Joseph Opala on the Black Seminoles
Monday, November 18, 2019
Thomas Thurston talks with Joseph Opala on his work with the Black Seminoles
Joseph Opala is an American historian noted
for establishing the “Gullah Connection,” the historical links between
the indigenous people of the West African nation of Sierra Leone and the Gullah people of the Low Country region of South Carolina and Georgia in the United States.
Opala’s historical research began with a study of Bunce Island,
the British slave castle in Sierra Leone that was a departure point for
many African slaves shipped to South Carolina and Georgia in the mid-
and late 18th century Middle Passage. He was the first scholar to recognize that Bunce Island has
greater importance for the Gullah than any other West African slave
castle. He ranks it as “the most important historic site in Africa for
the United States.”
Opala has traveled
between Sierra Leone and the South Carolina and Georgia Low Country for
25 years, producing documentary films, museum exhibits, and popular
publications on this historical connection. He is best known for a
series of “Gullah Homecomings” in which Gullah people traveled to Sierra
Leone to explore their historical and family ties to that country. He
has drawn on his original research to establish these connections, and
the work of earlier scholars, especially Lorenzo Dow Turner, an African-American linguist who in the 1930s and 1940s traced many elements of Gullah speech to West African languages.
Opala’s research and public history events generated a national dialog in Sierra Leone on the subject of family lost in the Atlantic slave trade.
These discussions have continued for almost three decades. The Sierra
Leone media first coined the phrase, “Gullah Connection,” for the family
ties which Opala has brought to light. He helped generate a similar
dialog in the South Carolina and Georgia Low Country, where he has given
public lectures and interviews to the local media, and organized
workshops for teachers and cultural activists for many years. His work
has helped Gullahs recognize their links to African traditions. More
about Joseph Opala here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Opala
Recommended Resources:
Kenneth Porter, The Black Seminoles: Histroy of a Freedom-seeking People (University Press of Florida, 2013).
think
absolute power depends on absolute control over knowledge, which in turn necessitates absolute corruption
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