Everything Change Up Now Transcript
- When I was born, the baby come into the world, But yet he had . You can fly too, you bird, too high, bird too high, bird too low, that six wing ya travel with, that six wing. All travel with six wing.
♪ Jesus gimme six wing ♪
♪ I am going to fly ♪
♪ Jesus give me six wing ♪
♪ I am going to fly ♪
♪ Jesus gimme six wing ♪
♪ And I am going to fly ♪
♪ To my home ♪ ♪ On high, yes ♪
♪ Jesus gimme six wing ♪
♪ I am going to fly ♪
♪ Jesus give me six wing ♪
♪ I am going to fly ♪
♪ Jesus gimme six ♪
♪ And I am going to fly ♪
♪ To my home ♪
♪ My home on high ♪
I birth into the world, come into the world. I ask ya if you could come from then up to now. 1886, they hear the earthquake; in '93, storm. And the earthquake, I hear the old people say, is seven years apart. I've been all about, work all through that village there in their white people house, left me for cook dinner for them, all like that. Had a farm of me own, plant for meself and all like that. Well, yeah, I been on the... I raise farm, works country. Yeah, but now, you see, the here no . These raise the plant wrong now, you know. Now everything's changing. Everything change up now. You know when horse have buggy; and that, two wheel? Call a road car? Well, they've been in fashion. Ox and cart, all like that, I had one of them by myself. I ain't got a thing for do now but cook and eat and say my praise. My heart ain't that there for take no alteration. I no worry now. My appetite too great for I worry poor. When I want eat, I eat. And I can eat. I can eat any time of night. When they people on the radio there, that there, I say, "All right, go hell." Try to me too. God paying me food. I ain't got none in the appetite. I so glad. I ain't got no pain up in the body, ooh, Lord! Everything change up now. I can't read, you know, 'cause my people take me a school when I used to go to public school for my children, but yet, I still ain't no fool. What I get I got until today. Got this much right here. The tree of life is me, and I got just much as you.
- [Bill] And there's all kinds of story about the islands. They said, during time of slavery, if they could make it across that Stono River and get on the island, there was a good chance they could end up being a free man on these islands because way no way for no one to find them once they get across that Stono River.
- My father was a slave on the Joel Poinsett plantation, and he came outta slavery nonviolent and very gentle, but he never felt that they had done him a wrong. He took his master to school every morning on the back of a horse and stayed outside, sitting under the trees or on the steps of the schoolhouse, until time to take him back home, and it was all right with him. He learned to write his name with his youngest child right after the First World War. And if he were living today and he saw a white woman lifting anything, he would say, "Missy, that's too heavy for you. Let me have it." He never felt as if he was away from that slavery. They have learned to accept what they lived through. I did too, and I did want to teach. I took state a state examination which qualified me for teaching from first through the seventh grades. I went over on Johns Island to the Promised Land School. There was no water and no lights. There was never any kind of a toilet. Kids who were ready for the first grade. If there were babies at home, they would have to stay to mind child, as the people say. We decided we'd let them bring the babies to school so they could take care of 'em while they learned to read and to write.
- You see, we had surrounded by the war, and the legislature passed an act to allow any island to have a with two teachers. And we went all my children, and right from Edisto, they went up college: Clemson, Carolina, anywhere. And they all did well because they were literally tutored, but I finish high school in New Jersey.
- And once you reach seventh grade, that's was it. Was no school on the island for blacks. My father, a few other people off the island start saying that this many kids want higher education. At a particular time, that was a higher education. People have to come up with some way of getting these kids into school or start building a school out here. So in 1955 or '54, I think, they completed the Haut Gap High School, and that was the high school there for black. Everything was by way of boats. That's why, I think, the people in the peninsula of Charleston, they are just learning Johns Island now.
- The boat used to take the passengers and the mail to Yonges Island. When we got to Yonges Island, we got off there. Then we'd get on the railroad train, you see? That's where the railroad came in. And then, we'd go down the road a piece, and the, we'd change: "Arrive. Now let's change for Charleston."
