Joseph Opala

Infobox Writer
name = Joseph Opala
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birth_date = birth date and age|1950|8|4
birth_place = Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States
death_date =
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occupation = Professor
nationality = USA
period =
genre = History of Sierra Leone, Gullah Culture, Public history
subject = African Diaspora
movement =
debut_works =
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website =
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Joseph Opala (born August 4, 1950) is the scholar who identified the "Gullah Connection," the historical link between the Gullah people in South Carolina and Georgia and the West African nation of Sierra Leone.

An American, Opala lived in Sierra Leone for 17 years, doing research on the Atlantic slave trade and working with that country's leaders to highlight Sierra Leone's links to African Americans. In 1988 he organized a visit by Sierra Leone's President Joseph Saidu Momoh to a Gullah community in South Carolina. He later organized three African American homecomings to Sierra Leone -- the “Gullah Homecoming” (1989), the “Moran Family Homecoming” (1997), and “Priscilla’s Homecoming” (2005). These events are chronicled in the documentary films "Family Across the Sea," "The Language You Cry In," and "Priscilla's Homecoming" (in production).

ierra Leone connections

Opala has uncovered some remarkably specific connections between the Gullah people and Sierra Leone. The Gullahs are African Americans who live in the Low Country region of coastal South Carolina and Georgia. In isolated rural communities on the coastal plain and the Sea Islands of those states they have preserved more of their African cultural heritage than any other black community in the United States.

In 1989, Opala worked with the Sierra Leone Government to bring a group of Gullah leaders to Sierra Leone led by Emory Campbell, a well known community organizer. The Gullahs came on a state visit and were hosted by the president and featured in all the country's media. The Sierra Leone government was responding to research Opala did on the 18th century slave trade links between Sierra Leone and South Carolina and Georgia. This first historic visit by Gullah people to Sierra Leone was called the "Gullah Homecoming."

In 1990, Opala and two other scholars -- ethnomusicologist Cynthia Schmidt and linguist Tazieff Koroma -- located a Gullah family in coastal Georgia that has preserved a song in the Mende language of Sierra Leone, passing it down from mother to daughter for over 200 years. The 5-line song -- an ancient Mende funeral hymn -- is probably the longest text in an African language known to have been preserved by a black family in the United States. Working on the African side, Opala and his colleagues also found a Mende woman living in a remote rural area of Sierra Leone who still knows a similar song today (with similar words, though a different melody). Their discoveries led to the "Moran Family Homecoming" in 1997.

Later, Opala brought to Sierra Leone a Gullah woman from South Carolina whose family can claim an unbroken 250-year document trail linking them to a 10-year-old girl taken from Sierra Leone to Charleston in 1756. This may be the only black family in the United States with a continuously documented history starting with the records of an enslaved ancestor in Africa. The family's document trail includes slave ship records, slave auction accounts, and plantation records. This discovery led to "Priscilla's Homecoming" in 2005.

Bunce Island research

Opala began his research in the 1970s with an investigation of Bunce Island, the British slave castle in Sierra Leone. He was the first scholar to recognize that Bunce Island has stronger links to North America than any other West African slave trading base. He showed that Bunce Island sent slave ships to Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia on a regular basis in the mid- and late 1700s when American rice planters in those colonies were eager to have the skills of enslaved Africans from Sierra Leone and other parts of the West African “Rice Coast.” Opala calls Bunce Island “the most important historic site in Africa for the United States.”Joseph Opala "Bunce Island: A British Slave Castle in Sierra Leone". ]

Opala has devoted decades to promoting popular awareness of Bunce Island's importance for African Americans. He took Colin Powell to Bunce Island in 1992, and after visiting the castle, Powell recorded the experience in emotional terms in his autobiography, "My American Journey". He said: “Iam an American...But today, I am something more..I am an African too...I feel my roots here in this continent."Colin Powell "My American Journey" 533–534. ]

Opala and computer artist Gary Chatelain are now working on a 3-D computer model of Bunce Island, showing in great detail how the castle appeared in the year 1805, two years before the slave trade ended there. African American TV actor Isaiah Washington recently donated $25,000 to the project. Opala is prominent in the campaign to preserve the ruins of Bunce Island, a project that will ultimately cost millions. His computer model will be used to explain the castle to visitors when the site is finally preserved. The computer model is also featured in a traveling exhibit on Bunce Island that Opala recently created. The exhibit is traveling to colleges and museums in the U.S. and Canada.

