Headed to Savannah with The Weeping Time and Feature in the Savannah Morning News

This week is the anniversary of the auction that I wrote about in my book, The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History. The auction took place March 2-3, 1859.

Many thanks to Kristopher Munroe for his thoughtful treatment of the book and this history.

http://savannahnow.com/accent/2018-02-24/these-people-s-lives-mattered-too-book-gives-new-narrative-savannah-s-weeping-time

A memorial is scheduled for March 2 at 9am in Savannah, Georgia.Those attending are asked to bring umbrellas to recall the rain that fell on those fateful days the slaves called “The Weeping Time.” It is a sign of hope that a historical marker has been established at the site of the auction and a regular memorial is being held to honor those who were sold away.

I am happy to be visiting on March 22 and giving the Mark Finlay Memorial Lecture at GSU’s Armstrong Campus in the Fine Arts Auditorium at 6pm. The Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters who reenact the auction and sing Negro spirituals created in the antebellum period will be joining me.  Their music has been a balm to audiences around the country.  For those who are able, you are welcome to join us.

Many thanks to so many who contributed to this book in some way; who hosted me in my visits to the city and who provided behind the scenes help in the research and production. 

Finally,  I want to acknowledge the descendants. It is your work of restoration that I honor in this book and it is a work of restoration that I hope will inspire others to do the same.

Anne C. Bailey

Author of TheWeeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History

IF YOU GO

What: Wreath to be laid

When: 9 a.m. March 2

Where: Gather at Otis J. Brock III Elementary School gymnasium, 804 Stratford St., and walk to The Weeping Time site at Augusta Avenue and Dunn Street. Bring umbrella to recall the rains that fell March 2-3, 1859.

What: Mark Finlay Memorial Lecture by Anne C. Bailey

When: 6 p.m. March 22

Where: GSU’s Armstrong Campus, Fine Arts Auditorium, 11935 Abercorn St.

Cost: Free and open to the public

Courtesy of Georgia Historical Society

Letter to Parkland Students

Dear Parkland Students,

I have been a teacher most of my adult life and it’s a role I cherish. I cherish it because of what I teach –African, African American and Caribbean history--but mostly because of young people, young people like you.

I can not tell you how much I admire you for standing up for the change you want to see.  You are channeling your grief in the best way you know how and  I believe we will all be the better for it.

I am sorry, though, that this must be your burden as you are children. What I have seen and watched over the years is that our nation’s schools have turned into battlegrounds, and little has been done to change that. We spend billions of dollars fighting wars abroad and yet are losing the war at home.  We are concerned with peaceful protesters such as those who protest the deaths of unarmed Black teens, think Trayvon Martin, but the random slaughter of children in our schools hardly moves the needle.

But you give me hope.

You know, there were some children like you in the 50’s and the 60’s; they were brave too.  You may have learned about them in your school because I can see that Marjory Stoneman Douglas is a very good school. Those children were Ruby Bridges and the Little Rock Nine and others like them who dressed in their Sunday finest and braved hateful words and violent mobs just because they wanted an education.

They dared to integrate our schools when half the country wanted them to stay home.  They needed Federal Marshals to escort them to school, some for as long as a year, but they were undaunted. 

And you know what happened?  Justice and righteousness prevailed and their schools got integrated and that is the legacy they bequeathed to you.  You are a beautiful multicultural group, and from what I can tell, you could not imagine it any other way.  

So brave hearts, know that you are not alone. Be inspired by the past but carve out your own path and help this sleeping public to hear your voice when you say:

Enough is enough to gun violence.  Never again for another school, for another set of students.

Finally, I want say one last thing.  I was at a conference this weekend and there were many students there trying to think through other difficult challenges like diversifying their campus and reducing racial conflict.  We had really productive dialogue, but at one point, a friend and fellow teacher said to the group:

“We are so sorry.  We failed you.   Our generation failed you. "

  

Parkland, I am saying the same to you right now.

We failed you. We didn’t protect you.  We squabbled over politics.  We made excuses.  We put our wants above your needs.  Please forgive us.

This time, we will have your back.

Godspeed in all you do.

Anne B.

Sources

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ruby-bridges

For more info, see Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges and 

The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles

US Marshals with young Ruby Bridges on school steps, Public Domain.

