Essay on Gullah Culture
by
Bettye J. (Mbitha) Parker Smith
Gullah Images: The Art of Jonathan Green

Each bristle of Jonathan Green's paintbrush seems tempered by an ancestral presence that has been marinating for centuries in Gold Coast West African liquidity. When he walks to face his canvas, Jonathan Green does not make the trek alone. Surrounded by oscillating echoes of things past, he is clairvoyant and prescriptive. He gives honor to a higher force; one of his familiar. Each brush stroke responds to the residual sounds of Congo drums beating delicately against the lowering Daufuski sunset. Enveloped in mystery and history, how often has he responded to the whispered advice of the Mandingo warrior on the mixing of purples and oranges and blues? What about, one may wonder, the swaying of women's hips that are laid to rest on Jonathan's vibrating canvas- over and over again? Is it the presence of the Tshi elder who ensures his exactness of motion; who steals his privacy in the middle of the night and guides the hip-swaying moves which are present in the formula of this youn g artist? Where else did he secure the patent on his vivid display of "hands-on-hips," on canvas?

Maybe. Maybe the water sounds heard quietly splashing against the rowboat's edges of his painting space were once intermixed with Sierra Leonean River tidal waves. Or, maybe this perplexity that hovers over Jonathan Green is much less complicated than the intricacies which his images project. After all, he could have just transferred onto his masonite the "laying-on-of-hands" rituals practiced by elders from the Liberian hinterlands. Of course, the Gola may have unleashed their century-stored blessings which have been banked along the Atlantic Sea waves, straight onto Jonathan Green's vividly portrayed pray-house (or, as it is sometimes known, praise-house) pews. Could what one sees, feels, and breathes, when in the presence of Jonathan Green's paintings, very well be prime ingredients of another world wonder, called Gullah?

Gullah is an appellative used to describe a population of Africans who were taken against their will from the Gold Coast of West Africa and transferred permanently, with a culture intact, to the Americas- specifically to the coastal region of South Carolina and Georgia. These New World inhabitants were accorded residence on fertile islands in this region that have made deep indentations into the sea. Among other important items which they carted across the Middle Passage with them were their keen agrarian skills and an inexhaustible pride. To this end, these well-endowed Africans became refined indigo tillers, superior rice producers, and farmers who grew cotton of the purest quality. These islands, whose temperaments were well suited for their new guests, graciously received the Africans who became known as Gullah. The islands are often referred to as Sea Islands and were geographically acceptable to South Carolina slavers who wished to raise an isolated, noninterfering slave populace. Excluded from the mainland by creeks, rivers, and marshes, the islands could only be reached by boat. Most of them did not have conveyance to the mainland until 1940. While not all of the islands are currently inhabited, some which are do not have mainland access still. They number about 1,000 and are situated between Georgetown on the north and Port Royal and St. Helena Sound on the south. They were so well insulated from the mainland- by about twenty miles or so- that none bothered to notice the continued importation of slaves long after this North American institutional holocaust was deemed illegal by the Salve Trade Act of 1808. According to J. Herman Blake in "The Sea Island as a Cultural Resource" (Black Scholar, March 1974), Africans continued to be brought onto the Sea Islands until 1858. Upon arriving in this new space, the newly displaced Africans found communities of other Africans, although obviously many generations were now American born. Indeed, Gullah born. To demonstrate the extent of the Gullah-populated islands, Blake writes: "in 1800 there were 2,150 whites and 12,400 slaves in the Georgetown district and by 1840 the same region contained 2,200 whites and 18,000 slaves."

These Gold Coast West Africans who became indentured slaves were a unique entity within the North American slavery system. South Carolina slave owners used their legal system to shape their slave community. This is demonstrated in the amount of duty tax imposed on the cargo of individual traders. In the first place, South Carolina and Georgia catalogue-ordered their slaves directly from the West African Coast, particularly those areas that range from Senegal to Angola and also include Gambia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria. In 1721, an act was imposed that required a duty of ten pounds on Africans brought directly from Africa, while for those brought into the state en route from another state in America, an additional thirty pounds was imposed. In 1722, another law required a duty of one hundred and fifty pounds on any slave of Spanish background entering the state. A South Carolina Act of 1803, quoted in Lorenzo Dow Turner's Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (1949), forbade the importation of all slaves from the West Indies, and all others "over fifteen years of age from other parts of he United States except under certificate of good character." Early on, to further ensure the importation of pure, unadulterated Africans, a very low tax of only three pounds was imposed on those directly from Africa and on those who were over four feet tall.

