Utbildningsradion – Over to You 2000/2001 The Gullah People Programnr: 00060/ra 12

SLAVERY – PART ONE THE GULLAH PEOPLE

Manus: Carmilla och Calvin Floyd Producent: Claes Nordenskiöld

Sändningsdatum: 13/10 2000 Programlängd: 14’30

MUSIC: Marquetta Goodwine “My Spirit Calls Out”

Brandon Major: Gullah is … It would be hard to write Gullah. It’s mostly what they used to speak back home and some of the whites couldn’t understand. So they didn’t want them talking to each other too much because since they couldn’t understand them they thought they might try to do something. But they would sing songs and stuff to communicate and speak Gullah. You know at the Gullah festival people speak in Gullah too so people can know more of their heritage and they can have a piece of it with them, no matter where they go or what someone does to them.

Claes Nordenskiöld: We’re in southern South Carolina, on a group of islands known as the Sea Islands. The first slaves brought to the United States from Africa entered through South Carolina. This continued in the 16-, 17-, and 1800s and descendants of these slaves still live on the islands. They’re known as the Gullah people because of their specific language. It is a mixture of English and words from different African languages. And this is where Brandon Major lives.

Brandon Major: My name is Brandon Major. I’m fourteen. I live in a three bedroom, two bathroom house on the Wallace Plantation which is on St. Helena Island, which is in South Carolina. There’s a lot to be proud of here. You have a lot of natural resources and stuff. Well, not natural resources – but you know things that nature helps provide … Like rich soil for good farmland. We have a nice front yard. We have cows in the back and we have two dogs. I go to high school … I’m going through the tenth grade. I play basketball, baseball and sometimes football but I don’t like football as much anymore. I think my great-grandgrandmother’s mother was a slave and I think she lived through slavery and that’s when she had my grandmother.

MUSIC: Bessie Jones (and others) “It Just Suits Me”

Claes Nordenskiöld: In 1860, South Carolina had about 400,000 slaves, more than any other state. The slaves on St Helena and other islands off the coast of South Carolina were allowed to work on their own since their owners usually lived on the mainland in the town of Beaufort. The slave-owners were afraid of malaria and the high humidity which was thought to be unhealthy. Thus, African traditions and languages survived longer here than in many other parts of the American South. Brandon Major: The slaves, they were brought here by ships, and they were told they’d be free when they came to America. The slaves thought they were coming here

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for a better life but when they got on the boats they were chained and their feet were chained and their arms were chained and they were stacked in little rooms and they were on top of each other. After they got away from land enough they sometimes let the shackles go … and let them come out and come on deck and walk around. But like a few jumped off the boat and stuff. But I don’t think they survived because like sharks or something might have caught them before they reached land trying to swim.

MUSIC: Bessie Jones (and others) “It Just Suits Me”

Claes Nordenskiöld: No one knows how many slaves came to the Americas, but somewhere around 12 million is a good estimate. Most of them were brought to Brazil and the West Indies, but about 600,000 were taken to the United States. Many of the slaves came from western Africa – Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Congo, and other areas – and were brought across the Atlantic to work on cotton, tobacco and coffee plantations, and in mines. They were part of the so called Slave Triangle – tools, iron, and alcohol were brought from Europe and traded for slaves in Africa. The slaves were then brought to the Americas, and traded for cotton, tobacco, sugar, gold and silver, which in turn was brought back to Europe.

Brandon Major: When they were brought from Africa they were taken to Charleston and they were sold. A lot of the plantation owners went up to Charleston and they stood on like booths and stuff and they bid. They auctioned off the slaves and sometimes the children were auctioned off and they were separated from their parents. That’s real sad cause then the kids can’t actually trace their heritage or know what their family was like. Cause some of the kids were very young.

Claes Nordenskiöld: Gullah traditions and culture are very much alive on St. Helena. Brandon’s father is a fisherman and he still throws his nets in the same way as fishermen do in Sierra Leone. And of course, his father’s job has influenced Brandon’s taste in food. And when Brandon describes his father he talks of hard work.

Brandon Major: I don’t really have a favorite food but I eat all kinds of food. But actually I do. I like shrimp-fried rice, white rice – usually white rice, gravy and either fish or some other type of seafood. I like frogmarsh stew. I like that a lot. It has shrimp, smoked sausages, corn and some other things I cannot remember.

Brandon’s father: No. He ain’t got no fisherman in him. What do you think Brandon? What do you think?

Brandon Major: What?

Brandon’s father: I don’t think you’ll be a fisherman?

