Gullah storyteller, educator brings Black history home to Okatie students
On the slick gym floor of Okatie’s John Paul II Catholic School, masked and separated by a few feet, several hundred students listened in awe to the woman sitting in front of them. She wore a bright yellow headdress, crimson scarf and checkered dress, in sharp contrast to the muted blue sea of uniforms.
“Can you imagine,” Anita Singleton-Prather began, “where you’re sitting in your seats having to lay on this floor — and this is a nice floor — but can you imagine having to lay on this floor five to eight weeks in the belly of a slave ship? Eighteen inches, if we were to take a yard stick, from your butt to the floor … that’s all the space you had.”
Slave traders stole great African kings and queens, she explained. Mathematicians. Philosophers. Explorers.
“They didn’t come get us from Africa because we didn’t know anything,” Singleton-Prather said. “They came and got us because of our expertise, especially in rice cultivation.”
Singleton-Prather — a Gullah storyteller, playwright, actress and scholar — grew up in Beaufort, where she has been recounting the stories of the Lowcountry culture for decades. This includes appearances at local schools, where the former public school educator explains with cutting detail the trauma enslaved laborers faced at sea and on plantations, including those in the area.
“I want you to know how horrible the Middle Passage voyage was,” Singleton-Prather said during a Black History Month presentation on Thursday. “Bones are being broken. Women are giving birth to their babies, and babies are being tossed across the bow to sharks because ain’t nobody got no time to take care of no baby on no slave ship. Even when they took us up on deck to be exercised, some of us opted to take our own lives and to jump and leap into shark-infested waters.”
The students listened, not a cell phone in sight. When she danced, they danced. When she sang, they sang. When she fell silent, they fell silent.
Gullah history, Beaufort history
Despite the Gullah’s significant cultural footprint on the Lowcountry and the nation, many still do not know the community’s history — how enslaved laborers were shipped from West Africa to coastal South Carolina and Georgia to work in the Sea Islands’ rice fields; how in their isolation they developed their own creole culture and language, a blend of their various African heritages; how they fought for the Union in the Civil War and were the first to gain freedom from slavery in the South; and how they amassed vast swaths of land for farming, fishing and living.
At John Paul II, teachers discuss Gullah history in the 8th and 11th grade and take students on field trips to local Civil War and Reconstruction sites, including the Penn Center.
Gullah culture “is so important to the Lowcountry, and sometimes our students don’t necessarily understand the heritage here, what they have contributed,” Principal John McCarthy said.
Community leaders say the Gullah’s present demands a reckoning as well. Many families are close to losing their historic land to tax delinquency without a clear title, and many of the Gullah elders, who have preserved the region’s cultural traditions for decades, are dying, without the guarantee that their stories and traditions will pass on to future generations.
This is where storytellers like Anita Singleton-Prather come in, sharing Gullah tales with wide audiences in person and online. She said she was taught from a young age to embrace her culture, at a time when many Black families were taught to hide it. Her parents were involved in the Civil Rights Movement, her mother a teacher and her father a civil service worker.
“Even when I went to D.C. for college, and people would leave Beaufort for Philadelphia, New York, Washington, everybody would try to get rid of their accent,” she said. “I was determined to keep mine.”
After graduating from Howard University, Singleton-Prather became a teacher in Beaufort County, starting at the nursery station at the Marine Corps Air Station before going to the career education center, where she taught remedial reading. She also taught at Robert Smalls International Academy and several elementary and middle schools north of the Broad River.
“When I got out of teaching, it wasn’t because I was frustrated,” she noted. “I had started storytelling, writing plays that showcased Gullah culture. I was on the road, and it wasn’t fair to my students. I still get to teach, but I don’t have to do lunch duty.”
Her lessons — about standing up against hate and evil; about the brilliance and perseverance of African American leaders long ago and in the present; and about loving God, yourself and each other — appear to be catching on.
High school senior John Hughes said that last lesson stuck the most with him.
“Love is who we are,” Hughes said. “Love is the foundation for what our school is, what our community is … I love love. I think it’s just wonderful. I think it’s the best thing you can have in life, ever.”
This story was originally published February 15, 2021 at 4:25 AM.