By selecting their slaves specifically from the Gold Coast of West Africa, the slave owners were attempting to strategically limit ethnic diversity in their slave communities. However, some of the Gold Coast areas had well-developed secret societies which constituted an admixture of ethnic groups and kinship systems, and these different societies were only mistaken as one because of their demonstrated allegiances. The initiation rites into these secret societies prepared Africans in the region to protect themselves and their communities from invaders and instructed them in ways to survive against the most difficult odds. So when captured by the interlopers, and after surviving the Middle Passage and being take off to the isolated Sea Islands in the New World, the Africans who had now become initiated slaves were better prepared than other Africans who were cast into multilingual, multiethnic, and less homogeneous groupings. Their strong religious manifestations provided psychological and physical protection. And by virtue of their isolation and the small number of whites who lives on the islands, the Gullah received little acculturation into the ways of who lived on the islands, the Gullah received little acculturation into the ways of North America, and particularly of the antebellum South. The climate in the region was not friendly to whites- their immune systems were not strong enough to protect them against the extreme heat, malaria, and humidity- and often the only white inhabitants on the islands were those in charge of overseeing the management of the plantations. Turner informs us: "It is said that there were two Negro families to every one white family in many sections of coastal South Carolina. On many plantations, there were no white overseers. Here the work of the field slaves was directed entirely by Negro drivers."

Therefore, the geographical isolation which characterized the newly transplanted Africans, the state of South Carolina's insistence on importing Africans directly from the Gold Coast of west Africa, and the small numbers of whites able to survive the climate and conditions of these Sea Islands created a sort of petri dish for preserving African cultural tenets and for the development of a unique African American culture. Further, as the Slave Trade Act of 1808 was ignored, Africans continued to be transported into the established slave communities, which allowed for the refueling and strengthening of existing Africanisms. Clearly, it was not the intent of the slave owners, even in the state of South Carolina, to establish a system, which would promote African pride. In fact, the intent was to destroy all sense of self-worth and fashion a submissive people. But for the South Carolina Sea Island slaves, the human spirit was strengthened by isolation. The history and practice of a self-sustaining community, which they had packaged well and brought with them to their new world, produced attitudes of selflessness and pride, which would extend into perpetuity. As devastating and wrenching as the North American slave system was, it is difficult to annihilate the inner lining of a human being's spirit.

The Africans whose spirit later deigned the Gullah culture understood at the beginning of this atrocity something that those who chose to destroy them did not know: they were equipped to maintain control of their collectivity and, according to Margaret Washington Creel in A Peculiar People (1988), they "possessed a proclivity for rising above their near-tragic situation for the sake of community."

Africanisms which permeate the Gullah culture carry the velocity and intensity of the history and culture of their antecessors. Out of their common and multifaceted African cultures, and the limited access they had with the English Language, the newly ascribed Gullah were able to blend a language that allowed for communication, and therefore were better able to retain their cultural canons. An examination of some of some these Africanisms is essential to a deeper appreciation of the art of Jonathan Green.

The unique geographical seclusion which the Gullah people experienced at the onset of their new life in America spared them the inundation of American Protestant proselytization at the level that their sisters and brothers elsewhere experienced. In fact, the Gullah received their major introduction of Christianity from Methodists and Baptists over a hundred years after their own system was stabilized, and by this time they had already effected their African ontological spiritual system into their community structure. The Southern Christian exhortations were intended to encourage obedience and loyalty to the slave-master structure and build a belief system, the subscriptions of which were prerequisite to a heavenly home in the afterlife; or, certainly a reward for earthly subjugation. And, while much of the preachings did in fact change some of the coloring of their own system, religious efforts were never able to destroy the historical beliefs of these Africans. Indeed, parts of what they revered were synthesized into their own traditional African world view.