Brandon Major: No.

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Brandon Major: He’s a commercial crabber. He sells his crabs at the market. He goes and he takes his crabs and then he usually comes back home and whatever he needs to do in the yard or whatever kind of work he has to do on his boat or something – he does that. He usually works until dark. I started going out on the river with him when I was real young. Like I used to go for boat rides when I was about five, six and seven. When I turned about twelve and a half I started going with him, grading the crabs and stuff … separating the males from the females and the small ones. You can tell the female and the male by the shape of the underside. The females have orange-red claws and the males have blue.

MUSIC: Church music

Brandon Major: I go to church every Sunday, especially on third Sundays …that’s the day I usher. I stand by the door and keep the doors closed and help people. My mom, she’s an evangelist. She likes to talk about like life stories and stuff. Women are evangelists … men are usually elders, ministers or preachers.

MUSIC: Boisterous church music with clapping from above

Claes Nordenskiöld: During the time of slavery, slaves were not allowed in churches even though they had built most of them for the whites. On St Helena the slaves put up small frame shacks known as praise houses, of which only a few remain today. These houses were the only place slaves could meet to worship and to talk without the whites accusing them of planning a rebellion or escaping from their masters. The services were led by people known as ‘ring shouts’ and dancing and singing went on long into the nights.

Brandon Major: They say that the holy ghost passes – well, the holy spirit is in the church and when the holy spirit touches people they usually begin to shout. Like the pianist will start playing a little louder and the drummer starts playing a little louder … and people will start clapping.

MUSIC: Boisterous church music with clapping from above

Claes Nordenskiöld: Hundreds of thousands of tourists visit the Sea Islands every year. Most of them don’t come to observe the Gullah people’s culture and history, but rather for the luxury hotels, the golf courses and the beautiful natural surroundings with clean white beaches. The resorts and residential complexes are encircled by high fences and the entrances are watched by uniformed security guards.

At first, most things were built without damaging the environment, but the builders who came later have not been as careful. Pollution is now increasing, even reaching the beaches on St. Helena. In the 60s and 70s, many Gullahs were talked into selling their land too cheaply – today they’re wiser. St Helena is one of the few islands where people have refused to sell their land to hotel chains. Believe it or not, you even have to pay five dollars to enter some of the tourist areas. This is how a guard explains it.

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Guard: How many people in the car, two? Alright, just put this on your dashboard and you’re taken care of. It pays for the maintenance. It also covers the security and the shuttle that will bring you down here from the local gate. This is a private community. Everything here is owned, even the harbor. All the slips are owned. They’re not public docking. So for you to enter there’s a fee to come in, just like any country club or any movie theater. We have a beach that has access to with that pass that’s five dollars – it gives you access to the beach. All the plantations, back in the eighteen hundreds were gated – a very safe place. There is probably zero crime rate.

Matt: The Harbor Town … It’s a place where a lot of visitors come. It’s a real family place. You can do anything from renting powerboats – go sailing. Basically they just come here to have fun. I don’t know much about the history. A lot of things go on on that island. I know a lot about what goes on down here, but as far as history is concerned I don’t know too much.

MUSIC: Madonna “American Pie”

Claes Nordenskiöld: Tourists come and go, but in their path cultural traditions are in jeopardy. Baskets made from sweet grass have existed in St. Helena since the time of slavery. The baskets are woven in a traditional African technique, one which has passed on from one generation to the next. It takes more than one week to make a basket, and the raw material is becoming increasingly difficult to find. The grass grows around the beaches – areas frequently taken up by hotels and tourist development. Traditional basket making may soon become a lost art.

Weaver: My mother taught me, and her mother taught her and it’s like passing from mothers to daughters. Like in my generation we do a little more different things with them than what our mothers did back then … but it’s not too much of a difference. It’s really mostly like a dying art because of the fact that the sweet grass is getting scarce and then we have children who don’t have patience like we do to really sit down and really want to weave this basket see and really get it going again.

MUSIC: Amazing Grace

Brandon: The good thing about America is the freedom. Well, in an area like this you can find little jobs. You can work and then you can start to save up and you can get your own stuff. Where like in big cities, like people without education and stuff – it’s kind of hard for them to get jobs.

Martin Luther King, you know … cause he wanted everybody to be treated equal and he wanted everyone to get along no matter what race … but he died, because someone didn’t like what he was saying.

