Explore Your History…
Dream it.
“Start with a dream. Maybe a dream that is personal and small, but worth doing. Then dream a bigger dream. Keep dreaming until your dreams seem impossible to achieve. Then you’ll know you’re on the right track. Then you’ll know you’re ready to conjure up a dream big enough to define your future and perhaps your generation’s future.” – Vance Coffman
Maggie Smalls (born Heyward, 1906 - 1987) was married to Wesley Smalls (born to Edward Smalls and Sarah Smalls, 1900 - 1972).
Edward was born in January 1873, in South Carolina.
Sarah Smalls (born Wing) was born in 1874.
Wesley was born on July 13, 1900, in Saint Helena Island, Beaufort County, SC.
Maggie Smalls was born on August 11, 1906.
Wesley and Maggie lived in Saint Helena Island, (Frogmore), South Carolina 29920, USA.
Maggie passed away in February 1987, at age 80.
Wesley Smalls passed away in 1972, at age 72..
Build it.
“Individually, every grain of sand brushing against my hands represents a story, an experience, and a block for me to build upon for the next generation.”
― Raquel Cepeda
The Anacostia Community Museum was originally described as "an experimental store-front museum" by the Smithsonian Institution in 1966.
Throughout its history, the museum's exhibitions have reflected the community of Anacostia, Washington, D.C., and often concerns seen throughout urban communities in the United States. African American history and art have also been showcased in exhibitions, including subjects such as immigration, slavery, civil rights, and music. The opening exhibition at the museum, in 1967, featured the reproduction of an Anacostia storefront from 1890, a Project Mercury spacecraft, a theater, a small zoo, and a varied collection of natural history objects. [Wikipedia®]
Grow it.
“Unless you try to do somethng beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” [Ralph Waldo Emerson]
The Greensboro sit-in was a civil rights protest that started in 1960, when young African American students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service. The sit-in movement soon spread to college towns throughout the South. Though many of the protesters were arrested for trespassing, disorderly conduct, or disturbing the peace, their actions made an immediate and lasting impact, forcing Woolworth’s and other establishments to change their segregationist policies. [https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/the-greensboro-sit-in]
Gullah Culture Facts
The Gullah are African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and Georgia, which includes both the coastal plain and the Beaufort Sea Islands.
The Gullah (also called Geechee) are the descendants of African slaves.
These Africans were taken from the Western region of Africa (in what is today Sierra Leone), transported to the Americas.
The name "Gullah" may come from Angola, where the ancestors of some Gullah people likely came from. Other scholars think that it came from the name of other ethnic groups in Africa.
Originally, the Gullah region included Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.
Today the Gullah area is only in Georgia and South Carolina, Lowcountry regions, which includes both the coastal plain and the Beaufort Sea Islands.
The Gullah are known for preserving more of their African linguistic and cultural heritage than any other African-American community in the United States.
They speak an English-based creole language containing many African loanwords and significant influences from African languages in grammar and sentence structure.
Gullah storytelling, cuisine, music, folk beliefs, crafts, farming, and fishing traditions, all exhibit strong influences from West and Central African cultures.
Most of the Gullah ancestors were brought to the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry through the ports of Charleston and Savannah as slaves.
Africans were taken as slaves from the Western region of Africa (in what is today Sierra Leone), transported to the Americas,
Charleston was one of the most important ports in North America for the Transatlantic slave trade. Up to half of the enslaved Africans brought into what is now the United States came through that port. A great majority of the remaining flowed through Savannah, which was also active in the slave trade.
The largest group of enslaved Africans brought into Charleston and Savannah came from the West African rice-growing region.
South Carolina and Georgia rice planters once called this region the "Rice Coast", indicating its importance as a source of skilled African labor for the North American rice industry.
African farmers from the "Rice Coast" brought the skills for cultivation and tidal irrigation that made rice one of the most successful industries in early America.
In the U.S. Civil War, white planters on the Sea Islands were afraid of an invasion by US naval forces so they left their plantations and went to the mainland.
When Union forces arrived on the Sea Islands in 1861, the Gullah people wanted freedom and many of them ended up serving in the Union Army.
The Sea Islands were the first place in the South where slaves were freed.
The Gullahs continued to practice their traditional culture with little influence from the outside world until the 20th century.
Penn Center and other community groups have been instrumental in keeping control of the rich history and traditions of the Gullah people..
Gullah people now organize cultural festivals every year in towns up and down the Lowcountry. the Gullah Celebration on Hilton Head Island in February, The Gullah Festival in Beaufort in May, and Heritage Days at Penn Center on St. Helena Island in November.
Note (1): Facts were taken from the Beaufort County Visitors Center - Gullah History.
Note (2): Picture was taken from NOOK Book entitled Gullah Culture: 1670 to 1950.
The Gullah Geechee Corridor
St. Helena Island
Photos of the history of our voices…..
Our Rich Heritage…….
