Home Across the Water Transcript
- Born in the morning..
- We were Trying to reestablish our lives. We just been torn apart by many different things. Torn apart in that ironic torn apart by the fact that the islands are now connected with bridges more people are coming in and more resources have been brought to bear.
- Most residential areas on Hilton head have one style to them. The homes all look alike in Wexford. The homes are distinctive.
- There are people in this same room in the same building right now that cannot go to the graveyard of their loved ones on the Fusky island unless they get permission to do so. I'm telling you, I'm telling you the problems that we are sharing in the coastal area today. Not just on, the Fusky not just on Hilton head, but believe me it's gonna come to Johns island. It's gonna come to Wardlow island. It's gonna come to the Florida area and it's gonna come to every other coastal area that we survive in.
- You know what we gonna do with all these condominiums and stuff? What is the, I noticed the development that's going there. It's not helping in us any
- And
- It, it's no reason. It's no reason to take people land, but they are out there. The greedy land, people are out there, but I'm realizing that no more land will be made. And if we lose what we got, we a
- Son
- You have a wonderful, rich, rich heritage to offer to this country. And as part of this history that we should want preserve as Americans and that we should want study and, and cherish and celebrate
- Without a doubt, without the land base we not gonna preserve any of this culture. That's where people are. And that's where people function within their own setting, within their own land. People who came to these islands primarily from the west coast of Africa. And these islands were established farms primarily rice and the gold cotton.
- But then when the season was bad, and it was bug season from mosquitoes and malaria the white man, naturally he he went up to dry land. So he went inland. And so you were virtually left alone. So your culture, you brought over with you survive cause you didn't have nobody say don't beat the drum. Don't talk like this. Don't eat that don't walk like this. So
- Forth.
- Mainland African Americans had an opportunity to be influenced by European culture. Whereas we didn't even get exposed to that. For an example, the speech itself, the Gullah language was practiced very, very prevalently in the sea islands. And you went, you know, 40 miles away and you you didn't hear it in some places.
- You idea What that means.
- Big oil, that boy. So big oil want everything. You see it got the big oil. You want everything you see. And somebody says that about you. What are they saying about you? You're greedy. That's right.
- Rest him out. Rest him out. I say, you run him out too much.
- Be quiet.
- Be quiet Or if you say it the right way, shut up.
- After the civil war, these same people who had worked the land were given an opportunity to purchase some land that had been abandoned by the planters. They were able to reestablish their their lives almost similar to their lifestyle in Africa particularly as it relates to the family and the the support system that they built around each community.
- My grandfather come from Africa go Africa making baskets in Africa, make Africa. Fella been here one day, he was from Africa His little boy said, little boy said, daddy, the same kind of baskets he makes, Grandma makes the same baskets in Africa Yep, my momma make them same type of baskets
- Our institutions has, you know, have traditionally been the family religion. And we also had a kind of a closed economy on these islands based on farming, based on the use of the use of land. And you had your own food production and what you didn't use for your own family use, you could sell, it
- Could be a plan for living make your own rices and make your own corn make your own big and all that index your mom, no money but you don't go hungry. I plant in, I plenty really me. I born ranger and I, I never the phone room. Can't in my legs.
- When I grew up the child of the fishermen and my parents were school teachers, but the child of the fisherman was just as important because my parents had to depend on the fishermen for food and, and they depend on my parents to help read a letter or whatever
- Start doing it. Once I got big enough first time I did it like to throw myself in put the cast net cuz Nick got caught on the button, on my shirt. Yeah, got a fish band. I wanna get a picture of that one. That's the way you let him out. The net piece.
- We'll just ride around from from here to the north end, anywhere around this island. We goes, you know our horse in wagon and them days. Yeah. That's the way it is honey. I old auction either one. It wouldn't make no difference just since I had something about I really wish I had a wagon in a horse right now. You wouldn't have find me home this morning. I would've been gone.
- Don't know the road by playing of song. Don't know the road by saying of the song.
- Most families were on one spot of land and you have all of your cousins and nephews and uncles and mother and grandmothers living right there together. So you, you have a chance to call on them to babysit or to borrow food or to exchange clothing help to build houses, to borrow money. It's had a very good system in place.