- You would leave Edisto at 7:30 in the morning, and with luck, you got to Charleston at 11:00. You would leave Charleston, if you were coming back the same day, at three o'clock, and you'd get home when you got home. See, we had to ride in a horse and buggy from our homes to the steamboat landing. It's over four miles from our house there, so it meant an early rising. The women of the family seldom ever went to Charleston for one day, naturally. No woman can get through anything in one day.
- My mother used to say we used to have two ways to go to Charleston. " going backwards," he said be we only have one way to go to Charleston.
- In 1670 three little boatloads came sailing up the Ashley River, and they settled up there on the bank at Charles Towne Landing, their old town plantation, which is now a state park. In 1680 they moved their little colony on to the peninsula, where Charlestonians have been thriving ever since, despite two wars, great earthquakes, great fires, and several depressions. After the Civil War, she was so devastated economically that she didn't begin to recover until after World War II. You know, it's amazing we had anything left after that war. Charleston was bombarded for 567 consecutive day and nights, which is the longest continual bombardment of any city in the history of mankind, amazing. Almost everything took a shell.
♪ But that's all right, that's all right ♪
♪ That's all right, that's all right ♪
♪ Bless my soul ♪
- [Bill] Johns Island's the second largest island in the continent the United States, and it's second only to Long Island, New York. They are many of not only water and electricity. They don't even have outdoor toilets. They're still using what we used to call a slop jar, the gem jar, whatever you wanna call it, but there no sewage or water facilities on the island.
- Well, we buy a few chicken right on the first of the month when we have a little bit ice, buy a little bit of milk on the first of the month while we have to little bit of cheese. But then, after that when we can't have no ice, well, we gon' have no milk, nothing like that, no fresh meat or nothing. But you mostly keep kerosene for the lamp. I used to use the lamp through the night when I was raising my babies, so I still burn the lamp through the night. But I still got babies anyway, heh. I stop raising mine, but there's still some more here. I still use the kerosene through the night, and we got a cool little... My oldest daughter gave me that one, and we'll full that through the night. And I got two buckets. You see that . They don't bring you none. Then they have to get up, get the lamp, and go to the pump. We'd get water from the spring to wash, but we'd always it to drink and cooking water from my cousin down there. Then a spring go bad. We still had to carry the pool of her house to bring the water from her house. Soak in pools is just as bad as water, believe. When they come and then with bowl cracks, I always make the kids throw something down to the crack to help keep some the air out. We try to keep up with wood to have a good fire. Some part the house might be a little chilly, but it don't be real cold. I used to have a wood stove. That stove name wasn't on the map, now, and they couldn't get a part for it. It was so old. Twice a month my cousin'll take me to shopping wearing the back.
- Yay!
- But I have to wait until she does her work. I used to do a lot of walking to get to work to try to make a living for these children. The daddy was sick If he had a live until June, it woulda been nine years he'd been sick. My mother and father lived in this house I'll be dead, but now, how many years this house had ahead of me I really don't know. Now, my won't have enough to pay rent. If I had to pay it myself, I won't have enough to pay rent and pay my insurance and buy my .
- [Tour Guide] Everybody can't live in a 18th or 19th century house comfortably. You have to have plumbing, and you have to have a kitchen. You've got to have these 20th-century adaptations. All over to your left, there's restoration going on everywhere. As some fella says, "It's amazing what a little bit of good taste and a hell of a lotta money'll do," and it sure is, but remember this is all financed out of our pockets, the individual owners. We don't have a Rockefeller money here. I wish we did.
- [Tour Guide] Some people ask me why these homes along here are so large. One reason's simply the wealth of the people who build them. Another reason is they tended to have large families. To the rear the Charleston homes the old carriage houses, servants' quarters, stables, and kitchens. Today, many of these buildings have been converted into apartments, and they rent for around 200 a month, but even at this rate, I know of no vacancies today. Many doctors, lawyers, and big businessmen live along here now. Many of the homes still have maids, butlers, and gardeners.
