquist, foreword to Significations, v.; Long, 107-108. 236 Fox-Genovese, 68-69. 237 Wood, 36. 238 Wood, 143. 239 Wood, xiv. 240 Wood, 170-171. 241 Pollitzer, 72. 41 distances between calls and unfamiliar ailments that required innovative approaches to achieve health. Folk medicine proved a more popular approach to healing the afflicted among the general population. Mail order medical books were popular among the colonists, as were home remedies. For slaves, Root served the community of believers as means of resistance to oppression and the formation of new identities. It enhanced the available medical practices and facilitated social affairs and justice in slave societies. Many slaves had extensive knowledge of plants and cures from their homelands and were able to adapt this knowledge to the new . Some whites sought this knowledge and applied it to their own situations.

Slaves trusted Root prescriptions, or herbal remedies, more than white doctors’ prescriptions. Even some masters consulted with Root doctors.242 Slave women were often the herbalist in residence on plantation, serving as Root doctors. Herbalists passed along their knowledge of plants and healing to others while expanding the healing library.243 Some popular Root cures and herbal medicines used on plantations included: fence grass tea for fever, branch elder twigs for chills, dogwood berries for chills, slippery elm water, roots, herbs, and grease. It was said that Turpentine dipped string tied around the waist of the afflicted would cure chills if one tied a knot in it every time a chill came.244 Tepid leaf bath for dropsy, jimson weed for rheumatism, chestnut leaf tea for asthma, cow manure tea with mint for consumption, crushed peach tree leaf for upset stomach, horehound with sorghum and molasses in candy or whiskey for colds were used as well.245

Colonists paid serious attention to slave and Root cures for malaria, a disease that plague the white population in particular.246 Manumission or money was exchanged on several occasions with slaves for the secrets to their various useful cures. Some slaves bargained for both, like Caesar, who sold his herbal Root rattlesnake bite cure to the colony for his freedom and a yearly pension.247 Belief and practice in Root lead Caesar to freedom.

What could be used for health could be used for harm as well. With the access that house and kitchen slaves had to their masters and other members of the household, Root poisons became a form of rebellion, but would-be poisoners faced the possibility of harsh penalties. ‘Doctors’ and/or slaves that knew herbs would provide the poisons used by many as a form of resistance. Accusations from whites that slaves had poisoned people were frequently heard, as were instances of slaves poisoning one another.248 Dr. Alexander Garden noticed that often, complicated medical cases were attributed to ‘poisonings’ when doctors could not reach any other acceptable diagnosis. Dr. Garden set out to study African plants and poisons derived therefrom, believing that slaves brought

242 Fox-Genovese, 169 & 171. 243 Fox-Genovese, 171. 244 Fox-Genovese, 171. 245 Fox-Genovese, 169. 246 Rosen, 69. 247 Wood, 289.; Morgan, 625. 248 Morgan, 612-614. 42 the art, not medicine, of plant knowledge with them from Africa.249 Yet it wasn’t until the mid eighteenth century when South Carolina outlawed the practice of slave ‘doctors’ prescribing any prescriptions or slaves working in apothecaries. An amendment was added to the South Carolina Negro Act of 1740 in 1751 that also instituted felony punishment for blacks that instructed other blacks regarding poisons and root, plant, herb or otherwise. This did not stop women from passing medical lore to others.250 Corporal punishment to the tune of fifty stripes became a common penalty for breaking these laws.251

More laws were passed that chipped away at the small freedoms that slaves had. By the early 1700s, the black population of the colony matched that of the white number for number. Whites began feeling that free blacks compromised their plans. Few missionaries, like LeJau, spoke out against the mutilation of frequent runaways as punishment deemed legal by the slave law of 1712. According to LeJau’s notes of February 20, 1712, males were castrated and females had their ears cut off, practices to which he fervently objected.252

Slaves on South Carolina rice plantations that employed the task system developed a greater control over their resources; however, their masters were in ultimate control.253 Slaves generally received rations, clothing and lodging, but they worked for all that they received.254 Slave cabins were cleaned three to four times a year as the masters saw fit, which could include resetting floors and white washing.255 Slaves would also make or purchase additional cloth for clothes.256 The master’s prosperity was important and the 'taking' or stealing of a master’s property was seen as contributing to his property because it aided the slaves’ welfare. If the slaves’ comfort and security increased as a result of taking from the master, they would have more of the supplies they needed to live, providing the will and stamina to maintain or increase agricultural production, improving upon the master’s prosperity.

The off time experienced within the task system contributed to the development of Gullah culture.257 On the Sea Islands, slaves expressed their religiosity in secret by gathering in the Invisible Church, regardless of the fact that participation was risky. Members of the Invisible Church met in the woods during off-times to perform religious rituals forbidden by the plantation owners.258 Eric Lincoln asserts that the invisible church made survival possible and made hope more than mere fantasy.259 As Gullah

249 Linnaeus named the Gardenia flowering plant after Dr. Alexander Garden at the request of a friend. Wood, 291.; Morgan, 617-618. 250 Fox-Genovese, 306. 251 Wood, 289-290.; Morgan, 627-628. 252 Wood, 135 and footnote 1a. 253 Fox-Genovese, 94. 254 Fox-Genovese, 95. 255 Fox-Genovese, 95. 256 Fox-Genovese, 95. 257 Pollitzer, 95. 258 Cooper, 123. 259 Cooper, 124. 43 began taking hold, the sense of agency experienced by the communities grew. The Gullah Invisible Church served as a community center, a judicial center and a religious center. It provided a forum for religious expression and societal regulation for a blossoming community. Organizing themselves affirmed their humanity by demonstrating that they were not invisible to each other.260 A meeting might include official church business, discussions regarding ethical and spiritual matters and any other issues facing the congregants.

