Folk History of the Bahamas
The Bahamas
Folklore
Collection goes
beyond recognized history
and explores
the other influences
and values that make Bahamians the
kind,
gentle people that
they are.
Our
resource materials
comes
from church programs, funeral notices,
newspaper clippings and
sometimes
just
sip sipping over folktales and anecdotes
with community leaders like the late Kermit
Rolle, one
of the patriarchs
of Rolleville, and
who was a great source
for the immense contributions
Bahamians made
to the development of South Florida.
This edition
is a production of the Pompey Centre
for the Studies in
Traditional Art,
Music, Food and the Unresolved Mysteries.
The Director
is Cordell Thompson,
a former Editor with Jet
and Ebony
Magazines
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The Bahamas
According
to European history, the
Bahamas
was the first landfall
of the Italian explorer Christopher
Columbus on his voyage of discovery on October 1492. The truth was that when
he arrived in this part of the
world, the islands were
already inhabited
by Arawak Indians
who had originally
migrated from the South American mainland.
They
shared
a kinship with the Taino and
Lucayan Indians
who inhabited Jamaica, Hispaniola
and Cuba.
In return for their
hospitality,
Columbus changed their
names,
the names of the places they lived, and
he, and later Spanish
adventurers,
wiped
these gentle peoplefrom
theface of the earth.
Although considered
part of the Caribbean, the 700
islands
that make up the country
of the Bahamas are well
out in the Atlantic,
stretching
more than 650 miles from the eastern coast of Florida
to the south-eastern tip of Cuba.
The Tropic
of Cancer runs through the island of Exuma, one of the few Taino names still attached
to the country.
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Exuma
Over
the centuries
the country’s history
of exploitation, slavery,
and its predominantly
African culture gives
them much in common
with
all the other islands
of the Caribbean.
With
little arable
land and thousands of square miles of water
Bahamians
prospered
from enterprises like piracy,
smuggling,
wrecking, blockade running and
even honest pursuits like
fishing.
Today
Bahamians
have used these same
natural assets to create one of the most thriving tourism
economies in
the region.
Like their counterparts
in other parts of the region, the Bahamian people
over the centuries have
created a powerful and
unique culture.
Like
their
Caribbean neighbours,
Bahamian artists,
thinkers, athletes
and musicians have
had a worldwide influence disproportionate
to the country’s small size and population.
Sir Sidney
Poitier, the first African-American
to receive an Academy Award for acting, hails from Cat
Island.
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SirSidneyPoitier
Joseph Spence, recognized internationally as one of the most accomplished
folk-guitarist
of his day, was born in
Andros,
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Joseph Spence
James
Weldon Johnson, who penned
the African-American national
anthem, “Lift Every
Voice
and Sing” is a son
of the Bahamas.
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James Weldon Johnson
Bert
Williams of the famous vaudeville act,
William
sand Walker, has his
roots in San Salvador
or Watlings Island.
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Bert Williams
Without a Dr. Robert
Love, who grew up in Grant’s
Town, Nassau, the world may
not have heard of Marcus Garvey.
A physician and minister,
Dr. Love was one of the earliest mentors of the budding black leader
as he developed his
oratorical and
journalistic skills that
would propel him to leadership
of the largest African-American organization
the world has ever seen.
The
island of Exuma has produced
many
sons and daughters who have
made their mark ontheworld scene.
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Dr. Robert Love
1829, Exuma was the
scene
of a revolt when slaves
belonging to Lord
Denis
Rolle fled to the woods for a month and refused
to work, setting a precedent that
alarmed slave owners throughout the Caribbean. The
group,
led
by Pompey, stole
a boat and headed
to Nassau to seek a hearing with the governor,
but was captured en route.
All
forty-four slaves were
imprisoned. Pompey was brought back to Exuma and flogged with
39 strokes of
the cat-o-nine in the school yard
in Steventon.
By the time
slavery was abolished five
years
later,
Lord Rolles’s Exuma plantations had
failed
due to pests and soil
exhaustion.
Lord Rolle received
more
than four thousand pounds
in compensation,
and today sixty percent of all
Exumians carry the last name
Rolle
and can acquire land in
the village if they
can prove that they are
descendants of the
original slave population.
King Curtis the artist, whose soulful saxophone sound underscored many
of Aretha Franklin’s greatest hits, has
roots in Rolleville,
Exuma. The settlement
of Rolletown,
also named after
Lord
Rolle
is the ancestral home
of “Good Times”,
actress Esther Rolle.
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King
Curtis Esther
Rolle
Ms. Rolle who was born in
Miama,
Florida had two other
siblings Estelle
Evans who appeared in the move
“To kill a mocking
bird” and
Roseann Carter who earned a name for
herself on Broadway in
several starring roles including the play “A
gathering of old men”.
The late actress
Roxy Roker mother of Lenny Kravitz also has Exuma roots and so does Al Roker,
NBC’s weather man.
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Roxy
Roker Al
Roker
Brigadier General David Smith
Brigadier
General David Smith
was born in Jolly Hall, Exuma and
went on to become
Chief
of Staff of the Jamaica Defence
Force.
In this photograph he is
seen at the welcoming ceremony for His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haille Selassie,
of Ethiopia on his official visit to Jamaica on April
23, 1966.