- Here ya go.
- Just a dollar.
- Three for a dollar.
- Yeah, I don't want none.
- $3 first right here.
- Want those .
- I have egg and bread.
- [Vendor] You like this?
- $10.35.
- Okay, just the .
- You don't like? I have the yellow.
- We want the white flower.
- Thank you very much.
- [Tour Guide] They call Charleston the Holy City. A lotta people wonder why. The upcountry people say it's because we're so uppity.
- [Tour Guide] It's also known as the Holy City, not because the numerous churches here but because Charlestonians think this place is similar to heaven because of the beautiful ironwork, garden, and architecture.
- [Man] about?
- Some people say that Charleston's more of a way of life than it is a place. Pace of life here is quite slow. Charlestonians have always been noted for their hospitality but not their hard work. They'd think that manual labor was a Spaniard who never came to Charleston. And they have their own manners and their own way of speech and their own style of cooking. Some people say the Charlestonians are like the Chinese. They eat lots of rice, worship their ancestors, and speak in a foreign tongue.
- [Tour Guide] The wooded area over there, to the right at the acme, is James Island. James Island is one of a group of Sea Islands that extend down the Carolina Coast. It was on those Sea Islands, James, John, Hilton Head, Edisto, Kiawah that the average is starting at $17 million that that famous Sea Island cotton was developed.
- And then we had to switch to long-short staple cotton. And, of course, they learned to dust for this and dust for that and dust for the other, but in dusting to kill the boll weevil, you also killed this rare spider, which killed other insects, you see? That's the way it is with insects; you kill one, and then others come in. So little by little, cotton just began to go downhill here. And then, truck came over, took over cabbage, potatoes, cucumbers, what have ya.
- Down on the Sea Islands, we raise tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, snap beans. We also raise some cattle. There's some shipping industry around. There's some oyster harvesting around. There not much industry around in the Sea Islands. Actually, it's mostly a farm-oriented area. Most of our laborers this year are migrants as far as the harvesting is concerned, but all of our shed people are local people. On the packing shed here, we employ about 150 in our tomato operations and about 75 people on our cucumber operations. And it is seasonal. We start in middle of May harvest our cucumbers, and we work through, possible, the middle of June. We use all local labor riding the transplanters and supplying tomatoes. And then we use the local labor for thinning and hoeing. But in the fields, we do use all migrants. There is enough people on Edisto Island to harvest every ounce of produce that's grown on that island, but they just won't turn up. I've had as much as 600 working. When you've got crop in the field, if you get 10 busloads of people, then you need 10 busloads, and ya need 'em consistently, so we have to deal with the migrants, and they come to work because they make good money. They can make $50/$60/$75 a day if they wanna work. They've got a labor camp down there that... They tear the door off of it, they plug up the restrooms, and they do everything imaginable. But we've got numerous local people who wouldn't have any of those problems.
- But the sun is so hot. It's kinda stupid to me, be working on a farm. There ain't that much down here. Ya need to do something nobody else can doing. My plan is, actually, to join the service or the Air Force. After I finish I can go to college and be a professor. If you didn't go into service, then it's probably... You can get a construction job in Sea Islands Construction or something.
- Most of my friends me. They work on the farm right now till they find a job. They plan to go into service, then, next.
- [Man] The best place to go in, the service, but all the girls wanna do... They wanna private education. All the boys wanna do is work and get money, ya see?
- The biggest problem facing Sea Island now is transportation, nutrition, unemployment. Unemployment in the Sea Island area is about three or four times the national average. We can really work hard with these developers who trying to come in here, not only to provide job. They can get in their own type of businesses, and they will make a living and then help develop the community.