MUSIC: Amazing Grace

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SLAVERY – PART TWO LOOKING BACK AND MOVING ON

Manus: Carmilla och Calvin Floyd Producent: Claes Nordenskiöld

Sändningsdatum: 17/10 2000 Programlängd: 14’37

MUSIC: Stevie Wonder “Pastime Paradise”

Rohulamin Quander: The monument to Franklin Delano Roosevelt is straight across there and the Vietnam memorial is right down here. That’s Virginia right over there where we just came from. That’s the Watergate Theater. Now you heard so much about the Watergate scandal that brought President Nixon down? When we were children, the only thing that was a Watergate was the theater and the steps right there and the stage.

Claes Nordenskiöld: Rohulamin Quander is talking about Washington D.C. – a principal home to the Quanders, one of the few African American families able to trace their origins back some 320 years to the time when their ancestors were forcibly brought from Ghana in West Africa to work as slaves. The Quanders have long been a large and prosperous American family, which includes many doctors, lawyers and other successful people.

Most African Americans know little about their forefathers, since slaves were not included in official records. Slave families were often split up and never reunited, as family members were sold on to new slave-owners.

Today, there is a growing desire for African Americans to seek their lost roots. Rohulamin Quander has recently visited Africa and is writing a book about the Quanders.

Rohulamin Quander: So, we want to put this in writing so that it’s public information. It will also mean that the information will be preserved, because what I might know in my head, somebody in the next generation will not necessarily have a clue about.

MUSIC: Stevie Wonder “Pastime Paradise”

Rohulamin Quander: That was my second trip to Africa. I really felt as though the ancestors who had been torn apart over 300 years ago. That the circle that was broken was kind of coming back together. We could feel a sense of community on both sides of the ocean. When they took the slaves and they caught them in the … along the

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coast and in the interior and they brought them to prepare them to ship away to the Caribbean and to the Americas, they had these places where they held them in which were forts. Some people call them slave forts; other people call them slave castles. But it was not too long before Christopher Columbus sailed in this direction. So when they were ready to put them on the ships they had an area where they would take them through a passageway and there was a very small door called ’the door of no return’. One person passed through the door at a time. That door was very narrow. Depending upon where the castle was, you might find a ladder to climb down to a row boat or somehow you’d have to climb down and get into a boat to take you out to a larger boat and that put you on the road to be taken away. And then you were put in shackles and chained in the boat, lying down in most cases and you stayed lying down for three months. You couldn’t even get up. And many of them died and most of them were naked. The business of slave trade was to stuff as many in there as possible cause they knew some were going to die on the way. And those that died they just threw in the water. So, if you survived the passage to be sold somewhere, depending on who you were sold to, you might get somebody who treated you better or somebody else who treated you worse.

MUSIC: Bessie Jones “I’m Gonna Lay Down My Life For My Lord”

Rohulamin Quander: Well I’ll tell you one thing, when I went to the slave castle and the door of no return, I broke down and I cried. That was difficult. My ancestors came through that situation and they were brutally ripped away from their families. And you see my nephew right here, he’s sitting with us and he’s learning a lot, things he never knew before. So when he gets to be my age I just hope he’s going to be able to pass this information on that he started learning when he was at a young age.

MUSIC: Bessie Jones “I’m Gonna Lay Down My Life For My Lord”

Julian Quander: My name is Julian Quander. I’m age 13 and I live in Silver Spring, Maryland. I go to White Oak Middle School, which is also located in Silver Spring, Maryland. It’s a nice school and the teachers are nice. They communicate with the students real well. And I learn a lot going there. It’s nice and peaceful. Security guards, they stop the violence and they increase the peace in our school.

Music: Dr. Dre “Big Ego’s”

Julian Quander: After school I have a soccer team … I like to play basketball, golf, tennis, hockey and football, but mostly they all have different racial categories … I would include soccer in all races because that’s an all around sport. Everywhere they play it. But in America it’s not really high rated. Basketball’s higher and football are higher rated in our area.

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In our school, when it comes to lunch some people like to be with their own race. And just think that other people might be different from them and they don’t fit in that category, which they live in. When I first came to White Oak I sat with mainly the black people. I still do now but to me it wouldn’t make a difference sitting at the white or the black or the Spanish table, or Asian. It wouldn’t make a difference. They think that, say, a fight were to break out … with the Asians versus the black and I’m sitting at the Asian, they’ll think I’m on their team or something – be with their group.