Religion was the focal point for slave organizations.261 Slave churches and slave communities provided support and strength, preventing social isolation.262 The secrecy of these meetings added to the empowerment of the assembly by providing a means of social and religious agency particular to the group. Former slave, Susan Rhodes, explained the importance of the secretive meetings and the rituals performed:

We used to steal off to de woods and have church, like de spirit moved us---sing and pray to our own liking and soul satisfaction---and we sure did have good meetings, honey--- baptize in de river, like God said. We had dem spirit-filled meetings at night on de bank of de river, and God met us dere. We was quiet ‘nuf so de white folks didn’t know we was dere, and what a glorious time we did have in de Lord.263

The diversity in South Carolina coupled with the number of Africans brought to the colony enabled the retention of Africanness more so than any other region on the colonial mainland. As the number of slaves exposed to both European Christianity and Gullah increased, so did the number of slaves born in country who were exposed to African traditions. Conversely, as the assimilation of Africans and African Americans into the occurred, the intensity of primary culture diminished as seen through the Gullah language, a language that emerged from a multiplicity of exchanges over generations.264 The names given to children indicate change and compromises between English and African and over time, fewer African names were used. Even so, those that were utilized eventually lost some of their original meanings or were substituted with English equivalents. For example, a popular naming practice across sections of Africa was to name children after the day of the week on which they were born. Cujo, or Monday, became Joe. Quaco and , both meaning Wednesday, became Jack, Jacco, or Jackie.265

This assimilation, especially concerning language, was of extreme import to the ability of slaves to engage in meaningful discourse with the white population. By denying slaves legal access to literacy in the white world, slaves were put at a disadvantage by whites who used the to signify slaves. Gullah language became a powerful tool for the signifying of whites by slaves. It allowed slaves to comment on those outside of community from behind the veil, creating a similar linguistic disadvantage for their oppressors.

260 Long, 166. 261 Fox-Genovese, 168, 331. 262 Fox-Genovese, 328-329. 263 Mellon, Bullwhip Days, 194-195. 264 Wood, 170-171. 265 Wood, 181-182.; Morgan, 453-455. 44 By 1720, the population estimates in South Carolina rested at 9,000 whites to 12,000 blacks.266 However, the numbers do not necessarily represent the entire picture because there was difficulty in getting quality statistics regarding free blacks. Today, demographics that are more accurate say there were approximately 6,525 free blacks and 11,828 slaves for a total population of not twenty-one thousand, but instead closer to twenty-eight thousand.267 This population shift was a source of fear for the whites of the colony. They had created a situation through signification and mythologizing slaves as brutish animals to benefit their agendas; However, when blacks became the majority race represented in the colony such images instilled fear that led to another round of laws, one of which officially abolished all black voting rights. Until that law passed in 1721, freemen occasionally voted.268 In 1722, a law passed which stipulated that any black granted manumission must leave the colony within one year or surrender freedom.269 A few years later and to the south, Spain frustrated the British colonists with the 1733 law that declared free any slave who escaped their master and arrived in St. Augustine, and the city became another symbol of freedom for slaves.270 The backlash of this Spanish declaration came most notably in 1739. Due to suspected Catholic support of the Stono Rebellion, Catholics in South Carolina experienced scapegoating and persecution.271

The passage of oppressive laws continued. The Negro Act of 1735 ruled that only certain types of cloth should be worn by slaves, creating a kind of dress code. The Act addressed the kinds of rations allowed to slaves as well.272 In addition, slaves receiving manumission based on merit or service who returned to the colony within seven years of the grant immediately lost their freedom.273 In the same year, legal restrictions were placed on black trades, to include porters, carters, anglers (license required) and barbers. Economics were blamed for this change because of the competition blacks in such positions created for poor white workers. The intent was also to encourage European immigration, but the law was never fully enforced. However, oppressive labor increased, including jobs ‘unfit’ for white laborers, such as trash pickup.274

As slavery became progressively more oppressive, the lengths slaves would go to in rebellion became greater. The Stono Rebellion was the first radically significant in the Lowcountry. Slaves organized themselves within their communities in a plot to kill the whites and march their way to St. Augustine and freedom.275 It began during white church services on Sunday, September 9, 1739 in St. Paul’s Parrish on the

266 Wood, 145. 267 Wood, 146-147. 268 Wood, 102. 269 Wood, 102. 270 Miller, 83. 271 Miller, 83. 272 Wood, 232-233. 273 Wood, 102-103. 274 Wood, 196-209, 228-23. 275 Rosen, 76.

