Cornel West speech marks inauguration of Gullah-focused CCU institute

In a packed auditorium at Coastal Carolina University, Cornel West, Ph.D., spoke Friday night to give the keynote address at the inaugural ceremony for the Charles Joyner Institute of Gullah and African Diaspora Studies.

The Gullah culture traces its ancestry to people of West African cultures who were brought to the South Carolina coast to grow and cultivate rice, said the institute’s coordinator, Veronica Davis Gerald.

The Gullah culture’s history goes back to the early 1700s, said Gerald, and the people have had an impact on the region’s culture, including music and food.

“Everything you eat has come through Gullah hands,” she said. “Up until the 70s, we were the main cooks in Myrtle Beach.”

Gerald said the institute will be a place of learning.

“Eventually you’ll be able to major in Gullah and African diaspora studies,” she said. “We already have a minor. Students get the chance to actually participate in the learning, going out into the community, interviewing people, finding that 110-year-old woman on the island, sitting with her and learning how she does things, healing medicines and that kind of thing.”

Right now, the institute is housed in a small room filled with books and boxes. Gerald said she’s waiting for some construction on campus to be finished before the institute moves into a bigger room.

“My biggest vision is for scholars to come down here, house themselves at Coastal, and go out into the community and learn,” she said. “Also you have a natural population (of Gullah people) right here.”

Gerald said she hopes the institute is a “student-driven” environment.

“It would be on-the-job training where they would actually learn how to interview, how to enter into a culture that’s not their own,” she said. “Charles Joyner for instance, who just passed, he had a unique ability to go into a community that wasn’t his, and bring quality information back. And we want to pass that down. We want to show them how to interpret without bias, understand without bias and rewrite the canon.”

West dedicated his address to the late author and CCU history professor before speaking about love, race, education and the Gullah people.

“Look at Robert Smalls, coming out of that Gullah culture,” he said. “The father of the first compulsory education system in the whole country when he went to the state capital to say, ‘You know what? Education, especially humanistic education, ought to be available to everybody. Because low and behold you’re going to end up overlooking magnificent potential and possibility if you don’t allow education to be available to everybody.’ Thank God for the Gullah shaping of Robert Smalls.”

West also spoke of the virtues of truth, justice and courage.

“But above all virtues is the virtue of love,” he said. “I think of the Gullah people. The rich African cultures of the west coast crossed the Atlantic, with those myriads of African bodies still down at the bottom of the ocean today, making their way to the new world. How will we come up with ways of forging integrity, honesty, decency and courage in such a way that we both love ourselves and our babies and our children, but also provide gifts to the world? For me, there is no doubt in my mind that as a people, the black people in the new world, one of the most hated people in all of modern times, we’ve taught the world so much about how to love.”

This story was originally published September 17, 2016 at 3:09 PM with the headline "Cornel West speech marks inauguration of Gullah-focused CCU institute."