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Brigadier
General David Smith Lincoln
Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry
(Stepin
Fetchit)
Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry
(Stepin
Fetchit), was born in Key West
Florida 1902, to Joseph
Perry, believed
to be either from Jamaica
or the Bahamas, and Dora Munroe,
a seam stress from
Exuma. Although
Perry made 54 movies in a 52
years
career,
and was a columnist
for the Black newspaper, The
Chicago
Defender, he was heavily criticized by
later
Civil
Rights leaders for the "shufflin" roles
he portrayed on screen. He was awarded the Spingarn
Medal from the Los Angeles
Chapter of the NAACP in1976 and the same year, inducted into
the Black Film makers
Hall of Fame.
The
Gullah/ Geechee Connection
In
1492, Christopher Columbus made his first landfall in the Western Hemisphere in
the Bahamas. He encountered friendly Arawak Indians and exchanged gifts with
them.
Spanish
slave traders later captured the Arawaks and their cousins, the Lucayans to work
in gold mines in Hispaniola (later called Santo Domingo and later still, Haiti
and the Dominican Republic), and within 25 years, the Lucayans and the Arawaks
vanished from the face of the earth. Lacking a source of slaves, the Spanish
did not bother to colonize the islands. In 1647 during the time of the English
Civil War, a group of Puritan religious refugees from the royalist colony of
Bermuda, the Eleutheran Adventurers, founded the first permanent European settlement
in The Bahamas and gave Eleuthera Island its name. Similar groups of settlers
formed governments in The Bahamas, but the isolated cays sheltered pirates and
wreckers through the 17th century. Charles I granted land in the Bahamas to the
Lords Proprietors of the Carolinas but the islands were left entirely to
themselves. After Charles Town was destroyed by a joint French and Spanish
fleet in 1703, the local pirates proclaimed ananarchic ‘Privateers’ Republic’ with Edward Teach,
better known as Blackbeard— for chief magistrate.
In
1718, the islands became a British Crown colony, and the first Royal Governor,
a reformed pirate named Woodes Rogers, expelled the buccaneers who had used the
islands as hideouts. During the American War of Independence the Bahamas fell briefly
to Spanish forces under General Galvez in 1782.
After the American
Revolutionary War, the British
government issued land
grants in Jamaica,
Canada and the Bahamas to a group of British Loyalists,
who chose the wrong side in the war.
The sparse
population of The
Bahamas tripled in
a few years.
The planters thought to grow cotton, but the limestone soil, the boll
weevil and chenille bug put an end to those dreams. After a few years, the
plantations failed and soon both the Black and White settlers turned to the sea
for their fortunes.
The
new arrivals however brought their food,culture,folkways and mostimportantly,
their language. Although a British colony from 1670 to independence in 1973,
culturally and linguistically, the character and personality of the Bahamian
people owe much to the Gullah/Geechee people.
The Gullah/Geechee People
The real Gullah/Geechee
culture is
found
in an area that extends for
several hundred
miles between Cape
Fear in North Carolina, and
the St. Johns River in North Florida.
It is home to one of America’s
most
distinctive
cultures,
the Gullah and Geechee people,
and descendants
of slaves who have stoutly maintained
folkways, crafts, and traditions– even
a language –whose
origins can
be traced back
over the centuries
to their homelands
in West
Africa. The
Gullah
people
and their traditions are
a product of the Atlantic Slave trade.
In the seventy-five
years
from the beginning of the 18th century to the declaration
of independence, more than forty percent of the Africans arriving in the
British North Americans Colonies were quarantined and processed in coastal
islands off Georgia and South Carolina.
As they adapted to their new homes in the coastal islands off the coast
of Georgia and South Carolina, their culture found expression
and expertise in basket weaving, cotton, indigo, and rice cultivation, and the
unique cuisine that drew on the rich harvest of the coastal marshlands.
She-crab soup, fish and grits, peas and rice, fried mullet and conch are still
staples at fine eating establishments in Savannah, Charleston and Beauford,
South Carolina. |
Gullah Ladies
The Gullahs and their mainland cousins, the
Geechees, were first brought from Africa to the isolated Sea Islands off the
coast of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia and until
fairly recently their communities in the coastal region of islands,
marshes, placid rivers and expansive wet- lands had seen little change.
The Gullahs (as they are called by others) are
direct descendants of Africans coming mostly from the ethnic groups of West
Africa and the Bantu of Central Africa. The word, “Gullah”, is believed to be a
shortened form or corruption of N’ gola (Angola). There is no difference in the linguistic
structure of Gullah and Sea Island Creole than that spoken in the Caribbean and
Africa.
The Geechee language and culture is believed to
have derived from the plantations along the Ogeechee River that flows through southeast
Georgia to the Atlantic, although linguists claim it also has antecedents in
another Bantu dialect.
The Gullah/Geechee culture on the coastal islands
remained in almost total obscurity for more than 200 years. However, while many African traditions have
been retained in the culture, change in the region is now widespread, often
overwhelming, and sometimes threatening this unique culture.
New bridges and roads have opened the
area to intensive
development and tourism, sprawling resorts, residential subdivisions
and strip malls are
sprouting everywhere. Family cemeteries, archaeological sites
and fishing grounds are being paved over or put off-limits by new owners, and
familiar landmarks – stores, churches, schools and houses are being demolished
or replaced with new structures.