45 Stono River.276 The rebels made it ten miles into their journey to freedom, just shy of the Jacksonbough Ferry at the Edisto River, before they were stopped.277

The organizational structure of the rebellion reflected African tribal influences. The rebels were warriors, as they had been in Africa, using drums and banners.278 They danced war dances, sang songs and used music and drumming to make their case known and possibly to gather more slaves. The estimated number of total participants was between sixty and one hundred.279 It is possible, according to some accounts, that the rebels believed their banners made them invincible. Such an idea may have come from the tribal use of banners and magico-religious practices in secret societies throughout .280

The colony responded to the Stono Rebellion with four major reforms. The post- Stono Rebellion South Carolina Negro Act of 1740 made illegal freedom of movement, assembly, raising food, earning money and learning to read English.281 This enhanced the white advantage in the game of signification by making access to English more difficult. It also stipulated that all blacks be tried in the same judicial process, free or slave. Furthermore, the Assembly would decide all cases regarding manumission.282 In addition to the extremely oppressive Negro Act of 1740, owners who gave excessive work and/or punishment were to be penalized because such action might incite rebellion. The white population worked to make slaves utterly dependent upon them for their basic needs both physical and spiritual, utilizing tools such as the Christian doctrine of submission. Finally, the colony enacted a population quota of one white man per every ten slaves per plantation, in the hopes of achieving a larger white population.283

Forms of resistance provided by Gullah took many guises, one of which was becoming literate. “Despite legal prohibitions against teaching slaves to read and write in South Carolina, many masters and more mistresses…taught at least some of their slaves to read the Bible.”284 Such knowledge was intended to make good Christians of slaves. What it allowed for the surrounding communities was access to the forbidden texts of the oppressors. Access to the Christian Old Testament allowed for a variety of forms of resistance. For example, if slaves could read what the Bible really said, they could form opinions of their own regarding slavery. Former slave Jack White had strong opinions on what he had been taught regarding Christianity while a plantation slave:

Though Marster was a Mef’dis preacher, he whip his slaves, an’ den drap pitch an’ turppentine on dem from a bu’nin to’ch.

276 Wood, 314. 277 Wood, 316. 278 Fox-Genovese, 305.; Morgan 456. 279 Rosen, 77.; Morgan 456. 280 Wood, 316. 281 Fox-Genovese, 305. 282 Wood, 103. 283 Wood, 323-324., As mentioned earlier in the section, amendment was added to the South Carolina Negro Act of 1740 in 1751 that instituted felony punishment for blacks that instructed other blacks regarding poisons and root, plant, herb or otherwise. 284 Joyner, 215-16. 46

Marster preach to de white folks Sunday mo’nin. Den, at night, all de marsters roun’ dat country sen’ dey slaves, an’ he preach to us. He hab two fav’rit tex’es he uster preach from to de slaves. One was, “Serv’nts, obey your marsters.” He didn’ say much ‘bout de Marster in Hebben, but allus tole us to obey our earthly marsters. De other tex’ was, “Thou shalt not steal.” He preach dat over an’ over, to de niggers. Dey couldn’ read deir Bibles, so dey hatter b’liebe jis’ what he say.

Since I’s got to readin’ an’ studyin’, I see some of de chu’ches is wrong, an’ de preachers don’ preach jis’ like de Bible say. 285

According to Bernard Powers, there was an established slave religion in South Carolina that focused its eschatological hopes not in The Book of Daniel or The Revelation of John as did the denominations that brought Christianity to the slaves, but on the forbidden Christian Old Testament text of The Book of Exodus.286 By focusing eschatological hopes in this text, Gullah theology provided a powerful agency to slaves by promising a restructuring of their world; salvation promised a time when they would be free from the bonds imposed on them by their oppressors. It provided hope for the future.

The Methodist movement challenged the ideals and practices of the colonial aristocracy, making the establishment of congregations more difficult. Another impediment to establishing congregations was the interruption of daily life caused by the Revolutionary War. Methodism promoted the ideas of deliverance shown in the Bible and the emotional expression of religious experience in services, both of which made the denomination more attractive to slaves.287 The Great Awakening further enhanced that tie by calling for far more drama and emotion in services, especially concerning conversion experiences.288 By 1791, there were 4,500 black Methodists in South Carolina, yet the patterns of economic distribution led to a crossroads communities of slaves that wanted to educate or start a church. They had to choose to go into hiding or express themselves religiously under the supervision of whites. Regardless of the path they chose, they had a better chance than poor whites of attaining such goals because of the communal structures and ties they had already established.289

By the nineteenth century, the slave population was reaching an all time high. The continual renewal of African-born slaves refreshed the tribal elements of culture and religion within slave communities, exposing slaves born in-country to the traditions of the . Even after the abolition of the international slave trade in the United States, African-born slaves arrived surreptitiously with the help of the Spanish to the south, through Georgia and with the aid of smugglers. Africans could be legally transported into Spanish after 1808, and then be taken across the border into Georgia, thereby circumventing the new laws.290 At the same time, there were more whites coming to the

285 Mellon, Bullwhip Days, 196-197. 286 Powers, 189. 287 Huff, 37. 288 Huff, 37. 289 Fox-Genovese, 45.; Cooper, 123. 290 Pollitzer, 48. 47 state, reversing the previous population ratio. By 1860, there were over twenty-three thousand whites to seventeen thousand slaves and free blacks combined.291

Sea Island people expressed power over their situation by organizing religious communities, fostering unity and cultural identity through forms of resistance. At the same time, religion empowered both the individual and the group by providing a means of understanding their place in the world and a method of self-identification, or being able to name and define themselves in their own terms. By moving into the Praise House, Gullah practitioners began to display publicly the empowerment they had gained by participating in the Invisible Church. All African American life centered on church because it was the only place to feel dignity and respect in an otherwise white dominated world.292