- We usually leave the dock at noon and start fishing. It's round about five or six o'clock until seven next morning. Then we goes out and still feed and tend these, as long as the weather be good, and come back in and unload. Well, see, my children, they rig all three of the boats which we got now, and they doing most of the mechanic work and all the packing and every bit theirself. The hours is very long, but when start working, gotta stick with it until the season is over. After all, you have your good and your bad days in anything you wanted to do. Sometime it's good, and sometime it's bad, but when it bad, ya gotta stick with it, not run because it was bad. Otherwise, you losed everything what you was working for, 'cause right now in the business, if we can't get a peer over, then the peer'll stayed in to take care the boats. Two of my sons work under the father when they were six years old. After he died I have five of my son in the business with me and my daughter. They decided that this is what we had wanted and that there was no way on the count of he passed that we would not keep the business going. So then we decided to get together and just keep it going.
- Well, I'll say it like this. We have a strong mother, in order to keep us together. I don't know whether it's pray, but she can pray so hard and make things come true. Everybody was looking for us to divide it, but instead, we stick together and grow a little more. The only way you can survive in shrimping is you love what you doing in order for you to survive any . This my sport, pleasure, everything, and I wouldn't even give it up for my wife, but I got two boys. Crazy about the boy so far. But, well, I'mma try to see that I can go to school.
- The thing that's happening is that... Ya see, Seabrook Island is a private island now, and so the beaches are all cut off from the people. Now, it doesn't mean that they needed so much the beaches for bathing and having fun, but they needed it to get their food. They got their fish, and most of the times, they could fish in those streams, and this is what they needed. And they could hunt in those woods, and this is what they needed to make a living, because even today, Johns Island has something like $1,000 for the median income for most families. The shellfish, the shrimp, oysters, conchs, that was part of their income for living. Now, with the developments, they will soon put up the no trespass signs, and nothing will be left to them but the roads, which does not frinch them any food.
- This my first trap right here. Good. I guess you could call me a commercial fisherman. I crab because I needed to keep making a living. I don't like crabbing. It's too much worriation. I got a few breaks. Lotta people help me. I'm making a little money crabbing. And when the shrimp get here, me and Scrape'll be out there every day. Many times, me and Scrape said, "Well, I wish we didn't have a motor, 'cause a motor'll ruin the shrimp. Well, when we row out there, when we get to the spot we wanna go to, takes us half a day, there's some fella in a motorboat fishing at our spot, so ya got to go along. It's a shame.
- Huh? Here's something to cook about
- [Ron] One mullet, Scrape.
- [Scrape] One mullet.
- I guess this country was founded for money. They sent first discoverers over here to exploit this country, and they sent the rich English planters over here, and when they didn't wanna keep sending back money over to England, they just decide to break away from it and have it all for themselves. It hasn't changed any. People want so much. The Lord created all of this, and if you just live in it, it'll take care of you if you don't destroy it. That's just man's nature. I just feel like he just gonna keep on taking away from nature until there isn't any more, and nature's the only steady, consistent system there is. He's a fool. Man is a real fool. But this gives me a reason to be a little more optimistic living down here around people like Scrape. Have taught me something I never had before, and that's faith. Ya see that net he's making? It'll last a lifetime if ya take care of it. He made it with his hands. Lord made his hands. It's just that simple to me.
- See, I didn't know anything, and the rest the people was dumb to what I wanted to learn as they go on and leave ya still. I left my little, earn my little living. Ron did the same. I couldn't take no . I didn't see where I couldn't make it, so I just leave. I ran away from... It changed a lot 'cause I had to learn more, ha, see? From what is going on today... See in the... The Lord doing the same this minute that he did in world first made, but it wasn't as much people then as now. Well, he got the same much of things in that ocean, but look what the people doing with it.
- [Ron] That's it.
- Ya see. If people go out there now and kill up all the little fish-
- [Ron] Today is the first day of shrimping, May 1st.
- Indeed, May the 1st. For they oneself, they should not go today.
- [Ron] No.
- They should wait until about the 15 of next month when and mother swims and come out from the ocean and go in these creeks, in these inlet, and lay they eggs. Then the mother go back.
