Bunce Island and the "Gullah Connection"
Charting the connections between a Black community in the American South and Sierra Leone
In 1990, scholars researching the connection between West Africa and the American South community met Mary Moran of Harris Neck, Georgia. Generations of women in her family had passed down a particular song, whose language Moran could not speak, understand, or even identify.
Mary Moran
It took the combined efforts of ethnomusicologist Cynthia Schmidt, anthropologist Joseph Opala, and linguist Tazieff Koromo to crack the mystery of the five-line song’s origins: a funeral hymn in the Mende language, primarily spoken in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Mary Moran
Fourth of July celebration on St. Helena Island, a major center of Gullah culture (1939) by Marion Post WolcottWorld Monuments Fund
Moran, who passed away in 2022 after celebrating her 100th birthday, was a member of the Gullah/Geechee community, an ethnic group descended from enslaved Africans who live mainly in an area stretching from Florida to North Carolina.
Beach at Bunce Island (2015) by Pierre ChrzanowskiWorld Monuments Fund
The Gullah/Geechee possess distinctive crafts, cuisine, music, and language. The origins of these traditions, as it happens, routes directly through Bunce Island, a tiny island in the estuary of the Sierra Leone River.
Interior of the main house on Bunce Island (2019)World Monuments Fund
Since the 1500s, Bunce Island had been used as a trading post from which European merchants—first the Portuguese and then the English—could traffic enslaved Africans across the Atlantic.
Rice culture of the Geechee near Savannah, Georgia (1867) by A. R. WaudWorld Monuments Fund
Because of Southern plantation owners’ intense demand for enslaved laborers with knowledge of rice cultivation, the British traders who ran Bunce Island made a heavy profit selling Africans from the “Rice Coast,” a region famous for rice agriculture.
Black workers on rice plantation in Cape Fear (1866) by Frank Leslie's Illustrated NewspaperWorld Monuments Fund
As a result, a high number of people from the same area of West Africa found themselves together on the other side of the ocean when they were taken ashore at Charleston.
Wilson Moran, Mary's son
Sweetgrass baskets, a distinctive Gullah/Geechee craft tradition (2013) by Don McCulloughWorld Monuments Fund
With pre-existing cultural bonds, the enslaved Africans who were taken to America via Bunce Island were better able to safeguard their heritage and traditions, even thousands of miles from home. Sweetgrass basketry is one such tradition with roots in West Africa.
Vera Manigault
Scholars have identified connections between the Gullah/Geechee musical tradition of ring shouts and West African rituals and musical styles.
McIntosh County Shouters
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Institutions like the King-Tisdell Cottage, Savannah's only Black historic home, preserve and disseminate knowledge about Gullah/Geechee culture.
The Gullah dialect was long disparaged as “substandard” English and its use discouraged. But its unique features have roots in the homelands of its speakers’ ancestors.
Carolyn Jabulile White
When the linguist Lorenzo Turner visited Gullah communities in the 1930s, his research was able to trace thousands of words to African origins.
Carolyn Jabulile White
The speech patterns of Sierra Leone’s Krio community in particular have much in common with Gullah. When Joseph Momoh, then-president of Sierra Leone, visited St. Helena Island, South Carolina, he addressed the Gullah audience in Krio.
Joseph S. Momoh
As understanding of Gullah culture’s affinities with West Africa has deepened, there have been a number of high-profile visits by Black Americans—including Mary Moran—tracing the path of their ancestors back across the Atlantic.
Mary Moran
Bunce is a key destination on these homecomings, which seek to undo the forced separation meted out at that place centuries before. “Bunce Island,” writes Joseph Opala, “is arguably the most important historic site in Africa for the United States.”
In recognition of Bunce’s significance, World Monuments Fund included the site on its Watch list first in 2012 and again in 2016. It also partnered with the Monuments and Relics Commission of Sierra Leone to create a museum and educational programming related to Bunce’s legacy.
Shrimp fleet belonging to a black-owned cooperative on Hilton Head Island (1973) by Paul ConklinWorld Monuments Fund
Through efforts like these, the site can become a symbol of cultural resilience and regeneration in the face of historic trauma for communities on both sides of the Atlantic.
Learn more about Bunce Island, Sierra Leone
Basu, Paul, and Michael Abu Sam. "Review of the Monuments and Relics Act and Development of Recommendations for New Heritage Legislation for Sierra Leone." (2016).
Corry, Joseph. Observations upon the Windward Coast of Africa: The Religion, Character, Customs &c., of the Natives. G. and W. Nicol, 1807.
DeCorse, Christopher R. "Sierra Leone in the Atlantic World: concepts, contours, and exchange." Atlantic Studies 12, no. 3 (2015): 296-316.
Ghee, Britney D. "White-Washed: The “Conservation” of the Physical and Metaphysical States of Ghanaian Slave Castle-Dungeons and Forts." (2011).
Opala, Joseph, Virginia Harrisonburg, and Christopher DeCorse. "Bunce Island: A British Slave Castle in Sierra Leone." Bunce Island Cultural Resource Assessment (2007).
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