However, many grass roots organizations and
community groups are collaborating with preservation societies and the national
trust to educate the public, raise funds and secure technical assistance for
protecting and preserving structures,
landscapes and archaeological sites.
Gullah Museum
The
Gullah/Geechee language
Today, the English spoken by the average working
class Bahamian is close to the Gullah dialect, so much so, that Bahamian
migrant workers who found their way to the American South as farm workers on
“The Contract”, during and after the Second World War, could melt into the
local population at the drop of a phrase, because, “they could talk Geechie
good”. Idioms like ‘day clean” for dawn and “terectly” for “soon” or “whenever”
are still commonly used in both Charleston and Nassau.
The cultures of the Bahamian and the American
South also share a great story-telling tradition, and many of the themes and
motifs suggest a common African past.
But what is remarkable is that researchers have
found one of the largest collections of folk-tales in the hemisphere in The
Bahamas, over three hundred or more, and only in Africa are more folk-tales
found and still told today. These stories speak to an African origin,
particularly the Anansi stories, and show a commonality wherever Africans were
settled in the new world.
Traditionally, parents and grandparents in the
Bahamas, drew on B’ Booky and B’Rabby
folk tales to put their children to sleep. These folk-tales have much in common
with the Uncle Remus stories collected over a hundred years ago by a white
Southerner, Joel Chandler Harris. The
Bahamas however is
recognized as having
one of the
largest collections of folktales in the African Diaspora in the
Americas, and their preservation owes much to the work of Zora Neale Hurston,
one of the leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston is credited with
documenting a wide collection of Bahamian folktales, songs and chants that
still enrich the Bahamian society today.
For example, in one of his stories, “How the
Alligator Skin Got Wrinkled,” Harris used the word “Nyam” which means, “to
eat.” The word is still common in
Jamaican dialect and residents of Cat Island and Andros use it to refer to a
shoulder bag used for carrying food when going to work in the fields.
Other idioms, which occur in Bahamian dialect,
include:
Tell him,
say… -
Tell him
One man - A man
Me one - Me
alone, only me
Mash up - Break,
hurt, destroy
The
headway I make - The speed I make
He rig a plan -
He made a plan
He jook a
fish - He
speared a fish
Do, for
God’s sake - intensification for any verb
One day
more than all - One day particularly
He does
tief - He steals
In 1807, the British Parliament passed the
Abolition of the Slave Trade Bill, which made it unlawful for any British
subject to transport slaves. British captains, who were caught continuing the
trade, were fined one hundred pounds for every slave found on board. The
British Navy adopted the practice of intercepting slave traders of other
European nations and depositing their
cargo at the nearest British ports. In the capital city of Nassau, the villages
of Gambier, Adelaide, Carmichael and Fox Hill were home to these liberated
Africans. In Andros, there is still a Congo Town, and for years a popular
basketball team in Fox Hill went by the name, the Fox Hill Nangoes.
The slaves in the Bahamas and the Caribbean were
freed in 1834 by Queen Victoria. By that time, all Bahamians of African
descent, whether they arrived with the Loyalists or whether they preceded the
loyalists, or whether they arrived by other means, were influenced by the
culture and folkways of the Gullah people.
Food ways
Bahamians like their cousins in Savannah and
Charleston, believe that they have one of the most varied cuisines in the
world, stimulated to a degree by a thriving tourist trade, but influenced by
the indigenous seasoning or native food which can hold its own against any
recognized regional cuisine.
Bahamians have a way with fish and in a country
with over 100,000 square miles of water; there is a lot of fish and many ways
to prepare it. Bahamians prefer their
fish fried, baked, steamed (with tomato gravy), stewed or boiled. Popular species include grunts, snappers,
groupers, mackerels, porgy, turbots and sometimes barracuda. Conchs thrive abundantly in
Bahamian waters and this gastropod has always
been a favourite and versatile food for Bahamians.
Stew Fish
Conch is eaten raw, scorched, or diced and mixed
with hot pepper, celery, tomatoes and onion in a Salad. It is also fried for
cracked conch, or cooked with tomatoes as steamed conch, or with vegetables in
chow- der. It is deep-tried in flour batter to make conch fritters or
“fitters.” When dried for several months, it is soaked and revived to make a
conch and okra soup. Dried conch is also Hurricane Ham because it can out- last any preserved meat and is good for any
emergency. Restaurants in Charleston and Savannah serve grits with breakfast
and at Hyman a popular restaurant on Kings Street
in Charleston, one of
the most popular items on
the menu is stew fish
and grits, a Bahamian staple separated by a few hundred miles and about
the same number of years.
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Gullah
Cuisine
Bahamain
Music/Goombay
Today young Bahamians
embrace all world musical forms. The Bahamians love reggae, jazz, soul and
while the most popular cultural expression is Junkanoo, Goombay is the root of
all Bahamian music.
