!

The Lowcountry The Lowcountry is a geographic and cultural region along South Carolina's coast. The region includes the South Carolina Sea Islands. Once known for its agricultural wealth, the Lowcountry today is known for historic cities and communities, natural beauty, and unique cultural heritage. There are several variations on the geographic extent of the Lowcountry area. The most commonly accepted definition includes the counties of Beaufort, Colleton, Hampton, and Jasper. This area is mostly near or at sea level; thus, the term "low country".

South Carolina's Lowcountry holds a major place of importance in African-American history for many reasons, but perhaps most importantly as a port of entry for people of African descent. According to several historians, anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of the Africans who were brought to America during the slave trade entered through ports in the Lowcountry. This has given the Lowcountry the designation among some as the "Ellis Island for African Americans," although some dispute this term, as the Ellis Island immigrants arrived voluntarily as opposed to the Africans who were captured in the Atlantic slave trade.

At least three names of the many enslaved Africans who entered through the Lowcountry are known today. One was Denmark Vesey, who was brought from St. Thomas after he was purchased by Capt. Joseph Vesey in the late 18th century. Denmark Vesey is best remembered as the planner of the unsuccessful Charleston Slave Rebellion of 1822, which led to the establishment of a military garrison to contain future slave rebellions. This garrison later became a military college known as The Citadel. Omar Ibn Said, a Senegalese Muslim captured into slavery, was also noted to have arrived in Charleston in 1807. Ajar, who was also captured from West Africa, was sold in Charleston in 1815. Ajar's son Tony, who was purchased by a man named Allen Little, was the great-grandfather of Malcolm Little, who is better known today as the African-American freedom fighter Malcolm X.

Shrimp & Grits To a Southerner, eating grits is practically a religion, and breakfast without grits is unthinkable. A true grit lover would not consider instant or quick-cooking grits; only long-cooking stone-ground grits are worth eating. Outside of the southern states, the reaction to grits is mixed. Grits are served as a side dish for breakfast or dinner and are traditionally eaten with butter and milk. three-quarters of the grits sold in the United States are from a belt of coastal states stretching from Louisiana to the Carolinas, known as the "Grits Belt."

When the colonists came ashore in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, the Indians offered them bowls of this boiled corn substance. The Indians called it "rockahomine," which was later shortened to "hominy" by the colonists. Corn was a year-round staple and each tribe called it by a different name. The Indians taught the colonists how to thresh the hulls from dried yellow corn.

In the Lowcountry of South Carolina and particularly Charleston, shrimp and grits has been considered a basic breakfast for coastal fishermen and families for decades during the shrimp season (May through December). Simply called 'breakfast shrimp," the dish consisted of a pot of grits with shrimp cooked in a little bacon grease or butter. During the past decade, this dish has been dressed up and taken out on the town to the fanciest restaurants. Not just for breakfast anymore, it is also served for brunch, lunch, and dinner.

For generations, shrimp and grits have been everyday food for people who live in the vicinity of Charleston, South Carolina. Shrimp and grits is a typical breakfast for many of the Charleston area fishermen during the shrimping season, which generally runs from May to December. Grits, often served as a side dish for breakfast or dinner, can also serve as a main course, with milk and butter. This corn-based meal has become a renowned staple offering in diners and restaurants for the past few years. Restaurants compete with each other by varying the dish while preserving the basic flavor and charm of the shrimp and grits recipe. The popular cuisine of coarse grain provides a new twist in a variety of ways that it can be made. This has caused chefs to try to create new variations of the basic shrimp and grits recipe.

!

!In 1976, South Carolina declared grits the official state food: Whereas, throughout its history, the South has relished its grits, making them a symbol of its diet, its customs, its humor, and its hospitality, and whereas, every community in the State of south Carolina used to be the site of a grist mill and every local economy in the State used to be dependent on its product; and whereas, grits has been a part of the life of every South Carolinian of whatever race, background, gender, and income; and whereas, grits could very well play a vital role in the future of not only this State, but also the world, if as The Charleston News and Courier proclaimed in 1952: ‘An inexpensive, simple, and thoroughly digestible food, [grits] should be made popular throughout the world. given enough of it, the inhabitants of planet Earth would have nothing to fight about. A man full of [grits] is a man of peace.’ !

For many decades, shrimp and grits were a mainstay of the diet of the people who lived in and around Charleston, South Carolina.

The Geechee People !The Geechee people are descendants of enslaved Africans from various ethnic groups of west and central Africa. Brought to the New World and forced to work on the plantations of coastal South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida, Geechee people have retained many aspects of their African heritage due to the geographic barriers of the coastal landscape and the strong sense of place and family of Geechee community members. !Today, the cultural and linguistic umbrella of the Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor extends from Wilmington, NC to St. Augustine, FL. People who identify as Gullah or Geechee represent the many ways that Africans in the Americas have held on to and amalgamated the traditions of Africa with the cultures they encountered both during and after enslavement.

The Gullah Language !

"Mus tek cyear a de root fa heal de tree." - Gullah proverb [You need to take care of the root in order to heal the tree.]

!The origin of the Gullah language is as unique as the cadence and rhythm of its sound. Slaves from the Sea Islands of South Carolina and northern Georgia were brought to America largely from different communities on the Rice Coast of West Africa. Therefore many spoke similar but distinctive languages, and in order to communicate with each other and with their owners, they combined the similarities with the English they learned to form the unique Gullah language. This process of combining different languages is called “creolization." !For years, linguists referred to the Gullah, or Geechee, language as a dialect of standard English. But in the 1940s, as African-American linguist Lorenzo Turner researched African languages, it became apparent that Gullah did indeed have its roots in Africa. According to Turner, the most noted similarities between Gullah and the languages spoken in West Africa include the use of nouns, pronouns, verbs, and tense. Almost all Gullah nouns are singular, and no distinction is made between singular or plural verbs either. These characteristics are the same in many African languages. Also, Gullah and various African languages rarely account for when something actually happened - the present verb tense is also often used to refer to the past. !

Here are a few Gullah words with African origins: !A'min - Amen (Wolof)bid', bidi - small bird, small chicken (Kongo)buckra - white man (Ibidio)da (dada) - mother, nurse, or elder woman (Ewe)dash away - to get rid of a bad habitdiffer - a quarrele - pronoun for he, she, iteh - yes (Igbo)fanner - a large shallow basket made of wild grass and palmetto, used to thresh rice from its hull.hudu - to cause bad luck to someone (Via)nyam, nam - to eatnana - elderly woman, grandmother (Twi)shut mout' - secretive or withdrawntata - father (Kongo)tote - to pick up (Kongo)yam - sweet potato (Mende)

Charleston Lowcountry Cuisine

The Old Slave Mart, located on one of Charleston's few remaining cobblestone streets, is the only known extant building used as a

slave auction gallery in South Carolina.