GullahCoastal2012

Historian Joseph Opala knew he had made a remarkable discovery. It was 2004, fifteen years after he had helped to organize the first Gullah Homecoming based on links he had found between Gullah people in the United States and their ancestors in Sierra Leone. But now, Opala could trace an unbroken trail of documents for an African American family beginning with Priscilla, a 10-year-old girl brought to America from Sierra Leone 250 years ago, and ending with her direct descendant, a Charleston resident named Thomalind Martin Polite.

“Priscilla’s Homecoming,” the journey Polite subsequently led to Sierra Leone, is where writer Wilbur Cross begins Gullah Culture in America. Now available in paperback, Gullah Culturepresents an extensive record of the fascinating, yet too often overlooked, enclaves of African American descendants of slaves in South Carolina and Georgia. Though these

The Sea Islands

communities existed long before the Revolution, they remained largely hidden until the 1860s, when missionaries from Philadelphia founded Penn School to help freed slaves learn to read and write. Cross describes in great detail how, due to this long-term isolation, the Gullah were able to preserve the ancient traditions of their African ancestors.

Having lived on Hilton Head Island for a number of years, Cross has had the opportunity to learn first-hand about his Gullah neighbors. His deep respect for their culture and traditions is evident, and he incorporates his many interviews with members of the Gullah community into his text, frequently opting to let them tell the story of their people in their own words.

Originally published by Praeger in 2007, Gullah Culture in America provides not only a detailed history of the Gullah, but also a context for understanding what it means to “grow up Gullah.” In twelve colorful, engaging chapters, Cross introduces readers to all aspects of Gullah culture, including language, religion, food, music, and dance. He also provides insight into issues facing the more than 300,000 members of Gullah communities today, including the double-edged effects of modernization and assimilation, and the difficulties and triumphs of preserving the culture in the present day.

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Wilbur Cross is the author or co-author of more than 50 books on a wide range of subjects. He received a degree from Yale University, and after overseas military service, started his career as a copywriter in a New York City advertising firm. He was an editor at Time Inc. for ten years, and is a member of the Authors Guild and Time/Life Alumni Society. He lives on Hilton Head Island, SC.

John F. Blair, Publisher, has been publishing books on the southeastern United States since 1954. Based in Winston-Salem, N.C., this independent, family-owned company specializes in history, travel, folklore, biography, and fiction. Learn more at www.blairpub.com.

Gullah Culture in America
By Wilbur Cross
Foreword by Emory Shaw Campbell

John F. Blair, Publisher
978-0-89587-573-0
$16.95 paperback
6 x 9
288 pages
February 2012
Cultural Heritage, Educational, Historical

Gullah Culture in America begins with the journeys of 15 Gullah speakers who went to Sierra Leone and other parts of West Africa in 1989, 1998, and 2005 to trace their origins and history. Their stories frame this fascinating look at the extraordinary history of the Gullah culture.

The existence of the Gullahs went almost unnoticed until the 1860s, when missionaries from Philadelphia made their way to St. Helena Island, South Carolina, to establish the Penn School to help freed slaves learn to read and write. There, they discovered hidden pockets of a bygone African culture with its own language, traditions, medicine, weaving, and art.

Today, more than 300,000 Gullah people live in the remote areas of the sea islands of St. Helena, Edisto, Coosay, Ossabaw, Sapelo, Daufuski, and Cumberland, their way of life endangered by overdevelopment in an increasingly popular tourist destination. Having evolved from the original Penn School, the Penn Center, based on St. Helena Island, works to preserve and document the Gullah and Geeche cultures.

Author Wilbur Cross originally set out to make the excellent work of the Penn Center known and to introduce the Gullah culture to people in America. He became entranced with the Gullah way of life and ended up with 12 chapters that explore the various facets of Gullah culture. Gullah Culture in America not only explores the history of Gullah but also shows readers what it’s like to grow up and live in this unique American community.