Goombay is the Bantu word
for “rhythm” and the name given to the particular type of drum used in the
music. Usually made from a goatskin stretched tightly over a keg, the goatskin
drum is the centerpiece of the gentle rolling rhythm of all Bahamian music. The
musical form of Junkanoo is derived from the traditions of Goombay, although
since the 1960s, the musical form strayed from its more traditional style into
a louder, more rapid and cacophonous
sound that assumed the name of the
festival and parade that celebrates
Boxing Day, the Day after
Christmas, and again on New Year’s Day.
Junkanoo is now the most predominant musical form, and the Goombay traditions
are preserved in the rake and scrape bands which harkens back to a simpler time
in the islands when there were fewer resources.
The typical rake and scrape band had a drum, a saw which was scraped
with either a file or some other hard metal, a wash tub with a string through
it and tied to a three foot stick which served as a modified bass violin, maracas
and rhythm sticks. Today’s rake and scrape bands are modified with electric
bass and rhythm guitars, but they cannot respectably call themselves rake and
scrape without the saw and drums. From
the 1920s to the mid 1970s, the basic rake and scrape bands were modified with
a piano, horns, or guitar and even banjos and were simply called Goombay bands.
The musical form is also known in Bermuda and the Turks and Caicos islands.
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Junkanoo
Goombay is a still a popular musical form in West
Africa as the following article in the New York Times demonstrates.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
nytimes.com
October 17, 2000
By DAVID HECHT
ARTS ABROAD; Guinea- Bissau’s Music Drives Its
Industry: the Clubs
The surrounding jungle is slowly engulfing the
tiny capital of this former Portuguese colony. More than a year after a
devastating war little has been rebuilt. The new president, elected in January,
doesn’t even have his own office,
and his presidential
palace, like many
government buildings, is a burned-out shell. The broken streets are
mostly empty by day.
But nights are a different matter. At least eight
big discotheques with high-tech lighting and sound systems lie hidden in the
rubble. Bissau rarely has electricity because its power grid is severely
damaged, but the clubs all have private generators, so thousands of impoverished city dwellers emerge
from the darkness to dance the night away.
On dance floors men and women show off their
passada, a steamy Portuguese-African dance in which pelvises meet and gyrate.
The club goers are of all ages and classes. Members of the government
fraternize with peasants.
Officially it costs as much as $7 to go dancing
in a country where per capita income is $230 a year. But in reality anyone can
get into a disco, says the doorman in front of a big, half-destroyed colonial
building that houses a fancy, multilevel club called Galaxia. ”If you don’t
have money, you get a discount,” he said. Marijuana is readily available, and
prostitution is rife, but most people have clearly come to dance. ”Here we feel
transformed,” said Orlando Mendoca, 20, as colored lights flashed in his face.
A woman pulled him onto the dance floor as the D.J. put on a local hit called
”Don’t Judge Me by My Size.” The singer, Dembo Djassi, is a dwarf who says that
everyone used to insult him, even his mother. But now he is a star.
Before the war the modern French cultural center
in Bissau was the country’s main hall for local and visiting French performers,
but the day the war ended, victorious junta forces destroyed it.
Now discotheques are the only cultural
institutions left standing. Many
concerts take place a block away from the French ruins at the discotheque
Capital. One clubgoer recalled having to sit quietly at Capital as if he were
listening to Mozart. ”That’s not the way we show our appreciation for music
here,” he said.
The discotheques are loud and chaotic. Business
is booming, said Bacai Sanha, the owner of the Cafe D’Rome, who is also an
economist and the son of the former interim president, also named Bacai Sanha.
”They’re the only thing worth investing in here,” he said. Guinea-Bissau has no
industry and produces few export crops besides cashews, and even that has
slowed with the new government’s attempts to tax cashew traders.
”Economically and politically, we don’t know how
to move forward,” Mr. Delgado said in an interview. ”With our music many things
seem possible.”
Gumbe takes many forms. To an ear used to
identifying music by melody rather than rhythm, it often sounds like other
African, Caribbean or Latin dance music. Some gumbe musicians borrow heavily
from Congolese soukous or French Antillean zouk, and some use elements of rap,
reggae and salsa.
Even gumbe’s rhythm came from abroad, said
Ousmane Hurchard Sow, a Senegalese musicologist specializing in the music of
West Africa. ”It’s like the old rumba found in music from Cuba to Congo,” he
said. Yet the gumbe rhythm is distinctive, and a Guinea-Bissau sound shines
through. People here identify with it as if it were part of their genetic
coding. Intellectuals say it fits the ideal postcolonial culture.
Guinea-Bissau lacks a professional sound studio,
so the music is all recorded in Portugal or France. Local sales of imported
gumbe CD’s and cassettes have been growing, said Alfredino Tavares, who owns
the main music store in the country.
But he doesn’t see that as a sign of an economic
upswing. ”All people care about here is food on their table and music to dance
to, and not necessarily in that order,” he said.
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Goombay
dancers in Guinea Bissau
Jonkunno
Junkanoo
has an undeniable African heritage and it is said to be derived from ancient
African yam festivals celebrated with colourful costumes and wildly original
masks. All earlier accounts place Junkunoo in the Carolinas, where it converged
with Christmas festivities, when the slave masters gave the slaves two days off
to celebrate however they felt like.
Some
say the name comes from the French “L’inconnu”, meaning (the unknown), in
reference to the mask worn by the parades; or “junk enoo”, the Scottish
settlers’ reference to the parades meaning ‘junk enough”; or “John Canoe”, the
name of an African tribal chief who demanded the right to celebrate with his
people after being brought to the West Indies as a slave.