It is the custom for the Gullah to believe strongly in a set of values that identify the community as the focal point from which their existence is anchored. John Mbiti, renowned scholar on African religions, informs us in African Religions and Philosophy (1969) that in traditional societies, "to be human is to belong to the whole community… A person cannot detach himself form the religion of his group, to do so is to be severed form his roots, his foundation, his context of security, his kinship…African people do not know how to exist without religion." This African worldview engenders ceremonies and rituals for all aspects of living, including birth, death, fishing practices, motor movement, and styles of dress, especially among women.

Further, the Gullah people, in keeping with their heritage, engaged in combined spiritual and nonecclesiastical formula that again was driven by their devotion to their African heritage. Like their African neighbors, the West Africans from the Gold Coast were proponents of initiations which had ethereal ingredients. A belief in the spirit world as a natural extension of their declaration of faith provided for a cyclical acceptance of nature. They remained closely connected to their ancestors and felt assured that their movements were indeed overseen and protected by their spirits. A part of the ritualistic ceremonies was the wearing of very sophisticated and often highly adorned masks. Of course, these rituals were approved by God, who reigned always at the apex of the belief system, and those who had earned the right to be ceremonial participants were anointed by God. The majority of Africans who were brought to America were associated with initiation processes. This custom was known to the Methodists and Baptists, who were frustrated by the practices and were determined to dismantle the duality within the Gullah spiritual base: they identified this religious facet as paganistic. The independent worship centers, the pray houses, sheltered and effectuated the beliefs and practices of the Gullah people.

To be sure, the population of human beings characterized as Gullah continue to live along the coastal region of South Carolina and Georgia, and they are phenomenal indeed. The retention of their African history and culture has sustained them, and their long-identifiable lineage makes them unique among African Americans whose specific African connection is, more often than not, difficult to identify. While there have been concerted efforts over the past twenty years by scholars and artists to collect, preserve, and capture this culture, much work is left to be completed. In a 1974 article in Black Scholar, J. J. Herman Blake appealed to young scholars particularly African Americans and those interested in collecting oral history, to seize the moment and consider this area for fresh research and scholarship.

That prospect is not as likely today and will be less so as South Carolina structures its move toward the twenty-first century. The isolation and independence which the inhabitants of these islands have enjoyed for so long is soon to give way to modernistic advances, especially as related to urban renewal and resort development. Communicating in modern terms and adjusting to a new system of life management - rent, mortgages, ATM machines, bridges, upscale boats, and shops -certainly create serious problems of psychological and physical adaptation for a people who have made their own rules and managed their lives in their own defined space. National debate on issues of crime and criminal justice, public health facilities, and treatment of the elderly will be even heavier burdens to bear.

The human situation herein described represents the formation, the history, and the linkages which gave rise to Jonathan Green's valued ancestry. Jonathan Green, tall, angular, graphically astute, and enveloped in a wide-angled quietude, is an artist par excellence, and he shadows the warrior often seen walking about on West African soil making demands with his very presence. Actually, he is equally akin to the South Carolinian Gullah patrician, seen standing at the edge of the waterway emphatically and aesthetically measuring the distance between the colors in the rainbow. These parallels depict a presence that is perpetual; one that exudes motion and remnants of a distant past. And, vibrating all around him are ancestral acclamations, because after all, he has colored new links in the Gullah's long chain of pride. Using his talents wisely and claiming his place as a Gullah native son, Jonathan Green has transfixed his ancestry in time: his paintings are highly informed by African retentions, especially his deep association with and respect for community as the foundation of Gullah life. While this is clearly an instinctive strain present in Jonathan Green the man, it is also a display of conscious depth. In this regard, he has theorized in a statement included in Alan Gussow's The Artist as Native (1993): "How a man tills the soil in silent labor depicts a sense of purpose and functional movement that brings sustenance and well-being to the family and community."