The “Thanksgiving Day Scripture” editorial in the Times  by Lincoln Caplan, about my grandfather, Wilbur Cross Lucius Cross,  was of course  most interesting to me as the namesake of the subject and an author whose greatest desire has always been to emulate  his ability to express ideas so clearly and succinctly, both in speaking and in writing.  But the sad fact is that we who are known as writers and editors today  are ruled more by technology and the ability to enlist machines in our calling than on plain old-fashioned  penmanship which requires time and thought, word by word, and sentence by sentence.

I was fortunate to have spent many hours with him in his study, not only going over various works I was writing, but discussing his own work  as editor of  The Yale Review and the biographies with which he himself was authoring. Looking back, I well recall how astonished I was at the way he turned out page after page in the old-fashioned way: dipping a quill-type pen in an inkwell without ever spilling a drop, and neatly onto each succeeding page. It was, to me at least, astonishing how he could pre-determine exactly what he was going to write–including punctuation marks and spellings–without crossing marks and rewrites, page after page. To my knowledge he never even used a fountain pen in all of his writings, which included more than a dozen lengthy biographies and other historical books, not to mention scores of articles and essays. He was horrified at the new “backward” approach to writing—spew everything out onto a page  then  cut, paste, and edit it, if possible, and rethink what you really wanted to say. I daresay that his most notable proclamations were almost exactly what he wrote the first time around, and in no way a series of writes and rewrites. (I wish I could say the same for this letter).

- Wilbur Lucius Cross, III.  

Thanksgiving Scripture

In 1936, with the Great Depression persisting, the governor of Connecticut issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation so inspiring that people in the state learned it by heart as if it were scripture. It was common then to memorize stirring speeches and other texts, but not public decrees. The proclamation’s message and 2010’s turmoil make this a very good year to re-read the document.

The governor was Wilbur Cross, and he wrote the proclamation himself. He was an esteemed Shakespeare scholar and had just retired from Yale after an impressive career as an English professor and luminary. At the age of 68 in 1930, by a tiny margin, he won an encore career in politics. His appeal as governor shows what we are missing today.

In his inaugural address, he spoke soberly about the drastic state of the state, calling for it to open its armories to the homeless. As a Democrat hemmed in by a Republican-dominated Legislature, Cross proved an adept leader. His most powerful tool was his rhetoric.

His first annual Thanksgiving Proclamation, in 1931, has been celebrated for conveying insights about worship, friendship, the beauty of nature, and gratitude for blessings received, all in one sentence.

By 1938, at the end of four two-year terms and a few weeks after he had been defeated for a fifth, his final proclamation gave thanks for “the increase of the season nearing now its close.”

The 1936 offering stands apart. Its lightness came partly from what it left out. There is no mention of the state’s disastrous floods that year, its labor strife or its citizens’ struggles to make ends meet. Everyone knew how bad things were. Lifting his gaze to the stars, the governor helped others rediscover their hopes and dreams.

“Time out of mind,” he began, “at this turn of the seasons when the hardy oak leaves rustle in the wind and the frost gives a tang to the air and the dusk falls early and the friendly evenings lengthen under the heel of Orion, it has seemed good to our people to join together in praising the Creator and Preserver, who has brought us by a way that we did not know to the end of another year.”

Where did this spirit come from? In his autobiography “Connecticut Yankee,” Cross explained. He recounted his adventures with an improbably wide range of people, including Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. He translated the Gettysburg Address into Latin. The most instructive section is about his family and Connecticut childhood.

In the village of Gurleyville, near Hartford, his father farmed and ran a grist mill. The young Cross learned to communicate with his almost-deaf mother by silently mouthing each word.

He learned to read at a little schoolhouse where his parents had gone as well. As a boy born in 1862, he heard stories about America’s founding from a 90-something innkeeper born in 1778 — reading Governor Cross today, we are directly connected to the 18th century.

By the time he was 11, he was regularly left to manage his older brother’s general store. It was a haven for Civil War veterans who had fought for the Union at Shiloh and Antietam. Standing guard, they said, they had fraternized with the enemy, “swapping matches for tobacco, and smoking together, and hoping that the war would soon end.”