Junkanoo
is celebrated throughout the Caribbean, in Jamaica, Guyana, the Dominican
Republic and the Virgin Islands, but nowhere to the extent as it is in the
Bahamas, where it has taken on Super Bowl proportions.
Junkanoo
groups are organized on patterns similar to the New Orleans Mardi Gras “crews.
Group members are drawn from neighborhoods and affinity groupings, trade
unions, popular bars, and even churches are getting in and sponsoring
groups. The music is provided by goat
skin drums, whistles, horns and cowbells. Prizes are awarded for best group
costumes, best individual costumes and best music, but the prize monies hardly
cover the cost of organizing and outfitting a group, many of whom rely on
commercial sponsors. That doesn’t matter. Every Bahamian will tell you Junkanoo
is all about fun, it is all about the Bahamian spirit.
In recent years the Gullah Geeche language is
gaining wider recognition and there is now a Gullah Geechee bible.
God speaks Gullah
Published: Saturday | January 28, 2006 (Jamaican
Gleaner)
A
NEW translation of the New Testament designed for persons who speak Gullah was
unveiled last November. This translation bears strong resemblance to Jamaican
Patois.
Gullah
is the language that gave the world the song Kumbaya and words such as ‘yam’
and ‘nanny’. It is spoken by about 250,000 African-Americans who inhabit the
coastal areas between South Carolina and Florida.
The
Gullah language according to http://www.wikipedia.com“is an English-based
Creole, strongly influenced by West and Central African languages such as Vai,
Mende, Twi, Ewe, Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, and Kikongo.
“It
strongly resembles the Krio language of Sierra Leone, a major West African
English-based Creole. Some African-derived words attributed to Gullah are:
cootuh (turtle), oonuh (pronoun ‘you’), nyam (to eat), and buckruh (white
man)”.
The
language originated in the slave trade that brought mainly West Africans to the
Sea Islands off South Carolina. The slave traders, in an effort to thwart
uprisings and escapees mixed slaves who spoke different languages. From this
hybrid came Gullah. Some linguists believe that 10,000 African-Americans speak
nothing but Gullah.
YEARS OF COLLABORATION
The
Gullah New Testament dubbed De Nyew
Testament was unveiled during an annual festival celebration in South
Carolina. It represented the culmination of 26 years of toil.
De Nyew
Testament is the fruition of collaboration
between Gullah speakers, and linguists attached to the American Bible Society,
the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Wycliffe Bible Translators, the United
Bible Societies and the Penn Centre in
St. Helena Island, South Carolina, and is
published by the American Bible Society.
The 900-page Gullah New Testament includes the King James Version of each verse
next to the Gullah text.
Gullah,
also called Geechee, was developed as a way for slaves to communicate with one
another without white slave owners knowing what was being said. After the
American Civil War, the former slaves were able to retain their culture and
language because many remained isolated on coastal islands.
Because
the islands were isolated, Gullah never evolved into Standard English.
Many
concur that Gullah bears some resemblance to Ebonics, the modern
African-American vernacular. But scholars insist it is a distinct language with
its own grammar and vocabulary.
Bible
translator Pat Sharpe and her husband, Claude, arrived in the Sea Islands all
set to retire in the late 1970s. The couple decided to try a translation of the
Bible into Gullah, beginning a process that would take nearly 30 years.
By
the time the Sharpes had arrived, Gullah speakers had learned to be ashamed of
their language. Some locals tried to persuade the Sharpes to drop the project.
The couple refused to give up. They noted that Gullah had contributed to the
English language such words as ‘tote’ (to carry),
‘chigger’
(flea) and ‘biddy’ (chicken). Other linguists joined the translation team as
the project evolved.
NOT A COMMERCIAL MISSION
Dr.
Robert Hodgson, of the Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship at the American
Bible Society, says only the American Bible Society could have printed the
translation since its main concern is not a commercial one. Instead, the Bible
Society’s mission is to provide Scriptures for various language groups that
desire to read God’s Word in their heart language.
Dr.
Hodgson says the Bible translation is one in which everyone can take pride
because of its historical and cultural significance. He points out that this is more than just a
Bible translation: “The Gullah New Testament raises the Gullah language and
culture to a new level by enshrining the Scriptures in a Creole language once
denigrated as a second- class version of English.”
He
continues, “African-American churches around the country will celebrate this
new translation for its lively tone and musical rhythms, reminiscent of today’s
hip-hop vernacular, but also for its recovery of an al- most forgotten chapter
in the history of African-Americans.
This
sentiment is echoed by Dr. Steve Berneking, a translation officer for the Bible
Society, who was involved with the project. He says, “We are delighted to
celebrate along with the entire Gullah community in seeing this translation
move from merely spoken words to a printed form we can hold in our hands. Our
hope is that this New Testament will help keep the Gullah language and culture
living and active among future generations.”
Over
the years, in cooperation with the United Bible Societies, the American Bible
Society has provided accuracy checking for the translation and was able to
bring the project to completion by providing support for its production and the
actual printing of the New Testament.