However, this sense of divine revelation about the culture that is Jonathan Green, and which now encompasses the essence of the essence of his work, was not an easily determined recognition. On a conscious level, even though Jonathan Green grew up walking hand in hand with the corporeal and the intangible cultural edifices of his surroundings, the realization and appreciation for their imitable value evolved over time. Examining human existence outside his Gullah environment set up transparencies which gave him strength and assisted in bringing balance to a conscious and subliminal position regarding the "certain uniqueness" to which he subscribes. Having accepted his connection with the richness of his heritage, Jonathan Green's work endorses the community as the substructure to the Gullah system of living; an Africanism well preserved by these South Carolina islanders.

The first visual artist from the Gullah community to be academically trained and achieve national and international prominence, Jonathan Green has accepted the calling of his ancestors and is on a mission to preserve the magnificence of their way of life. Through a series of some one hundred and fifty paintings, he has indeed exacted the finiteness of their touch, their strength, their determination, their drive, and the rawness of their sensibilities; and through his own ordination, he has endowed them with power. He is very clear about his mission, articulated in a 1993 article in the Naples (Fla.) Daily News: "The only power-stronghold blacks have is their ethnicity. They have nothing else. A white man can take a bath, put on a nice shirt and immediately get respect- that's power."

So the power inherent in communities which the West Africans took on their journey through the Middle Passage is the link which welded the Gullah culture, and it is that power which is highly evident in Jonathan Green's art. Piece by piece, one sees this power vividly entrenched in the religious activities associated with pray houses, in the contrariety of his faces, and in the stance and unity of his figures. It comes through in the washing and hanging of clothes, the cooking of food, the sharing of tasks in the workplaces; in dressing up, slowdragging, and hanging out. The multidimensionality of power vibrates through the fabric of pride on which his figures step, sashay, quilt, flirt, carry their pocketbooks, and bury their dead.

And this special strain of power gets deeper on his waterways where the heavy vibrations compete with the calmness of the water and resound an admixture of ancestral pain and laughter and blood, and offer visual transportation from a sacred old life to a vibrant but unsettled new one. Actually, his stories on canvas produce the aftermath of an African griot story.

The timing of Jonathan Green the artist, and the level of momentum to which he subscribes, is not just one of happenstance. Indeed, while he may not have arrived in swaddling clothing, it is perhaps safe to say that he carries the sign of one anointed. He responds tenebrifically to the culture which has virtually maintained its virginity for so many years now and is in fact becoming quickly semenized by the tentacles of modernism. In an interview article for American Visions (February 1990), Carroll Greene, Jr., writes: "He seeks to recall the feel, texture and color of a way of life he knows is rapidly disappearing. And quite literally on some of the islands near his mother's home, a way of life is being bulldozed out of existence in the name of progress: condos, highways, fast food chains and displacement of people."

Progress notwithstanding , Jonathan Green, like his forbears, is equipped to manage in the face of adversity. And like them he feels secure; even powerful, as Carroll Greene reports: "I know I can't save a whole culture…but as an artist I can help create greater awareness, perhaps. All of the change is not bad. But, are they throwing out the baby with the bath?" The question is academic. The baby is now impaled. Richard Weedman, longtime friend and a Jonathan Green collector, assures us in an unpublished biographical statement on Green, that through his art, "Jonathan has the unique and gifted ability to afford the viewer a sense of space and silence to unobtrusively observe and participate."

Jonathan Green is realistic about the uncertainty of the future for a quarter of a million Gullahs who reside along the coastal region of South Carolina. For them the page has indeed turned again. This time there is no slave ship waiting at a safe distance to be loaded with human cargo and venture off into the deep waters to an unknown land. There are no auction blocks erected on the new land to insult their humanity. There is no overseer to whip them, or branding iron to indent foreign initials onto their skin. There is no forced division of families through a selling and buying process. There is no big house or master, in the thralldom sense. But, on this answers just might be as surreal as the "forty-acres-and-a-mule" oddity.

Are the carriers of this generation of misplaced Africans strong enough to manage their African Americanness, while at the same time continuing to protect this heritage and secure it for their children? What, one may question, is the potency level of their power? While theses answers are clearly unknowns, if one is to respect the system which places ancestry at an important level in a people's belief system, then perhaps the power level is active. Certainly, with Jonathan Green, the artist and the man, power is the people.