As the invisible church became more visible, both masters and ministers worked to better regulate the religious education slaves received in order to make missionizing to slaves more profitable for their owners. Unfortunately for them, participation in the Invisible church provided slaves experience in risk taking, decision making and self- determination.293 For example, Charles Colcock Jones was prolific in his contributions to the cause of missionization. The most famous of all the biblical slaves Jones used in a series of sermons was Onesimus, the run-away slave of Philemon. Jones recalled vividly what happened when he used Onesimus for his sermon:

I was preaching to a large congregation on the Epistle of Philemon and when I insisted upon fidelity and obedience as Christian virtues in servants and upon the authority of Paul, condemned the practice of running away, one half of my audience deliberately rose up and walked off with themselves, and those that remained looked anything but satisfied, either with the preacher or his doctrine.294

At the end of the service, the remaining slaves expressed their anger and contempt toward Jones and his Biblical interpretations. A number of slaves agreed, “that there was no such an Epistle in the Bible,” along with the fact that such a message ‘was not the Gospel.”295 Others felt Jones preached only “to please the masters,” therefore they would not come to hear him preach a church service ever again.296

Regarding rites of passage, those regarding birth and death were important and thought of in harmony. George Fleming of Spartanburg, South Carolina, was interviewed on October 28, 1937. He briefly described funerals before elaborating on baptisms.

Dar was a burying ground jes' fer de slaves and de funeral was sort of like dat of de white folks. Niggers was baptized jes' like de white people, too, and by de same preacher. I saw thirty niggers

291 Rosen, 77. 292 Cooper, 120-121. 293 Cooper, 123-124. 294 Clarke, Wrestlin’ Jacob, 40. 295 Clarke, Wrestlin’ Jacob, 40. 296 Clarke, Wrestlin’ Jacob, 40. 48 baptized at one time in de river. Dat's whar everybody was baptized, den. Now dey has a basin in de church, wid glass all 'round de top, but I 'spects it do 'bout as much good.297

Baptisms in the Gullah church were a form of resistance in that they reflected the beliefs of the slave community rather than the white rituals. Funerals functioned in the same way. To Gullah believers, death results by either natural or unnatural means that are determined by the type of illness that caused the death. Due to the occasional difficulty in determining the exact nature of illness, it is sometimes hard to determine the exact cause of death. Regardless, Gullah treats death as positive event in the cycle of life, one that requires special ritual attention.

Like Baptism, the funerary rites of the Gullah community are extremely important rituals that reflect the values and morals of the community. According to former 19th century slave, Adele Frost, funerals were often held at night by torchlight and double funerals may be held to properly send off a community member.298 In modern times, they are all day affairs that take place using much pageantry and ceremony.299 When Sea Islanders die while away from the islands, a special attempt is made for burial on the Islands so that the family may stay together in this life and then next.300 This is also a common practice among African tribes like the Yoruba because “…the dead are dependent on their ancestors for spiritual nourishment and thus must be buried among them to find peace.”301 This same reasoning led many slaves to believe that in death, one traveled back to Africa where the ancestors awaited.302 This contradicted the Christian teaching of the heaven-bound soul.

Burial in the family plot is important, as is how the cemetery is cared for when it is not in use. The Gullah practice a hands-off approach to grave tending. It is not unusual to find an African American grave completely overgrown, especially when burials are no longer taking place in that space. What is signified by outsiders as neglect is done purposefully so that the dead will not be disturbed.303

Some family plots are likened to gardens. The care of these plots is restricted to the family. It is the responsibility of the family to maintain the spiritual, as well as the physical, continuity of the gravesite. There is usually a grave keeper, but his responsibility is to maintain the overgrowth of the cemetery, taking care not to disturb the gravesites. Another important role of the grave keeper is to watch the cemetery against intruders.304

297 newdeal.feri.org/asn/asn09.htm 298 Cooper, 12.; Morgan 644. 299 Hughes Wright and Hughes, 2.; interview with anonymous, Medical University of South Carolina, 23 February 1999.; interview with anonymous, College of Charleston, 3 March 1999.; interview with Phillip Ridgegill, College of Charleston, 14 September 1998. 300 Hughes Wright and Hughes, 42-43. 301 Jones-Jackson, 26. 302 Morgan, 641-642. 303 Hughes Wright and Hughes, 42-43. 304 Hughes Wright and Hughes, 42-43.

49 Gullah funerals are as much for the living as they are for the dead.305 This becomes clear through the tradition of breaking possessions of the dead to be placed on the grave. Such interment rituals exist to prevent the dead from bothering the living and to ease their death journey.306 Another such preventative ritual involves passing babies and young children over the coffins of parents and grandparents. The activity holds a two-fold purpose in that it ensures the safety of the child’s life and spirit from the dead, while relaxing the fears of the child regarding the dead.307 There are many such beliefs among the Gullah that have been creatively adapted to fit modern rites:

Over a small graveyard alongside my family’s church, Old Bethel A.M.E., hover the spirits of my ancestors. African American burial traditions in McClellanville…still reflect the belief that at death, the physical body is lowered into the soil, but the soul/spirit remains among the living. This spirit must be satisfied and not disturbed. The belief (holds) that these spirits have an invisible circle of spiritual bonding with their family and loved ones. My mother often talks about how I was passed across the coffin of my grandfather. The belief was that since I was still a tiny, weak soul—only a baby and the youngest of my family—my grandfather could come back and take me with him, causing my death at this young age. Passing me across broke that spiritual bond.

