How CNN featured Beaufort County and the SC Lowcountry — and when you can watch
A nationwide audience will soon learn about an aspect of Beaufort County's story still not fully told.
"United Shades of America," a CNN show exploring different cultures throughout the country, took on the Gullah culture of Beaufort County and the Sea Islands during filming last year.
Host and comedian W. Kamau Bell visited St. Helena Island during Penn Center's Heritage Days, a celebration of Gullah Geechee history and culture. He visited St. Helena's Coffin Point praise house, talked to faces familiar to many in Beaufort and employed humor to confront the realities of what enslaved people faced in the Lowcountry.
The episode will air at 10 p.m. May 13. The cable news spotlight comes as federal and local officials continue to develop northern Beaufort County's national monument to the Reconstruction Era, which will tell the story and mark the sites where black people first taught themselves and owned and farmed their own land.
Beaufort resident Anita Prather-Singleton, who is featured prominently in the CNN episode, noted that the show will air ahead of the city's Gullah Festival in late May.
"So many things being connected on this moment in time," said Prather-Singleton, who travels the country as her Gullah entertainer and educator persona, Aunt Pearlie Sue. "I know it's the right time to highlight all of this history. We're blessed in Beaufort County to be part of — I'm not talking about just black folks, but Beaufort County as a whole — all the exciting things happening. With all the anger and the stuff happening across the nation, Beaufort seems to be a place that's kind of isolated from that kind of stuff."
At Heritage Days, Bell talks to a group of men about what makes Gullah culture different from black culture in other parts of the country. He probes the difficulty faced by families trying to hold onto heirs' property — land owned my families and passed down generations — in the face of increased development and rising property taxes.
And he gets a crash course in the food, music and traditions that make the Sea Islands unique.
"Thank you for being here for the Gullah-impaired," Bell jokes after a member of the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters translates a demonstration of Gullah language.
During the episode, Bell visits with Michael Boulware Moore, great-great-grandson of Beaufort hero Robert Smalls and head of the planned International African American Museum in Charleston.
Moore tells Bell about the history of the museum site where many African Americans can trace their family's start in the U.S. and told him Smalls' story of enslavement to U.S. Congressman.
The date of the episode, May 13, marks the anniversary of the day Smalls stole a Confederate ship and sailed it out of Charleston Harbor in 1862.
"Where's that superhero movie?" Bell said.
This story was originally published April 18, 2018 at 3:29 PM with the headline "How CNN featured Beaufort County and the SC Lowcountry — and when you can watch."