He grew from a boy proprietor of chickens, making good money selling eggs, to the promising winner of his high school’s declamation prize, and then to a citizen of Yale and beyond.

He was 80 when he finished the autobiography. He confessed that he had always believed in destiny, tracing his to his village roots and the community that tended them. His destiny led him to write his treasured proclamation.

In a period more trying than our own, Cross did for Connecticut what no leader seems able to do for America today. He buoyed hearts with reassuring words about shared blessings — “the yield of the soil that has fed us and the richer yield from labor of every kind that has sustained our lives.”

Proclamation

Time out of mind at this turn of the seasons when the hardy oak leaves rustle in the wind and the frost gives a tang to the air and the dusk falls early and the friendly evenings lengthen under the heel of Orion, it has seemed good to our people to join together in praising the Creator and Preserver, who has brought us by a way that we did not know to the end of another year. In observance of this custom, I appoint Thursday, the twenty-sixth of November, as a day of  Public Thanksgiving for the blessings that have been our common lot and have placed our beloved State with the favored regions of earth — for all the creature comforts: the yield of the soil that has fed us and the richer yield from labor of every kind that has sustained our lives — and for all those things, as dear as breath to the body, that quicken man’s faith in his manhood, that nourish and strengthen his spirit to do the great work still before him: for the brotherly word and act; for honor held above price; for steadfast courage and zeal in the long, long search after truth; for liberty and for justice freely granted by each to his fellow and so as freely enjoyed; and for the crowning glory and mercy of peace upon our land; — that we may humbly take heart of these blessings as we gather once again with solemn and festive rites to keep our Harvest Home.

Given under my hand and seal of the State at the Capitol, in Hartford, this twelfth day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and thirty six and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and sixty-first.

Wilbur L. Cross

By His Excellency’s Command:
C. John Satti Secretary

Filled with political intrigue, heroics, and cruel twists of fate, “Disaster at the Pole” is the fascinating and true account of one of the greatest artic expedition disasters and international rescue missions.

In the tradition of the powerful stories of explorers Shackleton, Scott, and Amundsen, here is one of the most bizarre and tragic tales of polar adventure.

Against the backdrop of Mussolini’s rising power, one of Italy’s premier aeronautical engineers, Umberto Nobile, gained acclaim by crossing the North Pole in a dirigible. Buoyed by this success, Nobile decided in 1928 to raise the ante and take his newly designed airship to the North Pole, land it, and then return to base. But what started in glory turned to disaster when the airship crashed some three hundred miles from civilization.

Nobile in Airship Italia

With more than thirty years of research and interviews with surviving participants, Wilbur Cross presents this terrifying tale of tragedy and survival. Here is the story of the airship’s survivors, who were stranded on a disintegrating ice floe — and of a determined international team of rescuers, including the famous Amundsen, whose desperate search for the missing Italians led to their own disaster. And it’s the story of the controversy surrounding the rescue of Nobile while much of his crew perished in the icy wastelands of the Arctic.

General Umberto Nobile

Umberto Nobile, Artic explorer and Italian aeronautical engineer, known as a developer and promoter of semi-rigid airships (Zeppelins) during the Golden Age of Aviation between World War I and II. He designed and piloted the Airship Norge, the first aircraft to reach the North Pole and to fly across the polar ice cap from Europe to America. Nobile’s second polar mission in the Airship Italia ended in a deadly crash and an international rescue.

Reader Review:

In the early years of the twentieth century, there were several explorers that journeyed to the North Pole. They went to vast desolate regions of terrible cold, to places of the earth that no man had gone to before. One of those explorers was Umberto Nobile of Italy. Nobile is not very well known today, but he was a man of great honor and courage. This book tells his personal story, and the story of his final polar expedition in 1928. Nobile chose a unique method for exploring the Pole: he used a lighter than air airship named the Italia. The Italia was similar in general design to the famous Hindenberg, but it was smaller and more flexible in flight. 