In earlier times, a broken wooden wagon wheel was placed on the grave, breaking the spiritual link, so that the spirit would not tantalize the living. Today floral designs are arranged in the shape of a broken wheel. The yucca plant is frequently planted among the graves. This thorny bush makes it difficult for the spirit to roam about graveyard. Sweet smelling plants are also found among the foliage. The dead are attracted to the sweet smell of the gardenia bush. One lady chuckles as she tells me, “I not too long ago dug up a large gardenia bush out of my yard because it was drawing too many spirits to my house.”

Immediately after death, open vessels of water are emptied, so the roving spirit will not remain in the home. Broken plates, drinking containers, and utensils, items last used by the deceased, are placed on the gravesite. One may also find medicine bottles, furniture, cigar boxes, doll heads, and other personal items.308

All possessions that are placed graveside must be broken.309 Breaking the items breaks the chain of death, preventing other family members from following the deceased in death. Leaving personal possessions graveside also prevents the dead from roaming in search of the items, possibly harming family members in the process.310 It is important to leave these items undisturbed. Martha Jenkins also explains what can happen when such gravesite belongings are disturbed:

My cousin an’ some other boys went huntin’ one day, an’ they hunt all through the graveyard. An’ while they was in there, he pick up this clock off of one of the graves an’ brought it home an’ clean it up. After cleanin’ it, it start to run. So he put it on his dresser in his room.

That night after he went to bed, ev’rytime he doze off, that thing tell him: “Bring my clock back!”

305 interview with anonymous, Medical University of South Carolina, 23 February 1999.; interview with “Mack,” Bogotá’s Coffee Shop, 4 February 1999. 306 Morgan, 642. 307 Hughes Wright and Hughes, 33.; interview with Sherrie Thompson, 4 February 1999. 308 Hughes Wright and Hughes, 42-43. 309 Morgan, 642.; interview with anonymous, College of Charleston, 3 March 1999. 310 Morgan, 642.; Hughes Wright and Hughes, 20. 50 That went on all night, an’ early the nex’ mornin’, he got his brother with him, an’ he took that clock back! An’ that person did not bother him anymore!311

Although dire consequences can result by not following the ritual of breaking the deads’ possessions, that is not always the case. The text Lay Body Down provides this account, supplied by Martha Jenkins of St. Helena’s Island, which describes her experience with the dead returning to use their possessions:

My grandaunt died an’ they give us (Jenkins, her sisters and brother) all her things: broom, bucket, dipper an’ a rockin’ chair. So that night (after the burial), she came in the house an’ she played with everything that they give us. An’ she did that all night! The rocking chair creaked, the water dipper clanged against the metal bucket, and the broom’s sweeping sounds spooked the listeners’ ears until morning.312

Beliefs regarding the dead and their final resting places do not end with the conclusion of the interment rites and cemetery maintenance. Special care must be taken as to not disturb restless spirits when visiting such places as well:

“Do not cross over the grave, walk around…Do not stand on top of the grave…. Do not point at the grave or your finger may drop off…. Do not remove grave goods or you will carry the discontented spirit with you.” 313

Outside of practices and beliefs, the Gullah church provided agency to its people to organize and rise up as a group. Several notable slave revolts occurred through the south during the nineteenth century and are often referred to by the name of their leaders: (1800), Vesey (1822), and Nat Turner (1831).314 Although the Gullah church was only directly involved with the Vesey revolt, news of rebellions helped inspired other slaves to act in their own somewhat less dramatic ways. Not all attempts resulted in freedom and none brought about an end to the institution of slavery. In fact, the reforms resulting from rebellious activity undoubtedly stripped away more of the slaves’ autonomy and created more oppressive conditions. Yet, slaves acquired a kind of power from uprisings and revolutionary figures and movements served as foundations for future forms of resistance, some even outside of the bonds of slavery.

Resistance to slavery was strongest in black churches, a prominent example of which is seen through the Revolt.315 Once a slave, Vesey purchased his freedom. He was educated, could read and write and was very involved in the church, particularly Emmanuel A.M.E. on Calhoun Street in Charleston. There, he preached freedom to others and spent nearly four years planning the revolt that led to his death.316 Exodus and various abolitionist writings inspired him, as did the Haitian Rebellion.317

311 Hughes Wright and Hughes, 24-25. 312 Hughes Wright and Hughes, 24 –25. 313 Hughes Wright and Hughes, 42-43. 314 Fox-Genovese, 307. 315 Rosen, 75. 316 Rosen, 76. 317 Rosen, 76. 51 In planning and executing the organization of the rebellion, Vesey received assistance from , Peter Poyas, Monday Gell and Mingo Harth.318 Gullah Jack, in particular, reportedly assisted by organizing plantation slaves into Armies, with the Angolan, Ibo and American-born slaves forming separate units.319 According to the plan, “Charleston was to be captured with arms secretly manufactured or seized from the two city arsenals.”320 Vesey’s plot was revealed only days before it was to begin.