PROMOTING CULTURE
One
of the translation team members from the beginning was Emory Campbell, executive
director emeritus of the Penn Centre, which pro- motes and preserves the
history and culture of the Sea Islands.
Mr.
Campbell said, “This New Testament has created much excitement among Gullah
speakers and it is a gift to all as we treasure our heritage and work to
preserve it.”
Mr.
Campbell who grew up speaking Gullah, told a reporter from a Phil- adelphia
newspaper: “We were teased and made fun of, and told to go get some culture,
not knowing we had culture all along, it was just a different culture,”
Ardell
Greene, another long-time member of the Gullah translation team, calls the
Gullah New Testament a ‘treasure’ and emphasizes that “this Bible will be read
in churches and our youngsters will be encouraged by it to keep the Gullah
tradition alive.”
The
Sea Islands, along with the seacoast city of Beaufort SC, were the receiving
ports of call for slave ships from West Africa. During the Civil War, the Sea
Islands, particularly St. Helena Island and its Penn School, provided the first
sanctuary for emancipated slaves, offering free education and unrestricted
access to the Bible and to religious expression. The Penn Centre provided a
home-away-from home for leaders of the Civil Rights movement, including Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., who penned his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on its
campus.
Vernetta
Canteen, a member of the translation team, says she is “excited to actually
feel it and touch it.” She believes that the New Testament validates the
culture and heritage of the Gullah people. As she puts it, “That’s the first
time I heard God talk the way I talk.” After 26 years working on the
translation, she says, “I would do it again in a heartbeat!”
Religion
The
Bahamas is essentially a Christian country with 99 percent of the population
professing to some branch of the Christian faith. Every denomination known to modern man is
found in The Bahamas. The largest groupings are the Baptists, followed by
Anglicans (Episcopal) and then Roman Catholics. The Fundamental and Charismatic
sects, historically connected to similar movements in the American South are
gaining ground in a number of congregants. Religion
is a source of upliftment throughout life.
Most
Bahamians are prayed for as babies and churched before burial. Also all
Bahamians like a little emotion in their religious service. The non-denominational churches
are noted for song
services or praise and
worship services with lively rhythms
and hand-clapping as well as crying when
members get the Holy Ghost. Small acts of piety are
integral parts of everyday life for many.
When
speaking of future plans, even for the next day, Bahamians will add ‘if God
Spare My Life’ or “God willing’. Many families would not think of starting a
meal before gracing it and before going to bed, children are taught to say the
Our Father Prayers.
Traditions
One
Bahamian tradition that have survived the centuries Is a savings plan called
the Asu (e). a means of pooling money has a direct link to Yoruba, unlike Junkanoo, which is eclectic. Among the
Yoruba, the practice was
known as asu,
and Samuel Johnson
defines it as a
“universal custom from clubbing together
of a number of persons for monetary aid.”
A fixed sum is given by each at a fixed time (usually every week) and
placed under a president; the total amount is paid to each member in rotation.
This enables a poor man to do something worthwhile where a lump sum of money is
required. There are no laws regulating
the sum.
This
practice came in handy in the Bahamas where there was no bank from which money
could be borrowed. Moreover, low income workers who probably did not have
sufficient credit to get a loan would not have been helped had there been a
bank. Asu(e) obviated this. By pooling their resources, ten (10) persons were
assured of receiving a payment ten times what they contributed each week, when
their hand came. The money could have been used to buy seeds, a farm animal,
tools, or cloth to make garments. Asu(e) was also practiced elsewhere in
the British West Indies under different
names: susu in Trinidad, and Partner in
Jamaica. Asu(e) was not practiced however, in the United States. It is still a
common practice in the Bahamas and thousand of Bahamians have been educated from
the Asu(e) program. Hotel workers run Asu(e), bank workers run Asu(e) and even
doctors have Asu(e) plans.
Asu(e)
has been authenticated by many scholars over the years.
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Niara Sudarkasa
Born August 14, 1938, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
I grew up a West Indian. There was never any question that I was a black
American, but in Florida people would call me “a Nassau” because my
grandparents were from the Bahamas and they were the ones with whom I lived.
We had a very big family. My grandmother was one
of twenty children. They all had big families so I grew up thinking that every
second person I’d meet would be a cousin.
When I went to Oberlin, I took a course on
Caribbean cultures and came across a reference to esusu or esu, which are
saving associations in Haiti and Jamaica and almost every part of the
Caribbean. An article by a student of the Yoruba in Nigeria described esu as a
Yoruba credit association. I believe that was the beginning of my determination
to study Africa, because I had known about esu from childhood. Instead of using
banks or post offices, these Bahamians used esu. I felt thrilled because for
the first time I really did concretely understand that there was a cultural
link to Africa. I determined that I would go to West Africa to find some common
roots. That’s how I came to begin this long-term association with the continent
that I have had.
[In Africa], I felt for the first time what it
meant to be a majority person. What struck me about the small Yoruba town I lived
in were the similarities to things I knew as a child .There were postures, the
way they did things. For example, the fact that women were the market traders
and had a lifestyle that made them very independent. There were no housewives
among these women. This was something that I recognized.
I think that being in Nigeria in the early
sixties increased my sense of pride in the African heritage. I felt that we
were all one people with a destiny that was very much interwoven.