From Kumbaya to Forty Acres and A Mule: The Gullah Geechees aim to preserve their land

Kumbaya, “Come by here” in the Gullah language, the song of peace, the song of hope, is finally getting its due.  Henry Wylie, a member of the Gullah Geechee community,  recorded the first known version of the song  in 1926.   After my blogpost last week about the song’s origins in the traditions of the Gullah Geechee African American people of Southeastern Georgia, over 400,000 of you viewed the post and voiced your enthusiasm for the Library of Congress, the Georgia Legislature and the United States Congress giving credit where credit is due! A big thanks also to John Eligon of the New York Times, who read this post, reached out to me, Griffin Lotson and others involved in this effort and wrote an excellent piece on the origin and impact of kumbaya.

So many of you wrote poignantly about growing up with this song and how much it meant to you. Many people remembered fondly parents singing the song to them or singing it around a campfire.  Literally, people from all over the world, from Argentina to New Zealand, wrote about its significance in their lives and seemed to bond even more with the song knowing that it was a song borne of pain and suffering but also hope in the African American community. 

That the song is a plea to God for help was not lost on most readers; it affirmed how this song speaks to them, especially when they are in pain.

So as we celebrate its origin and its continued impact, I encourage you to support continued efforts of the Gullah community to preserve this incredible culture.  Here’s why this is so important.

The Problem: Gentrification of Gullah lands

Gullah Geechee communities on the Sea Islands are under threat from rising land prices and the practices of predatory developers.  In years past, some developers have used loopholes in the ways in which property is inherited to get the land auctioned to the highest bidder.   With island land now being in high demand, property values have risen sharply and increased property taxes threaten to remove those who have for over two hundred years stayed close to the land and created this culture from which hails this significant song. The Gullah Geechee Heritage Corridor Federal Commission, many of whose commissioners hail from the community, is doing its best to preserve the culture,  but public support for their efforts could make that vital difference. 

What can be done?

Should these lands be given landmark status so that the community can maintain their historical and cultural ties to the land? Could a community land trust be started and funded to take the land out of the real estate market and allow it to be managed in ways that help the community?  Maybe this would give communities like Sapelo Island, Harris Neck as well as others the stability they need to plan for the future. Finally, would this ensure that those interested in cultural heritage tourism, and at the moment, that is many of us, would continue to have great places to visit?

People are already flocking by the thousands to the annual Gullah festivals and I can only imagine that more activities like these would be an added boon to the economy of this region.

What do you  the readers think?

Furthermore, could letters to the Georgia Governor, Senators  and  other local elected officials make a difference?  I am wondering out loud if there is a way that public support could help these landowners and culture bearers hold onto their land.

After all it is historic land.  This is the case not just because of the song kumbaya but because ironically these lands represent the only instance where African Americans actually received reparations.

Forty Acres and A Mule

In my recent book, The Weeping Time, I document the fact that according Sherman’s infamous Field Order no. 15, on January 16, 1865,  ex slaves on the Sea Islands were granted plots of forty acres by the Union General.  These were the only former slaves who ever received reparations in all of United States.  In fact, there were the only people of African descent in the New World who ever received any reparations at all! Efforts in the Caribbean are afoot, but as of this writing, this reality has not changed.

Some 40,000 of the newly freed slaves were to be settled on 400,000 acres of land and given mules for farming which came to be known as “Sherman’s Reservation.”  This meant that the Black people of the Sea Islands experienced something that few others did at this time: freedom with teeth- freedom and property ownership.

They could never be fully repaid for  246 years of unrequited labor, but they were given something to even the playing field.

But it was not to last. 

As I say in my book:  “ Sadly, no one could have anticipated that this order could have been so short lived.  Shortly after Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865, President Andrew Johnson  promptly rescinded the order and returned the lands back to their original owners.  It had been a bold experiment, but now it was over.”

The amazing thing is that in spite of this backlash and retrenchment, many Sea Islanders and their families through continued hard work, persistence and banding together, found a way to purchase land near or on their old plantations and hold onto it.

Now some are finding that legacy threatened.

Land and culture go hand in hand. For all our sakes, we hope they can preserve both.

Kumbaya My Lord, Kumbaya

Anne C. Bailey

Author of The Weeping Time: Memory and the LargestSlave Auction in American History. (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

Editorial Assistance from Professor Audrey McFarlane.

Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters, who share the oral traditions and songs of Southeastern Georgia and the Gullah Geechee community all over the world.

https://www.geecheegullahringshouters.com/

Unmarked graves on Butler island that  Butler Island descendant and cultural tour operator, Tiffany Shea Young, helped bring to light.