Blacks considered Gullah Jack (also known as Angola Jack) to be a sorcerer and considered him an invulnerable link to the African gods.321 His owner wrote of him, “Gullah Jack or Jack the Conjurer was a conjurer in his own country, M’Choolay Moreema, where a dialect of the Angola tongue is spoken clear across Africa from sea to sea, a distance of perhaps three thousand miles. I purchased him as a at Zinguebar.”322 Participants in the Vesey plot were to carry charmed crab claws provided by Gullah Jack for protection.323

Unfortunately, information regarding the plot was not available outside of the City Council special secret court account of 1822 because publishing information regarding revolts was discouraged.324 The city’s response to the plot was to hang all those found guilty of conspiracy and to establish Military College of South Carolina.325 Even with such harsh penalties enacted on people who only planned a rebellion, these blacks inspired people to resist and rebel. They symbolized the power of unified action that could instill terror in the oppressors. Even throughout the twentieth century, the Denmark Vesey plot was still a powerful symbol inspiring revolutionary thought within the .

Black churches in South Carolina, congregations like that of Vesey and many of his conspirators being predominantly Baptist and Methodist, were distinct from white churches because of the combined influence of American, African, Christian and Carolinian customs.326 They provided a place for people to be themselves and some developed surprisingly early in South Carolina.327 For example, although in the upstate, the Sliver Bluff Baptist church was established near an Augusta plantation as a biracial congregation in 1750. In 1773, it became the first entirely in the Untied States. A freed slave, George Little, was the preacher. Sliver Bluff Baptist is the oldest surviving black church in America.328

318 Rosen, 75-76. 319 Rosen, 76. 320 Rosen, 76. 321 Pollitzer, 65. 322 Pollitzer, 108. 323 Rosen, 76. 324 Rosen, 75. 325 Rosen, 76. 326 Cooper, 120. 327 Rosen, 75. 328 Cooper, 122. 52 In the later period of slavery, preachers in African American churches served as mentors, guides, spiritual leaders, civic leaders and liaisons with whites. Most were excellent exhorters, gifted orators, persuasive, and community builders.329 The African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church formed in 1816 as a separatist movement from the Methodist denomination.330 A.M.E. churches offered a style of worship that emphasized religious enthusiasm, glossolalia and emotionalism that the Gullah practitioners found attractive. By 1822, there were 1,000 members at Emanuel before it was shut down due to the Vesey Plot. Emmanuel re-opened in 1865 and the following year there were 22,388 regular members.331

But Emanuel was in the city where the number of people facilitated a large community. On plantations, scholarly estimates project that twenty or more slaves allowed for community life. In 1860, seventy-five percent of all American slaves lived on farms with fifty slaves or less. Fifty percent lived on farms with twenty slaves or less. With such small populations, kinship and churches led to slave networks to achieve community.332 Area networks facilitated the spread of the oral traditions. In some cases, stories left the security of the veil, but only as a means to an end. Slaves would use ghost stories and threats of evil spirits as a way to get white children to cooperate with them. As within their own communities, the stories served as a mechanism to curtail unsociable behaviors, to keep children in line at bedtime or to keep them from venturing too far from home.333 Yet, field slaves more easily transmitted lore through the network than house slaves did.334 In addition to the supernatural entities discussed earlier, many Gullah stories make used of the personification of animals to get their message across to the listener. In such stories, the trickster figure plays a prominent role in teaching values and beliefs, both religious and secular.335 Occasionally, the minister is the trickster-hero of the tale as in the following story, recorded by Mathew Polite:

There was an island, and Brother Rabbit had to go over there to marry a couple. So, when he got down there everybody had left Brother Rabbit.

So, Brother Rabbit played a trick. He called Brother Shark to take him over to the island. So, Brother Shark came, you now, and brother Rabbit got on the Shark’s back and went on across the island. He came back down again. The people had left him again. Now, he hadn’t pay Brother Shark anything.

So, he called Brother Shark again. Brother Shark came back. He came ashore, and Brother Rabbit got on the Brother Shark’s back and Brother Shark took him back over.

So, Brother Rabbit, to keep from paying the Shark, said, “Hmmm, Brother Shark, I smell your stinking back fin.”

329 Cooper, 127. 330 Raboteau, 204., In 1787, AME Church was established in . South Carolina strongest national membership. 331 Cooper, 131-132. 332 Fox-Genovese, 295. 333 Fox-Genovese, 155. 334 Fox-Genovese, 318. 335 Joyner, 172-195. 53 Brother Shark said “What did you say Brother Rabbit?”

“Man, we almost have gotten to shore!”

When they got to shore so he could jump off, he said the same thing again. And Brother Shark looked around. Brother Rabbit jumped up and left.

Now Brother Shark thought of a way to catch Brother Rabbit. He went on the shore and play dead. The people came by and carried the news to Brother Rabbit. Brother Rabbit was coming back now to preach Brother Shark’s funeral. Now Brother Shark’s going to have a chance to catch Brother Rabbit.

So, Brother Rabbit said, “Why, Brother Shark can’t be dead! Man, but Brother Shark can’t be dead! He just brought me over yesterday.”

They told him, “Well, Brother Shark is dead now.”

So, Brother Rabbit went down there with his Bible, you know. He didn’t get close to the shark. Brother Rabbit is supposed to be smart. He wouldn’t get close to the shark.

So, Brother Rabbit went around and said, “You know, when somebody’s dead, they have a different scent.”

He got up close enough to smell the scent. “Oh no, Brother Shark isn’t dead!”

