From The Lowcountry to The Ivy Leagues! This Gullah Connections story shares how the Gullah language is breaking barriers in higher education and the man behind
that was amazing. and thank you for being here for the gullah impaired. i appreciate that. [ laughter ] i loved hearing the gullah language. but before we go, let s talk about that song, you know the one it is called kum ba ya, but few people know the history of it, it came out of the gull gullah geechee culture. everybody knows kum ba ya. but it s come by here. it goes a little bit like this. miss marcia, if you will? kum ba ya my lord, kum ba ya kum ba ya my lord, kum ba ya o lord kum ba ya this was made on the plantation. we didn t bring this from africa. we put it together.
keep not only much of their west african traditions,s they were able to invent their own. they were able to develop their own music, art, food, and most importantly, language. a language which was a mix of english, west african languages and some good old down home southern drawal. we re happy you came to visit we people. while it s hard to pin down the population, it is estimated 200,000 to 500,000 people that identify as gulla. but today this whole unique american culture is in danger of disappearing for good, opposite of what helped make it disappear in the first place. renaming it and remaking the landscape. i wonder what the gulla word for gentrification is. which is why the saint helen day is so important.
i m just looking at the fancy table clothes. [ laughter ] this is the south. that s what you need. oh, yeah. you always have to have newspaper on the table. won t taste right without newspaper. not going to taste right. you want that news print after taste. one of the things about this that is so interesting to me is that people think that black people are monolith in america, that black people are the same no matter where you go. but this part of the country for black people, black people s life and culture here is so different from the rest. are you hopeful for the survival of the gullah culture? we ve been surviving for a long, long time so yeah, absolutely. so no matter what happens, as we do, we ll survive it. uh-huh. absolutely. our language lasted this long, that language survived all these