MUSIC: Dr. Dre “Big Ego’s”

Claes Nordenskiöld: Unemployment, drugs and violence are common among poor African Americans in the U.S. But a majority of the nation’s 28 million African Americans is actually part of the middle-class – well-to-do and well educated. However, they all have to deal with racism and discrimination. There are laws in the U.S. against race discrimination, but all prejudices are not gone. Conflicts between and among blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans still exist.

Julian Quander: Like, I remember the one time I went to go get my tennis ball that I threw over to that yellow house over there. And this lady was like … Get out of my yard! What are you doing?! I’m just going to get the tennis ball. She probably thought I was trying to steal something inside her house … take her dog or something.

I think it just comes from people who think that if you’re different … if you’re a different color or if you’re disabled, or just a whole different person they would just think you’re just nothing to them … if you’re not their kind then you don’t have to be around them. They think you’re like an enemy to them. Say I went inside a school or a mall somewhere and I saw, like a big Spanish guy picking on a small Asian guy that makes me go back in time to think about how slavery was. That was a lot going on. This is just a little bit. But just to think about that. It makes me feel very sad to think about the slaves who had to deal with that.

MUSIC: Dr. Dre “Big Ego’s”

Claes Nordenskiöld: Not far from Julian Quander’s hometown lies Mount Vernon, the restored 18th century home of George Washington, America’s first president. George Washington was born into a world in which slavery was accepted. At the age of eleven, he inherited ten slaves when his father died, and gradually acquired many more during his lifetime. The slaves were employed in a wide variety of jobs in the fields and the workshops of the plantation and in his household. Mount Vernon is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the United States. Until recently, no one wanted to talk about the fact that Washington owned slaves. But now, finally, the tour guides at Mount Vernon have started to tell the truth.

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Girl Guide: This is the entrance to the site memorial and it’s located relatively close, as you may have noted, to George Washington’s tomb. This is a site that we know through historical documentation – is likely the location of where the slaves were buried. Several of George Washington’s over three hundred slaves were buried in this location.

Children reading from tombstone: In memory of the many colored servants of the Washington family buried at Mount Vernon from 1760 to 1860 … their unidentified graves surround this spot. 1929 …

Girl Guide: At the time of George Washington’s death there was – around the time of his death – there was an inventory because you have to remember during that period slaves were thought to be property. So, a little over 100 slaves were freed in George Washington’s will according to his wishes upon Martha Washington’s death. So, George Washington died in 1799 … a good fifty years before slaves were freed here as a country … He’s one of the few founding fathers that actually freed the slaves in his will. In his writing he began to reflect that it was hard for him, fighting for the freedom of the nation, when not all members of it’s population were free. After the American Revolution, he did not purchase or sell slaves, George Washington resolved even before the American Revolution, not to separate families.

Claes Nordenskiöld: Many of the visitors to Mount Vernon are upset to learn about the hard lives the slaves were forced to lead.

Tour Guide: The rule was you lived where you worked. Log cabins, dirt floors, the chimneys made out of sticks, mud and clay. The beds lay on the floors with rats crawling over them to get at whatever bread, cornmeal or whatever might be lying around the quarters.

Child Tourist 1: I can’t believe that there actually were some white slaves.

Child Tourist 2: I can’t believe they had them over there, working in the fields and crushing the corn for them and all that stuff. They had to carry it a long way away.

Taking somebody from their own country and bringing them to your country just to work for you … I mean, like they didn’t even get paid … And that is bad … I don’t think that’s right … They should get paid for what they do. At least a quarter or something.

Tour Guide: Now, if you were a working slave, that meant that you were 12 years or older, down to 96, depending on the condition of the person. Now, a typical ration of food for the slaves, they received from George Washington was a quart of corn and five herring. And they were very salty.

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MUSIC: Stevie Wonder “Pastime Paradise”

Claes Nordenskiöld: In the United States, slavery was officially abolished after the Civil War in 1865. But segregation was still very prevalent in the South and certain other areas of the U.S. in the 50s and 60s, when the Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King eventually proved successful. But there is of course more to do.

The horror of slavery must never be forgotten – we must not let it happen again. The Quander family tries their best to keep history alive and take great pride in their ancestry and traditions.

Julian Quander: Well, Ghana is like the motherland of the Quander family. The reunion is a gather up of all the Quanders in America and we just celebrate. Think about the good times and the bad times. We’re thinking about how the Quanders lived back then and how we’re living now. Well, the kids mainly, we just play around a little bit – have fun, enjoy food. Usually we just gather around and talk about how good it is to see each other. We just stick together and look out for each other. I’m just proud to be a part of the Quander family.

MUSIC: Stevie Wonder “Pastime Paradise”

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