- My mother time, if they wait together, they wait together. That's the guy find the C I got a bunch of chill and working C you know, and you were over there and feed over there. And I come up my, I, I get to ho my crop before you do me and my junior chill climb my feet. Help me help get the crap boy work. The yellow kept one other Oak. You know, if any, if anybody dies, nobody wait. They better him. Bear rings. Somebody did wipe his wife. Did didn't
- Dancing. Say, I can start to
- Remind me to buy you some new dress socks tomorrow. Okay. Cause the one you have, what
- Is you talking
- About? New dress socks for church. Cuz the one, the ones you got is getting too small. So we all sitting there and we said, tell us the story of something and wanna stop telling I don't wanna finish it. And it's like in harmony each other or whatsoever. Well Papa his biggest thing was also to tell us about family members. So we grew up around him knowing who was kind to who and why we said, well, Papa, how come you say cousin? Hadie how come she's your cousin? Then he'll tell you the family history all the way back how she became his cousin
- The church and the music has always been a part of life. That was a time when everybody became very ins spirited. At one time during the week you laid your burden down from the week's work and then you got refueled for the next week. So music played a very important part. Sounds played a very important part in our life and the seas.
- As the people we look at God brought from allow hardship and trials. Some of them told would never, never, never be here can I get a witness? You
- I grew up on Hilton head island which same thing existed there. I left Hilton head about 1965 but I came back some seven years later and found that the islands were really changing. Well, somebody in the fifties and sixties say, wow now that we have some of these islands connected to the mainland, we can easily develop them into resorts. What does one think of? When they think of the south? They think of plantations and they think of big houses and they think of of people who are working rather cheaply on the plantation. And so these results got established as plantations very exclusive communities in the midst of these same African Americans who have been lived in on on land. In some cases, people are offered big sums of money. Although they're living in poor conditions and they sell off a portion of the land so that they may be able to improve the house. And soon that they sell off that portion of land and somebody comes up next door and want to build something, you know, real fine. Then that person next door is in trouble too. Because then the way the house look is is not compatible to the new one. And pretty soon that person is forced to either improve or get shielded out by a wall or, or or get the taxes get raised so high that they can no longer afford to pay. And so those are the kind of things that cause the African American to just leave the land.
- We have to be mindful of the hundred thousand $200,000. That's dangled in front of us to sell the land. The next question is where are we going to go? When we sell the land, a lady sold some land in Buford county last year, she got about $80,000 for the land Last week, she had to sign a note for the bank to pay state and federal taxes. It's serious. The only land she have left now
- Cause of the resort development and need for all cash. Even when you are an individual in junior high or high school, the burden on that family. So great that you really find yourself sacrificing your education so that you can go to work. So by the time you finish high school you are in no position to further your education not even to go north. And so you end up with a job there that meets your education level right here in the sea island. They not end in I position at that point to even pay the taxes on the land or keep the land. So you're in a quagmire, you're working in a resort and you're being forced to live somewhere else.
- Further back. It was more houses. Now you wouldn't even know where the houses been. If you don't see some bricks and all back out here behind me over here, house was out there. Oh man, three or four houses was out there, but it's not anymore because you know, the people die out and they the one, what is living well, they's not here. You can see the bricks so well, what was there? That's all
- Sure. I always stop by this church. For some reason. I don't know. This was a church that I was baptized into church, Iraq bluff.
- This one was moved into in 1900. Now you gotta go through this thing here carefully. Like balancing yourself up on this thing here. Just like walking on the side, you coming, Brittany. I just like coming down here and walking around to the old house spot and I know I don't actually talk to the people. At least I don't, at least I wouldn't admit to it but we would go places like down this road here off when you right was cousin Eddie hall and cousin D everybody called him D you know but his name was James Green and his wife IDER and little Jimmy, the same uncle Allen's nephew, Jimmy. Well, he was raised by his grandparents down here and over on the left side was Virginia and her husband, Mr. Randolph groom and all of their nine eight or nine children. And right on the corner here was Allen green and his present wife. He had one enemy. Was there everybody who lived here really loved where they lived at. You know, they come down here and they if these people was a rise up now and come down here and take a look at the places they really used to live and farm and love and work at. I think they die all over again. You know
- P place, all they all quite walk across the road but I'm trail over there. Go race field, all over, feel all, all players. When you not know pew, Don plant no P city, they buy it, buy cheap, make it yeah. Pew, don't go and plant them over.
- People, come in and say y'all need to preserve this just the way it is but we preserve it just the way it is. It shows heck going die. You can't stop time. Cuz if we stop it just the way it is and we want it back just like this, do no changes. Then what do we got? Nothing. You still made it. So we got to look toward the future a bit. We can't just do the present and we can't use the past too much because we didn't pass that stage. So I decided that I have to get something going for this area. And we fall max out to better the condition of minorities in Macers county. So that anywhere from housing to education to understanding the tax laws understanding the environmental issues and everything. So we don't wanna miss anything, including getting people to understand know their cultural better too.