Sources:
A. Bailey, The Weeping Time: Memory and the  Largest Slave Auction in American History

Karen Cook Bell, "African American Freedom and the Illusive Forty Acres and a Mule."
https://www.aaihs.org/african-american-freedom-and-the-illusive-forty-acres-and-a-mule/
Eric Foner, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction
Henry Louis Gates Jr.," The Truth Behind Forty acres and  Mule."
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/the-truth-behind-40-acres-and-a-mule/

Gullah Geechee Nation, http://www.GullahGeecheeNation.com
S. Winick, https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2018/02/kumbaya-history-of-an-old-song/

Gullah Geechee community finally credited with song “Kumbaya"

                                                                                                            February 4, 2018

Many a camper in America and around the world know the camp favorite, “kumbaya.”  It is known as a song of peace, a song of community. Few may know, however, that the song was first recorded by descendants of slaves in the Gullah Geechee community of Darien in Southeastern Georgia. Over the last ten years, I have had the pleasure of interviewing and listening to members of this community for my book, The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History.

The Gullah Geechees have now been credited with the song’s origin and a resolution recognizing Georgia’s first state historical song has been enacted. Gullah Geechee native and Mayor Protem of Darien Georgia, Rev. Griffin Lotson, did the research and with representatives of the Folklife Center in the Library of Congress found the first original wax cylinder recording. Listen to it here.

The story goes that Robert Winslow Gordon, a Harvard graduate who later became the first Head of the Archive of American Song at the Library of Congress, recorded the song in 1926.  Henry Wylie was the singer and a member of the Gullah Geechee community. “Kumbaya” meant “Come by here” in Gullah and was a plea to God for help.  In the interim years, missionaries and folk singers including Pete  Seeger, Joan Baez and Odetta made the song popular around the world, but if we look closely at the lyrics, we see how similar they are to Negro spirituals.  Negro spirituals or as African American scholar, W.E. B. Dubois called them, sorrow songs, were a cry for help.  They were an important part of the oral tradition that allowed the enslaved to share their most intimate desires and needs with God.   They were mostly Christian songs but also sometimes had a subversive message. Coded language in songs were used to help runaway slaves find freedom by means of the Underground Railroad trail. As such, these songs represented their hope for freedom and better days.

Those cries and that hope are heard in the song kumbaya which has finally gotten its due.  The fact that many things in African American culture quietly become mainstream without recognition of their origin makes this long overdue recognition all the more significant.

So next time you sing or hear “kumbaya,” remember this beautiful community and one of their gifts to the world.

Kum ba ya, my lord, Kum ba ya!
Kum ba ya, my lord, Kum ba ya!
Kum ba ya, my lord, Kum ba ya.
O Lord, Kum ba ya

Someone's crying, Lord, Kum ba ya!
Someone's crying, Lord, Kum ba ya!
Someone's crying, Lord, Kum ba ya!
O Lord, Kum ba ya

Someone's singing, Lord, Kum ba ya!
Someone's singing, Lord, Kum ba ya!
Someone's singing, Lord, Kum ba ya!
O Lord, Kum ba ya

Someone's praying, Lord, Kum ba ya!
Someone's praying, Lord, Kum ba ya!
Someone's praying, Lord, Kum ba ya!
O Lord, Kum ba ya

Anne C. Bailey
email: freedomlives4@yahoo.com

For more on Gullah Geechee history and culture --Book available on Amazon

 The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History  by Anne C. Bailey (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

Federal Commission Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor
https://www.gullahgeecheecorridor.org/

http://www.annecbailey.net (website)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABUZcObLc_8(interview with author)

Sources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwNmWHQjg8I&t=19s (Resolution at Georgia State Capitol)

https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200197143/

https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200198050

https://www.scoutsongs.com/lyrics/kumbayah.html#ixzz569OUkm00

Gullah Geechee Ring Shouters, who share the oral traditions of Southeastern Georgia and the Gullah Geechee community all over the world.
https://www.geecheegullahringshouters.com/

Travel Channel News and On the Road with The Weeping Time

Anne Bailey on Mysteries at the Museum on

Thursday, February 8 at 7pm

and Thursday, February 15 at 9pm

Upcoming Talk and Book signing at SUNY Oneonta   

Student Diversity and Leadership Conference

Friday, February 16, 3:30pm  Book signing

Saturday, February 17, 2018 at 8:30am  Keynote address

Contact: Faith J. Tiemann

Director of Multicultural Student Initiatives

104 Lee Hall, CME, SUNY Oneonta

607-436-2663

Faith.Tiemann@oneonta.edu

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