Two-Way connection

Opala has shown that the Gullah Connection is a "two-way" link. Not only were slaves taken from Sierra Leone to South Carolina and Georgia during the colonial period, but some free Gullah people also returned to Sierra Leone after American Independence. Opala says that about a quarter of the "Nova Scotian" settlers who helped establish Sierra Leone's capital city of Freetown in 1792 were Gullahs from South Carolina and Georgia. He has been quoted as saying that the Nova Scotians were "really African Americans."James Brooke "Birchtown Journal; For Nova Scotia Blacks, Veil Is Ripped From Past" "New York Times", Oct. 8, 1999. ] Some Gullahs also migrated to Sierra Leone in the early 1800s, including Edward Jones, a South Carolina man who became the first principal of Sierra Leone's Fourah Bay College.

This two-way connection, Opala says, means that "all" Sierra Leoneans -- both the indigenous people from the country's interior and some of the Krios, the descendants of freed slaves who live in Freetown, the capital city -- have family ties to the Gullahs in South Carolina and Georgia.

Popular interest

The homecomings Opala organized focused national attention on the Gullah Connection in Sierra Leone, and the people of that country responded with enthusiasm. When the first Gullah group made a pilgrimage to Bunce Island in 1989, hundreds came in boats and canoes to witness the historic occasion. Today, the “Gullah Connection” is an “evergreen” story in the Sierra Leone media -- a story of continuing popular interest. Most Sierra Leoneans are now aware of their historical links to the Gullahs, and the country's high school history textbook covers the Gullah Connection. There are now several civic groups in Sierra Leone dedicated to nurturing the country's family ties to the Gullahs.

The "Gullah homecomings" also generated a great deal of publicity in South Carolina and Georgia. The documentary films based on those events have been broadcast repeatedly on local TV and shown in schools and colleges. Many Gullahs have now visited Sierra Leone, and during Sierra Leone’s civil war Gullah civic leaders lobbied the U.S. Congress, asking for help for their “ancestral homeland.” Sierra Leonean immigrants in the U.S. have also taken an interest in the Gullah Connection, forming an organization called the “Sierra Leone-Gullah Heritage Association” to nurture the relationship in America. Sierra Leoneans and Gullahs now come together frequently at cultural festivals in the Low Country.

Professor Opala’s historical research and public history work have made a strong impact in both Sierra Leone and the United States.

Personal background

Opala's relationship to Sierra Leone began when he served in the U.S. Peace Corps from 1974 to 1977. He worked as an agriculture advisor with rice farmers in the rural areas, but later joined the staff of the Sierra Leone National Museum in Freetown. After his stint in the Peace Corps, he lectured at Sierra Leone's Fourah Bay College from 1985 to 1992, teaching in the Institute of African Studies. During his many years in the country Opala was also active in the pro-democracy movement. He was a co-founder of the Campaign for Good Governance, Sierra Leone's largest pro-democracy and human rights NGO. Originally from Oklahoma, he is of Polish descent. Opala now teaches history at James Madison University in Virginia.

ee also

*Gullah
*Sierra Leone
*Bunce Island
*Mende
*Joseph Saidu Momoh
*Campaign for Good Governance

References

External links

* [http://www.jmu.edu/honorsprog/opala.shtml Biographical information]

* [http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/ Sierra Leone-Gullah Connection]
* [http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-07/2006-07-05-voa56.cfm?CFID=241589529&CFTOKEN=44631509 Sierra Leone-Gullah Connection]

* [http://www.visitsierraleone.org/bunce-island.asp Bunce Island]
* [http://www.courant.com/news/local/northeast/hc-bunce_opala.artapr03,0,1009903.story Bunce Island]

* [http://etvstore.org/productlink.asp?pid=1530 "Family Across the Sea"]
* [http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0029 "Family Across the Sea"]

* [http://newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0053 "The Language You Cry In"]
* [http://www.terra.es/personal/inkoak/entlyci.htm "The Language You Cry In"]

* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4460964.stm "Priscilla's Homecoming"]
* [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0608_050608_slavegirl.html "Priscilla's Homecoming"]
* [http://www.yale.edu/glc/priscilla/ "Priscilla's Homecoming"]
* [http://www.africanaheritage.com/Priscillas_Homecoming.asp Priscilla's Homecoming and the USF Africana Heritage Project]