We put on our masks and went through the door of the Gullah Museum. It was
about 11:15 and the museum had opened fifteen minutes before. It was one room
with tables full of artifacts and newspaper articles, with story quilts on the
walls and rough wooden tools stacked on the floor, with small signs explaining
their significance. But we never walked around to look at these objects because
there was a storyteller already in action, quietly relating the history of the
Gullah culture, starting from the very beginning. Two people sat close to the
man, listening intently. It seemed rude
to wander around when there was a live person talking, so we sat down on the
hard chairs and joined the group. We sat a little bit separate since no one
else was masked.
He was an elderly, thin man with a bushy white beard and a
cap on his head. His right hand waved around constantly, disconnected from the
narrative, and he paid no attention to it. When we got there, the storyline was
somewhere in the 1600s, and he was describing the inhumane and deadly
conditions on the ships that carried millions of people from Africa. Soon after that he handed out a large sheet
of paper with a series of horrific facts about how many people were brought
into camps from all over West Africa, put onto ships, dying before they got on
the ships, dying en route, dying after they arrived. Fifty million people were rounded up and in
the end fifteen million were alive to become slaves. At the bottom of the page there was a chart that
showed how many people there were in Africa, in Asia, in Europe in 1600, 1700,
1800 – demonstrating the long-term population impact of this forced exodus.
The title of the paper was something like this: The African Holocaust and Diaspora. Somehow these words did not seem incongruous
to me, but he went into a long side explanation of why he chose those
particular words to describe what happened to all those enslaved people. He explained that he had grown up in a
neighborhood that was heavily Jewish and he went to school all the way through
high school with Jewish kids. He was told from the beginning that he should go
to college, but his family didn’t have the resources, and he went to a
technical school to learn to be a printer. I could hear a faint Boston accent, and even
though he didn’t say he was from New England, it seemed clear to me.
After a while it became evident that he was using the quilt
on the wall as an outline for his stories, and we were moving slowly around the
blocks on the perimeter. He said that he never understood why his wife made the
ship look so pretty (it was made with pink floral fabric) because that is not
what they looked like.
When we got to the block that signified agriculture (a boy
with a hoe in his hand), he got the most animated, describing how the
plantation owners did not know how to grow many of the crops that came with the
Africans, and how they brought the knowledge of rice-growing with them, and how
that rice made this particular county in South Carolina the richest in all the
colonies, and South Carolina the richest of the states – until slavery ended
with the Civil War. The entire economy, of course, was based on slave labor.
The most important lesson from this story was that no one knew how the farmers
of South Carolina became rice growers. When a 17th century visitor
asked a plantation owner how anyone knew about all those practices, the man
said another plantation owner had had an “epiphany.” It just came to him. It
took an interested academic many years to piece together the true story, through
interviews and research. It turns out that in the 1500s there were 20 varieties
of rice cultivated in West Africa and five varieties came to the New World,
eventually.
The other couple started to try to say they really needed to
leave, and with each gentle interruption, the storyteller acknowledged them and
said he just wanted to finish his point. He continued on. It became comical,
watching them trying to figure out how to extricate themselves. He even ignored
their offer of a donation, saying he had one more thing he wanted to say, and
that the expected donation is ten dollars per adult.
When they finally did manage to hand him a twenty dollar
bill and go, I took the opportunity to introduce ourselves as Jews, farmers,
people with no background in exactly what the word Gullah means and where it
came from. I asked direct questions and
got straightforward, interesting answers. The whole thing was interesting. First we had to deal with the Jewish part – he
had worked for a Kosher caterer in his high school years so he heard a lot of
Jewish blessings at all the Saturday events. Then he recited the motzi,
flawlessly (and I noted that he pronounced Adonai as “Adonoy” and I knew I was
right about Boston because he sounded just like Leon). He grew up in Roxbury, MA.
He told the amusing story of being at some interfaith event where a rabbi
turned to him and asked if he wanted to offer a blessing, probably assuming
that it would come from an expected Christian background. He offered a blessing
in Hebrew and confused everyone.
Then I asked forgiveness, but could he just start from the
very beginning and tell me what we mean by Gullah. He patiently explained that Gullah is the
culture that came out of the many mixed languages and customs of the West African
slaves (he only used the word “slaves,” he never said “enslaved people.”),
further mixed with English. Gullah is still spoken today. The culture was preserved
because after the Civil War, many former slaves moved to the barrier islands
and continued their traditions and language.
We didn’t have as much trouble taking our leave, partly
because he was not delivering a monologue and there were logical stopping
places to the flow of information. We were fascinated by this man and when we
got back to the internet, we read all about him. He never mentioned that he had
more education than trade school, but his vocabulary and capacity for fluid narrative
and his facility with numbers (I noticed that he effortlessly translated those millions
into “2.7 million” instead of 2,665,100) made me wonder about his education
and work history.
He is of Cape Verdean descent, he married a woman who was
born and raised in Georgetown (where the museum was), she was a real mover and
shaker, an artist and activist, she made a quilt for Michelle Obama because or
her Gullah ancestry. His name is Andrew Rodrigues, he went to college on an
athletic scholarship, became a chemist and worked for the FDA, went back to
school and got a law degree, became the first Black attorney to work for Bethlehem
Steel. When he retired, he and his wife moved back to her hometown and
established this museum. And now he is there six days a week, teaching anyone
who comes in.
His wife died seven years ago and his daughters moved here
to take care of him, he said, because “they didn’t think I could take care of
myself.” Now I understand the tone of voice
when he said that. He has lived such a self-determined life, and now accepts help
and direction from his daughters. I hope that there is a steady stream of
learners going through that museum. It’s a rare opportunity to learn from a
passionate scholar.
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