And you know one thing, they could never get Brother Rabbit to go close to the shark. Because if anybody’s dead, they’re going to smell, But they never got Brother Rabbit. Brother Rabbit stayed far enough away so they couldn’t catch him.336

Within the tale are references important to Gullah, such as marriage and funerals, but the story also emphasizes the cycle of life in general. At the same time, the story conveys ideas regarding interpersonal relationships and the treatment of others. Such a story serves to comment on the state of the community and its relationship with the larger society, making observations regarding the need for caution when in the world outside of the veil.

There are interesting applications that have resulted from the creative nature of Gullah. At times it is possible to identify places where African and Christian influences intersect throughout the Gullah religious system. In the following example, creative adaptation utilizes intimidation of a higher kind and the result can be best described as a supernatural Bible polygraph test:

If a child were caught lying or stealing, their accuser (an ) would turn the Bible on them. This is done by tying a string around the Bible, and at the end of a large key while reciting these words: “Wise St. Peter, Wise St. Paul, ain’t but one God make us all, if (give the person name) stole that money I pray to God this Bible will turn and fall, turn and fall, turn and fall.” If the Bible falls, you are guilty of the offense, and will be reprimanded.337

This line of thinking and belief is widespread in the Gullah Church and reflects aspects of an alternative justice system. The informal ritual allows members of the

336 Hughes Wright and Hughes, 27. 337 Hughes Wright and Hughes, 101-102. 54 community to teach their youth not to lie and steal through divine intimidation and provides a way to identify wrongdoers and deal expediently with such matters expediently.

In the wake of the Civil War, slave religion found itself at an ideological/ theological maturation point. In this new social milieu, the Gullah church was not as relevant. As previously stated, Powers asserts that during slavery times there was an established slave religion that focused its eschatological hopes on Exodus. The Civil War fulfilled those hopes, and an ordering of the chaos was necessary to make sense of the new reality. Baptist and Methodist religions spoke to the needs of the community, but many former slaves harbored ill feelings toward northern churches for their stances on slavery within South Carolina during the pre-war period. Remaining active in these congregations did not satisfy their spiritual needs. The community’s creative response to this new spiritual crisis was the establishment of new churches during Reconstruction. These new creations addressed the issues from several angles beginning with a reorientation of eschatological hopes. In most cases, this was accomplished by focusing on the books of Daniel and Revelation. Accommodations were made regarding the forms of worship by (re)organizing Black Baptist and AME congregations, groups that reflected mainline theologies that included to varying degrees the shouts, visions, and songs of the Gullah church. Songs took precedence over visions and visions over shouts. Slave religion essentially ended and its people became not a church, but members of denominations.

55 Conclusion

The Sea Islands were constantly assimilating native Africans, people torn from their families, possessions, and homelands, and forced into slavery. While being massed with fellow Africans who shared similar experiences, but very different backgrounds, these individuals faced a seemingly overwhelming number of obstacles including loss of personal freedom, cultural identity, linguistic heritage, kinship and power. African and African American slaves were signified by their oppressors, and images of slaves being less than fully human and hence possessing no souls, as primitive, unintelligent, and uneducable pervaded the cultural language of mainstream America. The signifiers negated the reality of these individuals’ histories, these men and women who represented different tribes, countries, cultures, traditions and religious backgrounds, by identifying them as one people. As a result, slaves had to create a new identity for themselves and form community through the process of self-definition. Religion empowered both the individual and the group by fostering this self-definition. Sea Island people expressed power over their situation by organizing religious communities, and by creating unity and cultural identity through forms of resistance. The power acquired in this way served as a foundation for future forms of resistance.

The Gullah church was created in oppression. For those individuals landing on the Sea Islands who chose to embrace white Christianity while incorporating their own ideas, the result was a newly established variety of religion called Gullah. The rich stories, songs and intricate rituals produced by this growing, highly adaptable and creative society exemplified the vitality of this new expression of religion. The Gullah church is an independent regional expression of this new form of African American Christianity.

Gullah is essentially an orally transmitted tradition. Consequently, it emphasizes the importance of the rhetorical skills of the church leaders. The sacred texts of Gullah are the Christian Bible, coupled with narratives from the Gullah oral tradition. Church services developed to reflect the prescribed rites for either Baptist or Methodist services and the community fashioned itself roughly along the lines of these denominations’ doctrines. By stimulating the congregation’s imaginations, as well as eliciting their active participation, Gullah rituals emphasize the congregation’s role. Based in traditional Christian rites, the distinct African American influence includes Root practice, song, prayer, dance, seeking and spirit possession. Gullah ritual specialists occasionally invoke earth-bound spirits to aid them in contacting both good and bad spirits in the other world for the successful completion of Root rituals.338

The growth and development of Gullah religious communities in the South Carolina Sea Islands illustrates the empowerment of African Americans. The Gullah church served to empower its adherents by affording an agency of independently defined religious beliefs, which helped to create a new identity and culture for oppressed African American slaves. Yet, is it the case that Gullah grew because it was a source of grounding and empowerment? It is possible that membership in the community grew simply

338 Jones-Jackson, 24-25. 56 because the population of slaves increased steadily over the years, allowing community growth that was proportional with the arrival of newcomers. Would this kind of proportional growth create the illusion that the Gullah church was a much more socially important community than the reality of its growth dictates? What is obvious is that, regardless of cause, the Gullah community of believers grew instead of disappearing after a generation or two and it spread throughout the region. This vitality is the key. Gullah also inspired blacks well into the twentieth century, contributing the anthem Keep Your Eyes on the Prize to the Civil Rights movement.339