- We are now at a second or third wave or the first wave being right after the civil war when people try to help people settle. And that, that has gone on to the civil rights movement where, you know things changed some 25 years ago and and in many waves in terms of race relations. And, and now we are a third wave where people are now talking about economics and, and environment. And, and, and this is where we need more extension work to go into communities and and reteach people within their own means.
- Yeah. What is the solution? That's the thing that we gonna have to deal with. Let me just run through some of the things here that I had addressed. And I think it may answer some of the questions in terms of land ownership who owns what and how we can deal with it. Then we can be with some more the specific thing South Carolina
- You say, you know, you need to hold on the land. And the question is why we gonna hold onto it for? Well, one simple answer is that you gotta live somewhere. You gotta eat, you gotta survive somehow. And the only economic asset that we have is the land. So if we get rid of that, then what do we have left? So what we are saying is that we need to revert back to the old ways. So tried to survive off the land that was inherited by most of us who were here today
- The techniques and tactics of struggle need not be abandoned or lost in history. We have to bring those forward today into this modern today's struggle. It is still trying to get equal access and equal opportunity. It still is trying to retain culture that in turn promotes self-esteem and people feeling good about themselves. So we still have to struggle with the powers that be in order to cross those bridges. But the goal now is not struggle for struggle sake. The goal is struggle for control over quality of life for retention of my culture retention of my language, if you will, no
- One would in the last up until the last five years would readily identify him or herself as being Gullah as being geechy because it was something it was very negative. You were backwards. You thought to be stupid and ignorant. If you spoke that way, or if you came from that particular culture, why don't you open that? Things are changing
- Acts chapter 10 story of Peter and Cornelius, pass it along for take one and pass
- It along. We're now finding out that gullah is now considered a language. I'm a part of a team where we translated in the Bible into gullah What we call a Seattle translation team. A couple of missionaries came and here about 10 years ago and began doing that work. And so we've joined up with them. It's the two missionaries who are linguists through the work. And then we who are community speakers. We review that work because it's not written anywhere really. And so we have to rely on our memory on how one says such thing now Has not made corrections on it yet.
- They, they talked with me. Yeah. At first, I didn't want to have any part to do with it because we thought Gullah wasn't the right kind of English. And I had been teaching my children to speak correct English. But after considering I, I thought I'd give it a try. Well, there wasn't very much I could do, except try to read this script as think had there one and the Caesarea named Cornelius, he been captain of the Semans from Rome where the people call the Italy SURS
- Yeah. How about the use of soans that's you either say so months or so dam, you know, mini more than one. Yeah, right? Yeah. You either use them on the end of it. Yeah. Now how about them for the Soman dam? I'm gonna put a parenthesis there. So you underline where it's
- People are becoming more knowledgeable about themselves and about their history and finding the, the, the strong points knowing who they are, where they came from, why they look and act and feel and think the way that they do they may have been told. I'm sure they have been told that the reasons behind those things are because these aspects of their culture, the heritage that they should just forget about and they're finding that no, they don't want to forget. And they don't necessarily have to forget. You ever
- Forget again, that
- We're coming together as a community of the coast and addressing the changes that are now further oppressing us, the adverse changes to our lives. It would've been better if we had more people who said, yeah, well we solved it this way. And that way, as it turns out now we have to get to digging and trying to find solution than resources to bring about solutions.
- I wanna say that I feel very honored along with feeling depressed, along with feeling a new sense of something that I can't find the right name for because what I see here tonight is a rebirth of something that needs to happen.
- I think we can reshape our own future. I don't think we have to map the future in the in the context of conformity. And there's some people who are advocating guys you better join them, or you'll be like the Indians. I happen to think that, that you have a better chance than that. We gotta do more convincing that the way that things are going now are not necessarily the right way are the only way
- I saw my home burn. I saw my cemetery dug up, you know, and now, you know I feel like the pledge of Allegiance should be changed a little bit. We was on one nation, but there's no more say Liberty and justice were all, but it's Liberty and justice for some not all of us anymore. Just some remember us on Harry neck, in your prayer let us be more prayerful. Let us go to God and let him lead us and guide us. And together we stand divided we'll fall. It is time for our black brothers and sisters to come out the shell. Now let's stand up and be counted.
- If this nation is gonna address that whole issue of oppression of a whole group of human being then I think at least we should take a look at preserving where they got started in free life. And they got started on these islands but it's also something human about doing and saying, wow here's what we can point to as how we corrected all those misguided notions of 300 years ago Oh, see my LORD... Oh, see my LORD...