- [Ron] And then, that's when they should open it up.
- Then, when they go there, they'll be catching the mother only and leave the children living. But when they go there now, they catching the mother 'cause it ain't time for the mother to lay yet. If you had born when I was born, you woulda see practically mores as much as I see. That mean you could sit and talk over there, ya see? Well, Ron born way up here. He ain't see none that, don't know nothing 'bout it. Ha!
- Two shrimp is plenty to me 'cause I don't know. It's just as much fun to me as it ever was when he'd catch a whole netful of shrimp. When I catch a netful of shrimp now, we got to throw the anchor out. It's more people, and they're not... If everybody shrimped like me and Scrape shrimp, there'd be so many shrimp, they'd be like rice.
- [Scrape] Yeah, we ever pull.
- [Ron] 'Cause way we shrimp is the only way to shrimp. The little ones get out the net, and we just catch as much as we can catch, and there's plenty.
- [Scrape] Yeah, they go into their net instead of getting want.
- [Ron] Mkay. Okay, good.
- [Scrape] And then you push 'em down.
- [Ron] Plenty of shrimp right here though.
- [Scrape] Yeah.
- We always can go the palm and the pine needle, but the sweet grass is the ones so scarce of finding. Well, it look like ya dying out. There's a lot in Florida, but it's so far. And you don't know rather you're going into ill or not 'cause see. You're going on them other people land. And they building it up for one thing, and ya can't go in there like ya wanna. Ya gotta get a permission to go over there. Sometime the man gather, and we gotta fine from them to go and motorboat onto . We just don't want dock to darn 'cause it's a old craft. Some people said it's over 200 years. I don't know how old is, 'cause from time I had sense, we was making it. My grandmother, my mother, handed right on down. So ya take four things to make the basket. Ya take the sweet grass, the palmetto, pine needle, and a old spoon handle. We just taking what we gonna use it, 'cause right now, some people making some of the basket. If they can't get the sweet grass, they use just the pine needle, ya know? And then some use the rushel. The young people can make it too, but they wouldn't make it, 'cause there ain't enough money in it, 'cause we make for 25 cents a hour. They know how to make it, but we don't know whether they go do it or not. The things going like way it going now, they might do the basket, and they might. And a lotta young people that know how to make the basket, they moving to different states too. You don't have to teach them. They be small playing round it, and all a sudden they pick up and start twining it. And then they do it for the fun till they get 'bout eight or nine years old. Then that's that. They would come back to it if the Lord let them live enough to get old and retire. It'll keep off the welfare anyway. I feel like everything the Lord do he do it for the best anyway. He never do nothing for the worst.
- Look down there at those baskets. You see that lady on the left weaving those things? Well, that is made from a swamp grass called Spotkania patten. The facet of that weaving has been traced by anthropologists back to tribes in Africa, and the way to do weaving is passed from one generation to the next. If you really wanna take a bit of real Charleston back home with you, you take you one of those baskets. This part of the market is the vegetable market. We call 'em vegitubble stand here. Boy, if you haven't had a Charleston tomato, it makes a mountain apple taste sour.
- [Vendor] Yes, sir, right-
- [Vendor] Yes, sir, right here. Too low. Look at mine before ya buy.
- [Vendor] Eat 'em and you're walking. Eat 'em and you're talking.
- Yes, sir, little more to go.
- [Man] I thank you.
- [Vendor] Have an okra. Squash, bean, red peas with new potato cook on top with a little bit of ham bone. Yeah, .
- Mr. Dick Reeves, who has since passed on... But he was president of the Society for the Preservation of Gullah, which is a local patois spoken here by the native. That's when ya read the state paper and go in the boat. But he loved to tell the story about the nanny who was praying during this great earthquake. And she said, "Oh, God, you come down here, and you save us. Now, don't you send your soul, 'cause we ain't got time for no children today." The population of Charleston is only around 65,000 in this peninsula area, but we service an area of over 300,000. So thus, we have this tremendous concentration of hospitals all in one area.