The Red Tent, 1971

Nobile meticulously planned his exploration, but despite those preparations disaster struck and the Italia crashed onto the polar ice. The survivors then had to struggle with great endurance through desperate conditions. This is ultimately a book about courage, both from the crew of the Italia and those that tried to save them in one of the largest rescue efforts ever undertaken. Nobile had to also endure much unjust criticism and political pressure from the Fascist Government of Mussolini. His story shows how hard it can be to extend the frontiers of science; and the tremendous heart that is required to reach into the unknown.

When Andrew Jackson, newly elected as President of the United States, moved on horseback to Washington and settlement in the White House, it was with an immense sense of loneliness, following the death of his beloved wife, Rachel. But the situation changed for the better when he invited young people who themselves were facing loneliness or a sense of failure in life, to join him there and take up activities that would revive their spirits and offer meaningful jobs and social assignments. This delightful novel is based on historical fact and offers a unique glimpse into the character and life of President Andrew Jackson.

Ageless are those who still suppose  

The rain brings petals to the rose,  

Who tolerate the winter’s fling  

Knowing it will soon be spring;  

Who see in dreams some lesson learned  

And not dark signs of passion spurned.  

What prompted them to be so clever?  

They are the Young in Heart forever.  

                         – Annie-Belle Donelson  

Excerpt: Chapter 1  

I was impetuously in love with Andrew Jackson.  

The year was 1789. He was 22. I was 16. He was like no other man in the territory of Tennessee. Or perhaps in the entire republic, from the shores of the Atlantic to the sinuous banks of the Mississippi.  

He was a shagbark type of a man, not a Tennessean by birth, but a maverick from the Carolinas. No one had ever presumed to earmark him as handsome. Indeed, his features were so etched by the whiplash of frontier life that he had more lineaments in his profile than two or three of his contemporaries put together.  

He was born to be a general, yet the military was too confining for his skills; bred to be a philosopher, yet with more energy than was traditional in the role; structured to be a pioneer, yet more polished than rough-sawn; schooled to be a lawyer, yet more accomplished dealing with broad patterns than with the details of warp and woof.  

Excerpt: Chapter 2  

 “Why in Heaven’s name,” said my mother one day with uncharacteristic exasperation “would that young man, Andrew Jackson, risk his career not to mention his reputation and probably brilliant future by going after Rachel?”  

“He is contorting himself into the most unlucky, contradictory love affair, fraught with all kinds of legal, moral, and emotional complications.”  

Statue in Jackson Square, New Orleans

Excerpt: Chapter 4

Slander was a fever that was to flare up periodically throughout the Jackson’s entire married life. It was, in fact, to contribute to the unholy tragedy that darkened Rachel’s last illness and death.  

Excerpt: Chapter 6  

“Bleed her, bleed her!”  he pleaded with Dr. Hogg.  

The operation was performed by this good man as deftly as on the previous occasion.  Barely two drops fl owed to discolor the gauze pressed against the incision. Her face was as white as the sheet on which she lay. Her beautiful dark eyes were open, staring at the ceiling as though she were a Greek statue. Dr. Hogg gently closed them with his fingers and bowed his head.  

She was buried in the garden, 150 paces from the East door of the Hermitage.  

Inuguration 1829

Excerpt: Chapter 13

As lovers have been doing for centuries, Becky Hays and Truxton Blair forgot their quarrels and fell into each other’s arms again with, if possible, increased ardor and rapture. Early that fall they were married in a modest ceremony in the East Room of the White House, attended only by relatives and friends, as well as the rest of the Young in Heart.  

Andrew gave the bride away.  He looked taller, younger, and livelier than he had since the day he was inaugurated!  

I was still in love with Andrew Jackson. I guessed I always would be.

We have several book signings lined up, including one at The Seabrook on February 24, 4-5pm. The Seabrook is located mid-island at 300 Woodhaven Drive, off of Pope Avenue (past Sea Pines Circle, heading towards the beach).