I didn’t come away feeling that home is only in
America and Nigeria in another country. I felt definitely and deeply that this
was a part of me.
Fort Lauderdale never belonged to me. I was
always conscious that this was not mine. There was always the hand above us, people
in control who intruded in our lives from time to time. I felt that it was my
country but not my land.
But when I went to West Africa, I had the deep
sense not only of belong- ing, but of possession. This was ours! The whole
continent was ours!
I wanted to affirm an association with the
continent by taking another name. It was a political decision that some black
Americans were making.
Sudarkasa came by marriage the word Nia in
Swahali means purpose. So Niara was an adaptation and the name was given to me
to mean a woman of high purpose.
I didn’t change my name because I didn’t like it,
or because I wanted to reject it as a slave name. Legally I’m still Gloria
Marshall Clarke and Niara Sudarkasa. My passport has both.
Niara Sudarkasa is the first woman president (she
has not resigned) of Lincoln University the nation’s oldest black college, a
formerly all-male institution. A graduate of Oberlin College, She earned her MA
and PhD in anthropology from Columbia University. Prior to her appointment at
Lincoln in 1987, she was the associate vice–president for academic affairs at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor,
where she was the first black woman to receive tenure.
“I is a
Bahamians”
Notwithstanding their proximity to the larger, and sometimes
overwhelming, North American culture, Bahamians still take pride in their own
unique culture and in sharing it with over four million visitors a year who
have also come to enjoy the Bahamian way of life. They like the proximity and
the benefits. They can fly over to Miami in the morning, go to K-Mart, and be
home in the evening, but they also like their separateness and their own
identity.
Bahamians think they own Miami .They were the
first real immigrant to Florida, in fact when Miami was incorporated as a city
in 1896 authorities sought and obtained the signature of 100 Bahamian migrant
workers to complete the incorporation papers. At that time nobody bothered with
visas and passports so in a sense Bahamians always thought of themselves as
somewhat “Merican”.
Miami is often thought of as a new immigrant city
- a city that only became the haven of Caribbean and Latin American exiles in
the sixties, but the fact is, according to Professor Richard A. Mohl of Florida
Atlantic University, Miami and South Florida have always had a magnetic attraction
for peoples of the Caribbean. Black immigrants from the Bahamas in particular,
gave immigration to Miami its special character in the early years of the
twentieth century.
Miami
had only a
few hundred people when it was Incorporated as a city in 1896;
in fact the city father’s needed the signatures of one hundred Black Bahamians to meet the legal
incorporation requirements. By 1920, Miami had a larger population of black
immigrants than any other city in the United States except New York. In that year, Miami’s population stood at 29,571, the foreign born making up one
fourth of the population, or just over 4,000 persons.
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1910 US Census Transcription
• First Name - Eva M
• Last Name - Rolle
• Birth Place - Bahamas
• Birth Year - 1892
• Age - 18
• Census Year - 1910
• State - Florida
• County - Dade
• City/Township - Lemon City
• Gender - Female
• Maritial Status - Married
• Race - Black
• Mother's Birth Place
-Bahamas
• Father's Birth Place
- Bahamas
• Head Of Household First
Name - Benjanan O
• Head Of Household Last
Name - Rolle
• Spouse's Given Name
- Benjanan O
• Spouse's Surname - Rolle
• Spouse's Birth Place
- Bahamas
• Immigration Year - 1891
The
story of how Miami became destination for black immigrants from the Bahamas
begins early in Florida history. Bahamian Blacks had been familiar with
Florida’s east coast, and particular the Florida Cays (or Keys), long before
the building of Miami. In the early nineteenth century when Florida was
isolated and underdeveloped, the area was commonly frequented by Bahamian
fishermen, wreckers, and seamen, as well as traders who dealt with the Seminole
Indians near Cape Florida on Biscayne Bay. These Bahamians regarded Florida as
much as another island of the Bahamas, and today Cape Florida has been
recognized by the National Park Service as the historical connection between
Florida and the Bahamas, particularly for the role it played as a jumping off
point to freedom in the Bahamas for African Americans and Black Seminoles
By
the 1830s, black and white Bahamians were beginning to migrate to the Florida
Keys, especially Key West, where they worked in fishing, sponging, and catching
turtles. The distance was short, and the work paid cash. By 1892, 8,000 of the
people in Key West were Bahamians and sponging was their mainstay.
By
the late nineteenth century, a second stream
of Bahamian blacks began arriving on Florida’s lower east coast, from Fort
Pierce to Florida City for seasonal work in
the region’s emerging agricultural industry. The scrubby pine and porous
limestone topography of south Florida was similar to that of the islands. The
Bahamians knew how to work with
this type of
land. They brought their commonly
used trees, vegetables and fruits and demonstrated to their American
counterparts the rich agricultural potential of the area. Today, south Florida,
particularly the area around Homestead, Perrine and Cutler Ridge, provide more
than a third of the winter vegetables consumed in North America, due in large
part to the contributions and know-how of those early Bahamian migrants.
The
development of Miami after 1896 created new opportunities for Bahamian
immigrants. A building boom was going on and any Bahamian who wanted a job
could find one. According to colonial records, ten to twelve thousand Bahamians
left the islands for Florida between 1900 and 1920-about one fifth of the
entire Bahamian population.