- The superstition was great on the islands. Some people believed that if a child didn't see its father, was born after the father died, that child could spit in the mouth of another person or blow in its mouth and cure 'em with a disease. It didn't work at that time, but at that time they tried to keep out evil spirits. There were no ways of getting help for the sick. They used what they had.
- We chose South Carolina and this area, basically, because, at one time, this area held the largest population of Africans. During the slave period, more Africans were imported into this particular state than any other state in the entire union. We see our lifestyle here as very much in accord with the way our people have been living here for some time. The only great difference is that we are quite satisfied. Most of the blacks in this area, having now become educated, have decided that the former lifestyle is no longer civilized. However, we've been through that stage already, and we can return to it enthusiastically. We've become very much involved in learning from that older generation which is just on the verge of passing away how to survive without a great deal of help from the outside. They've taught us how to deliver our children. They've also pointed out different herbs and roots for medicine because for years they did without doctors here. We here, of course, have adopted an attitude of deprivation. We feel that mankind did exist at some period or another off of the environment, which was immediately surrounding it, so it is possible to be self-sufficient, but you do have to tailor your appetites and your needs and your wants. We haven't raised sufficient food. A lot of our food comes from just friends who bring food here in exchange for religious work we may do for them. We don't have refrigeration, because we don't have electricity. We kill a lot of chickens here, a lot of goats, but having lived in New York, where there were no repairs in the buildings, and so forth, in Harlem, and snow came right in besides her bed, so we're well prepared for this kind of life.
- When I became sheriff in 1926, I quit the practice of giving medicine by witch doctors in Beaufort County, that a witch doctor was supposed to deal with spirits. They were going out medicine for cancer, for syphilis, tuberculosis, and all, and I told two of their leading witch doctors that that had to quit or I was gonna make case against them. They told me that if I had the powers that I said I had to make 'em quit... I accepted that as a challenge, which involved black witchcraft. Two works after the challenge was issued, the beating would stop, and Beaufort sun was drowned. Voodoo and witchcraft are both from Africa. It was the witch doctors of Africa who discovered rauwolfia, which is known as reserpine. They also had a lot to do with other nerve remedies, like cocaine. Rauwolfia's still being used to treat trouble minds, and it was the Africa witch doctors who discovered that. When you in the woods and you live close there nature, and that's what the Africans did... They put their soul into animism, became part of wood or tree, taboos all a part of that heritage. I could recite case histories to ya of prominent people who were dying because they heard that black magic had been worked against 'em, and it's the same theory that if 10 people saw you down the street this morning and said, "You look terrible," you would few sick. It plays on your mind.
- We start with this health center here with four of us. We organize a board. Now the health center's run by local people. We are the biggest employment of people on the five sea island. before then was nil or none. The only health they had was the county hospital in Charleston. Transportation is still a problem, even with our vehicles. Back then, there were no transportation. Many people, if they can get a ride to the city, it was crisis-type treatment. I know two case of the person died in my father's truck waiting on the bridge to close to try to get 'em to the emergency room. If something happened to this bridge, people can't get to Wadmalaw Island, and that's the same with Edisto.
- [Tour Guide] And while we've got a lot left in Charleston, we've lost a great deal, as this Exxon station will attest. The bricks and columns from that came from a house built by Gabriel Manigault. Gabriel built his own house right here on the corner, and it was so fine that it had a secret room in it, and some dingbat tore it down and put up an Exxon station. And I cannot, for the life of me, believe that that's progress. See, I want you to look well in the distance. It was that block of buildings that the Atlanta investor came down here the bought up and said, "I'm gonna tear down your 18th- and 19th-century warehouses, and I'm gonna up multistory condominiums." And we said, "Oh no, you not, honey."
- Naturally, there are some places that are better suited for golf courses and so-called resort developments than others, some places that are better to maintain as a wildlife refuge or a national park. In South Carolina, Kiawah is really the jewel of the barrier islands, we think, in terms of its resources, its size, and its relatively pristine state. As it is now, it's almost untouched.