To orient oneself in the ultimate sense, as Long defines religion, under the conditions of oppression would be quite the daunting task. To see people who found a mode by which they made sense of their place in the world under extreme conditions is inspiring. Yet, throughout the course of this project, the question that has been begging to be asked has been, “But what did the slaves as a whole ‘do’ to facilitate the end of their oppression with all of this empowerment and agency?” This is a frighteningly politically incorrect question with which to be faced. There were plenty of individuals who physically tried to escape the bonds of slavery, as well those who waged war against their oppressors with resistance or rebellion. Why was it that the ordinary African or African American slave did not just say no? Why not use the power of numbers, stand up and refuse to plant one more seed? Did the development of Gullah just fuel this seemingly pervasive ambivalence or was it indeed a source of empowerment and agency?

Powers posits that Abraham Lincoln represented to American slavery what Moses represented to the Israelites in Egypt. In mulling over that analogy, the Israelites were fortunate to have survived under such situational duress. It is probable that at the end of the workday, they did not have the physical energy to act to attain freedom, but they possessed the spiritual freedom to hope for a day outside of Egyptian bondage. When time came, they followed the Moses’ lead, but only after much complaining. Yet they still possessed the spiritual freedom to believe in and hope they would find the Promised Land. In the end, they indeed established a new land with the providence of Yahweh.

Jesus as savior presents a scenario similar to that of the Israelites in bondage. People believed in and followed him and they complained when it was hard. They were persecuted and signified by outsiders. They were angry when they did not experience the realization of salvation, especially hopes of an immediate physical variety. Jesus provided his believers with an intangible spiritual salvation and the result was an entirely new religion that has lasted for a few thousand years.

One could speculate that Gullah functioned in a similar way for the enslaved people of the Sea Islands as Judaism did for the Israelites in bondage and the followers of Jesus. The physical expectation may have been freedom in the literal sense, but the reality of what Gullah provided was a spiritual freedom to hope that their salvation would provide the solace to get though another day and lead them to the Promised Land.

339 Carawan, ix. 57 The flickering light of the old lanterns no longer cast their shadows over the slender, frail figures of Tyra Wright. When she died, her followers buried her back of the little church she loved, and one has to look closely to find her grave. With her death in 1942, much of the enthusiasm waned, and although a new Church Mother succeeded Tyra Wright, the meetings have almost ceased. A few of the member still live on Edisto, and they speak reverently of Tyra, but it is almost impossible to persuade them to talk of the services. Occasionally a minister from the City, as Charleston is called, holds a noonday meeting, but with little of the old rituals.340

Until as recently as the 1950s, many of the Sea Islands remained geographically isolated from the mainland allowing the time-honored ways of Islanders to continue. Gullah folklore, the oral tradition of the culture and religion, has been able to stay alive. In modern times, “Shouts” are reserved for special occasions, but remnants of it can be seen in the swaying and foot changing motions of some church congregations.341 However, like the earlier example of the Sanctify, no one really wants to talk about it, not outside of the veil.

To write a thesis on such a subject as slavery from an academic perspective leads to the inevitable possibility of signifying the subjects under study. On the one hand, this is because the language of the academy lends itself toward significations and on the other this is because research materials reflect the cultural language of the society to which the researcher belongs. It is also the case that the language of other scholars whose work is referenced and the people under study themselves influence the language choices of the writer, even if only subconsciously. However, the art of wordplay that creates signification requires the absence of responsibility for the language used by the wordsmith. I do take full responsibility.

With the resurgence in interest for all things Gullah in the Lowcountry, the subject is ripe for future research projects. Current undertakings in the area include the National Parks Service Gullah Corridor preservation and interpretation initiatives, The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s efforts to preserve and promote Gullah culture and history, the now-forming African American History Museum, as well as the inclusion of the Lowcountry in ’s research regarding Bance Island in Sierra Leone, all serve as testimony to the importance of this task.

In relation to this study, many areas of note deserve further exploration. One such project might examine Gullah folklore exclusively for symbols and significations toward the societies outside of the veil. Another could explore the entities of Gullah lore, the Hags, Haints and Plat-eyes and the import of each to the community. A study of the efficacy of Root remedies with comparison to traditional Chinese medicine would be fascinating. More socially significant would be a study that explores the direct impact that Gullah communities and beliefs had on the American Civil Rights movement of the twentieth century.

By using Charles Long’s hermenutic tool of significations in reference to the development of the Gullah church, it is possible to observe the creation of a system of

340 Graydon, 103-105. 341 God’s Gonna Trouble the Water. 58 belief under oppressive circumstances. Slaves on the Sea Islands expressed autonomy despite their oppression by organizing religious communities that produced a new orientation in the ultimate sense, making sense of their place in the world. The Gullah church is an independent regional expression of Christianity that allowed its followers to define their religious beliefs and create a new identity and independent slave culture. The stories, songs and rituals produced by this highly adaptable and creative community exemplified the vitality of this expression of religion. Functioning first in the Invisible Church and later within the Praise House, the church served as a community center, adding to the empowerment of the group, and providing a means of socio-religious agency that served as a foundation for continued forms of resistance.

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