At
the turn of the century, thousands of Bahamians migrated to Florida to work on
the Florida Flagler Railroad that connected Key West to Miami. Many of them
stayed on to play a part in the development of the city of Miami and one of its
suburbs, Coconut Grove. The
importance of the contributions made by
African Bahamians to South Florida has been well documented and a perfect example
is the community of Coconut Grove, where many of the homes that are still
standing, retain the wood frame vernacular typical of the style and
architecture that was popular in Florida and the Bahamas at the end of the 19th
century. This relationship is now celebrated the first weekend of every June at
the Coconut Grove Goombay festival, now in its 28th year.
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The Contract
Another important landmark in the social and
cultural history of the Bahamas was the phenomenon known as the “contract” or
the “project” and it was actually part of a second wave of immigration by
Bahamians to the United States. The Contract was a farm labor program
established in January 1941 and was the out- growth of the land lease treaty
signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
Winston Churchill whereby America supplied Britain with 50 destroyers and other
war materials in exchange or for bases in British territories from Newfoundland
to Guyana. The program continued, with some minor changes in its organization,
until 1966, and it allowed thousands of Bahamian men and women from throughout
the archipelago to work on farms and factories in several America States. Bahamians
cultivated and harvested a variety of crops, from tobacco in Tennessee, peaches
in Georgia, corn in Minnesota, citrus in Florida, and peanuts in North
Carolina.
When the contact started, nearly every Bahamian
of every class, color and educational status signed up to go, it was real money
they were after and the Bahamas was in a severe depression following the end of
prohibition and the collapse of the sponge industry. By anyone’s estimates or
boasts, there must be at least 20,000 Bahamian-Americans in the Southern United
States as a result of these two waves of immigration.
Some men had sent home large portions of their
earnings to wives or other persons while they were away working and when they
came home could find neither their wives nor their earnings. Some came home with money which they used to
build a start in life and they and their families are still benefitting from
the experience. Others came home with
experience alone.
Workers who hailed from Crooked Island and
Acklins were said to be the thriftiest because most of them belonged to the
Church of God denominations and refrained from the worldly life so when they
returned, they had lost of cash which they invested in two stories homes with
shops and business places on the ground floor.
Most workers returned to the Bahamas after the
contract was over, then again many of them simply jumped" the contract and
settled in towns and communities in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas because
they "could talk Geeche good", and melt into the African American
community. In a sense they were going back home.
If you visited places today like West Palm Beach,
Riviera Beach, Boynton Beach, Homestead,
Delray, you only have to turn on your radio to the local black station and wait
for the gospel hour and the name and accent of the preacher, would tell you he
has a Bahamian connection. Many of these
speakers and other upstanding citizens
of the communities mentioned could also be Bahamians who did not come back or
who “jumped” the contract and sort of went underground.
It wasn’t hard for Bahamians to pass as Geechies
especially as they moved to central or northern Florida into Georgia, South
Carolina and Virginia, where the speech pattern, language, and even their food
is very similar to that of the islands of the Bahamians. Naturally if you jump
the contract you ran the risk of getting caught but the American authorities
had their own way of tracking down Bahamians.
If they walked up to a group of Black men, all
speaking Geechie, they would give each one in turn a metal bucket to go to the
spigot and get water. The Bahamians
would invariably be the one to turn the bucket upside down and beat it. That
comes from our Junkanoo tradition Bahamians
can’t help beating drums or any container with his flat palms.
Many a young Bahamian got their first lessons on
American geography from returning contractors workers whose first purchase back
home was a three speed “tick tick”
English made bike, usually adorned with dozens of chrome wire clips. The
chain guard would spell out their favorite places of employment like, Pahookie
or Belle Glade Fla., or Charleston, S.C. or Valdosta Ga. The contract period coincided with what was
also called the Jitterbug period in Black America and most contract workers
went with the flow. Standard apparel for a returning contract worker was a zoot
suit, with the looped gold chain down to the knees, a Panama hat or a tam or beret. No self-respecting contract worker
was without an ample adornment of gold teeth, sometime modest, sometime
dazzling.
For months and sometimes years after their return,
their language was sprinkled with “ ’ Merican slang”, like “hey man, you ready
to split the scene?”. Everybody said “daddy o”, or “just cool baby”, and one
proud returnee insisted that he be called “Brave”, as he never forgot to remind
his compatriots that he had been to the “land of the free and the home of the
brave, the only country God blessed. God bless America.”
The contract changed the Bahamian way of life
forever, the new found economic freedom that many or the returnees enjoyed, led
to a new political consciousness. These men and some women had seen Southern
racism up close and were prepared to build and support the ideas that
ultimately led to total enfranchisement for all Bahamians and ultimately
independence from Britain. Bahamians feel
a special kinship with African Americans and while it has been a good
relationship over the years, Bahamians still feel that a Bahamian is a very
special breed of person.
Bahamian historian, and dentist, the late Dr. Cleveland Eneas, once told
a story of a Bahamian who was going to Miami and when he went to the
airport , was told by the United States
immigration authorities that he needed a visa to visit the United
States. The proud and rightfully indignant traveler said:” Man, ain’t
going to the States. I just goin’ to Miami I’se a Bahamian, I ain’t going to
stay. “