- [Tour Guide] So we've put on a new campaign, and every state except Alaska and 22 foreign countries contributed to that. And we told him to take his old condominium and do you know what with it. You know though, if you stop that first condominium, you don't have any trouble with the second one. There's nobody else dumb enough to try.
- I've lived here all my life, been to Kiawah probably since I was about 8 or 10. Well, we've been lobbying to try to get the county council to vote against rezoning the island. The developers would it rezoned to a certain classification so that they can build the kind of condominiums and stores, and so forth, that they wanna build on it. I just can't envision a place where 20,000 or 30,000 people live and have their sewer systems and two or three golf courses and condominiums, marinas. That to me doesn't mean environmentally sensitive. A lot of the people who are gonna get jobs will lose the job, and in 20 years, there'll be jobs for waiters and maids at the restaurant and the motels. Sure, people need a place to live, but the kinda people who are gonna come to the Kiawah that the developers envision, these are gonna be second and third homes for people to come drink martinis and play golf. Man has gotta be the one to save some of his environment as well as the one to exploit some of it for his own use.
- [Bill] On the islands, these developers and real estate people are coming to them, and they're showing them more cash money than they ever seen before.
- Well, I got some land to sell them. I got 12 I won't sell them.
- [Bill] And offer them prices that they didn't realize... It's just a token of what the land worth, but it's more than they had any idea the land was worth.
- Why sell it? What good land can do me? Well, I ain't gon' sell it just .
- [Bill] So we have a great responsibility in trying to educate the people to the fact that land is the prime line. It's very important. And only sell if it's become necessary.
- Got ain't making no more land, so you got to try to hold on to what you got, because it's the only thing of value that's left to us in this world.
- The Sea Pine Plantation in the second World Invitational Tennis Classic.
- [Audience] Wow.
- 10.
- [Tennis Player] Urgh, gee whiz!
- Wow.
- Ah.
- Play.
- I don't wanna be confined. I want to see the world, see how other people live in the big city and learn a little more, so I wanted to . So I went to New York, and I learnt an awful lot living in the city I learnt things that in really couldn't get in no book. Self-experience is the best teacher. I learnt things from people and people all walks life. It's like night and day, great change, big change to me and, I guess, to anyone else who been exposed to some of the thing that I was exposed to living in a city like New York and coming back on an island. But I realized, let's say, you can go anywhere in the world, but home... Can't beat home. You should always be able say, "Well, I am going home," where you were born. To me this is one of the most precious thing in your life, and you can go back to the place where you were born.
- Ah!
- Wow!
- I saw a picture of the house in which I live. It says, "A hut on the Daufuskie." You can just imagine how I felt reading that. I do believe I live in a house. It might not be so pleasing to them. To me it's a house. Someone just picking up this paper to read it, they'd come conclusion that is the same.
- I feel, not feel but know, that every time that a white person do research... They can take photograph of what they see. They can record what they hear. But most of the time, when they attempt to interpret that kind of thing that they saw and what they heard, it comes out different to what the black community was all about. We talk about black people suffering on the island. A lotta black never know they were suffering until people came out and told 'em they were suffering. Gullah, you can go to the masses of people on the island right now. They don't know what you're talking about when you say Gullah. They would have a different idea altogether what you're talking about. Everybody about the world, the more they see these things, or round the country, they wanna come over and see these strange nice people, these primitive people, and how they've been able to survive all these years: "Please don't let it go down because it's something we need to preserve. Just keep on starving, and keep on being like you are. We all love you. So that's the kinda thing that we are attempting to get around at this particular point.
♪ My soul ♪
♪ Just live in me now ♪
♪ That's all right ♪
♪ All right ♪
♪ Never die ♪
♪ Bless my soul ♪
- I love .
- [Man] Yeah.
- I love this place. I don't know, but I just love it.
