“The Ancestors Return: Three Gullah Homecomings to Sierra Leone” uncovers cultural link

Dr. Joseph Opala, American Lecturer and historian, will present The Ancestors Return: Three Gullah Homecomings to Sierra Leone on Thursday, Oct. 5 at 6 p.m. in Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library.

Co-sponsors of the program include the African Studies Program, African American Studies Department, the Department of History and University Libraries.

The Ancestors Return: Three Gullah Homecomings to Sierra Leone will document the Gullah connection thread that links the West African nation of Sierra Leone to the Gullah people of coastal South Carolina and Georgia, and traces preserved language, customs and traditions of the Gullah to Sierra Leoneans through the 18th century slave trade. Opala’s research highlights modern Gullah customs and traditions that can be traced back to Sierra Leone and the surrounding region, including their basket-making tradition, food preparation and a creole language that closely resembles Sierra Leone Krio.

In 1988, Opala’s research initiated a visit by Sierra Leone’s President Joseph Saidu Momoh to a Gullah community in South Carolina, and three subsequent historic “Gullah Homecomings” to Sierra Leone by Gullahs from South Carolina and Georgia have been powerful events for participants on both continents, breaking new ground historically. Additionally, Opala’s research has uncovered the longest text in an African language known to have been preserved by a black family in the U.S., and the first unbroken series of documents that links a South Carolina family to Sierra Leone – including slave ship records, slave sale records, and plantation records – connecting a black family of slavery origin to its ancestral home in West Africa.

Professor Opala taught African Studies at Sierra Leone’s Fourah Bay College from 1985 to 1991, James Madison University in Virginia from 1999 to 2010, and served as an advisor to Sierra Leone’s president on cultural policy and as Scholar-in-Residence at Penn Center, St. Helena Island, South Carolina. He was also a research fellow at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He has presented lectures at universities and museums throughout the U.S. and has curated exhibits on Bunce Island and the Sierra Leone-Gullah Connection at major museums, including the New-York Historical Society in 2006 and Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History in 2010.

Mr. Opala’s research has been covered by the New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press.  He has appeared on CBS “60 Minutes,” MSNBC’s “National Geographic Explorer,” NBC News, CNN, BBC World Service radio, Voice of America radio, and NPR’s “The World, “Fresh Air,” and “All Things Considered” programs.

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