“It is what it is, but what it is is good to know where you come from.”
The assertion appears to reverberate by the small, hundred-year-old picket shack we sit in on St. Helena Island in South Carolina. I huddle on a picket bench on a cold winter afternoon, listening to native pastors inform us in regards to the historical past of reward homes on the island, just like the Mary Jenkins Community Praise House the place we sit.
Originally segregated locations of worship throughout enslavement within the United States, reward homes ultimately took on the function of assembly locations, group centres and extra for native Black communities on the island. Their existence raises questions in regards to the function of faith, the event of segregated group establishments, the that means of progress and a lot extra.
And as we have been so deftly reminded that day, one among three days I spent experiencing Intrepid’s new Charleston to Savannah: Exploring Gullah Geechee Culture journey, whereas the historical past of reward homes and Gullah Geechee communities is usually painful, it’s additionally important to the story of the United States.
Exploring Gullah Geechee heritage
During our quick journey from Charleston, South Carolina, to Savannah, Georgia, we explored complicated questions associated to who will get to say and be included in tellings of American historical past by historic stops, native meals, musical performances and extra.
As we discovered in regards to the historical past of the realm and the Gullah Geechee individuals, descendants of West and Central Africans enslaved and delivered to the decrease Atlantic states who developed a singular tradition and language, we got here to grasp a foundational a part of the story of the United States: there isn’t any US as we all know it with out colonisation and slavery, simply as there isn’t any in style American tradition with out Black tradition.
As a lot as I loved myself and thought many occasions over that everybody ought to have the prospect to make a journey like this, it’s not possible to disconnect this expertise from surging debate within the US about precisely how a lot Black historical past is suitable to show. Because whereas there was a lot magnificence, ingenuity and group packed into our itinerary, this journey additionally raises questions with out solutions. Just as I believe the thought of instructing Black historical past raises for others.
Framing the controversy
Is it actually good to know the place you come from? For some cause, that’s a contentious query within the US.
I’ve watched because the nation I used to be born and raised in debates my cultural historical past as “indoctrination”, a part of an “agenda”, and worse. The Florida Department of Education lately rejected an Advanced Placement African American Studies course, an interdisciplinary course that spans matters starting from the “Origins of the African Diaspora” to “Black Women’s Rights and Education”. Educators are fighting mother and father, legal guidelines and even different academics who search to bar Black historical past or the instructing of any social or historic matters which may make college students “uncomfortable.” Call it a tradition battle, name it cultural backlash, name it no matter you need, however many societal debates of the right here and now are deeply invested in shaping how we consider, talk about and bear in mind the previous.
This nation has but to totally reckon with the truth that its historical past consists of torture, human trafficking and enslavement, colonisation, segregation, lynchings, homicide and extra. Because if we settle for that painful actuality, what does it say about American exceptionalism and the American dream? What does it say in regards to the “melting pot” that’s so typically hailed as an emblem of the US’s acceptance of variety?
For me, this cognitive dissonance is an inescapable a part of the Black expertise within the US: to be directly foundational to the event of American society and tradition but debated as in case your historical past is in some way tainted.
Travel as an alternate path to schooling
When faculties gained’t educate it, we’re left to teach ourselves elsewhere. I definitely did. My public college schooling had sparse classes on Black historical past. What we did study targeted on just some major figures, akin to Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and emphasised their grace and magnanimity. The Black American expertise was offered as if there have been however just a few small hiccups, by no fault of anybody’s, that had been absolutely overcome by track and religion. This is an instance of the “comfortable” narrative that faculty programs would possibly lead college students to consider in. One that I, at one level, definitely used to border the world round me.
This sanitised model of American historical past that so many are combating to protect, was jarringly at odds with the richness of our experiences in South Carolina and Georgia with Intrepid. Our journey jogged my memory of the ability of journey to problem us and reshape our perceptions.
I don’t say this to counsel that journey forces us to study completely different views and cultures. It’s not a magic balm that enables us to flee from ourselves, our beliefs, our fears or societal pressures. To some extent, I deeply dislike many journey narratives due to that simplistic framing. Travel could be extractive and damaging to native communities, and we, as travellers, can simply replicate our biases and worst behaviours in a brand new place. Yet, I do assume journey can permit us to reframe how we view ourselves.
School classes that nearly omitted enslavement and its brutal, inhumane underpinnings completely couldn’t stand the check of touring the Sea Islands and studying about communities the place some households are nonetheless dwelling on the identical land that their foreparents lived and laboured on as enslaved individuals.
Imagery of manicured plantations, each the figurative one I discovered about at school and the very actual one we handed on our tour in South Carolina, withered subsequent to a big hand-painted picket signal whose black block letters shone on a white background: “Sacred burial site of our African ancestors”. It marks the grave web site of an estimated 300 enslaved individuals who had as soon as toiled on the grounds of the imposing, white-pillared plantation throughout the street.
As we toured Helena Island after which Pin Point Heritage Museum outdoors of Savannah, we discovered about Gullah Geechee communities alongside the coast, based by previously enslaved individuals who used no matter leverage they might entry after enslavement to buy a property. Often solely in a position to buy land in areas as soon as thought-about undesirable, those self same communities now face pressures that threaten their tradition and land rights. Developers, rising taxes, eminent area and different forces now appear to squeeze them from all sides.
What if this was the historical past taught in faculties? One through which enslaved peoples, who introduced immense expertise and experience to the US, helped construct its financial system and establishments by horrific and inhumane circumstances after which fashioned an integral a part of the nationwide tradition. How would that be reconciled with the present-day actuality that Black Americans proceed to face widespread and systemic discrimination, assaults on our cultural practices and land, and debates in regards to the suitability of our historical past for lecture rooms? What would that say about our progress as a nation? How would possibly it shake the foundations of our establishments?
Those are the questions that some college boards, mother and father and legislators don’t need college students asking. They’re questions that don’t have simple solutions, whether or not they’re requested in a classroom or out travelling. They’re questions that seemingly result in solely extra questions. But that doesn’t imply they’re not price asking.
Anela travelled as a visitor of Intrepid to get a style of our Charleston to Savannah: Exploring Gullah Geechee Culture journey. Follow her on Instagram at @feedthemalik.