As a staff member at the American Folklife Center, I spend much of my time working with our collections. Some of the most rewarding moments of my job come from discovering compelling recordings or uncovering unexpected gems in the archives. To share these experiences, I’ve launched a new series on the Folklife Today podcast. In each episode, I explore a collection of interest with scholars and community members. My hope is to encourage future use of these materials, amplify the voices of my guests, and highlight the rich holdings of the American Folklife Center.
The first episode in this new series is titled “Exploring 1950s Gullah Geechee Sonic Life with Dr. Eric Crawford.” It focuses on the Penn Community Services collection (AFC 1957/009), which includes recordings of music, preaching, and testimonies from the Gullah Geechee people of St. Helena Island, South Carolina, made in 1955 and 1956.
Listen to “Exploring 1950s Gullah Geechee Sonic Life with Dr. Eric Crawford” on Folklife Today
The collection was created by Courtney Siceloff, a Quaker and White Civil Rights activist, who served as director of Penn Community Services—a community center on St. Helena Island for the island’s Black population—from 1950 to 1969.[1] Siceloff recorded church services, community gatherings, and other musical events across St. Helena Island for this collection.
I invited Dr. Eric Crawford to be a guest on the episode. Dr. Crawford is the author of Gullah Spirituals: The Sound of Freedom and Protest in the South Carolina Sea Islands (University of South Carolina Press, 2021). At the time we recorded this podcast, Dr. Crawford was the Interim Chair of the Music Department at Claflin University. Dr. Crawford is also an accomplished musician, who regularly performs with Gullah Geechee community members. His deep knowledge and lived experiences make him an ideal guide for understanding these recordings.
The Penn Community Services collection is important for several reasons. First, the collection documents a house blessing—a community celebration marking the completion of a new home. These ceremonies, led by local religious leaders, usually included an opening scripture, prayer, song, remarks, a closing prayer, and a benediction. As Crawford notes in Gullah Spirituals, house blessings often featured songs that included housing-related themes, such as “I’m Working on a Building,” “I’m Gonna Build,” or “Come and Go With Me to My Father’s House” (Crawford 2021: 56-60). In the podcast (11:29 – 18:48), we hear community members singing “This Old House Gonna Fall” at a 1955 house blessing.
Second, the collection dispels the idea that Gullah Geechees are a monolithic community, by demonstrating a variety of Gullah Geechee musical practices in the mid-1950s. For example, the collection includes recordings from Community Sings—a monthly gathering at Penn Community Services where Gullah community members sang spirituals and other songs. Until 1948, Penn Community Services functioned as a school, called Penn School. Founded in 1862, as part of the Port Royal Experiment, Penn School was one of the first educational institutions for Blacks in the South. Most singers at Community Sings were graduates of Penn School and were thought to be more “formally” educated than others on St. Helena Island.[2] Participants in the Community Sing employed a style of musical practice that Courtney Siceloff identified, in a 1956 letter, as more “refined.” In the recordings, for example, the Community Sing participants do not employ hand clapping and they sing with well-defined parts. Furthermore, the Community Sings, according to Siceloff, were a space where Whites were not only welcomed, but for whom much of the program was intended in the mid-1950s. As Siceloff wrote in a 1956 letter, “although these Sings are in some way for the Negroes own interest, it is well recognized that much of their effort is directed to white people who are frequent visitors. An offering is taken that is divided between the public high school and a community activities council or community council.” Gullah people singing for White visitors would certainly have impacted the performance style during Community Sings.
In contrast, recordings from Nazareth Baptist Church and First African Church—two houses of worship that served more rural Island residents—reveal a more animated musical and worship style. White people were largely absent from these churches, allowing Black Islanders to make music in ways that they found valuable. Siceloff, in a 1956 letter, described these musical performances: “The singing obviously is of a different character than that of the Community Sing, the pronunciation is not so distinct, nor is there the polished effect resulting as in the community sing of performing for others. However, in my opinion, both are valuable, though the church singing is the more interesting.” In the podcast (7:04 to 9:19 and from 18:49 to 22:54), Dr. Crawford discusses this diversity of musical expression, using examples from Nazareth Baptist Church and Penn Community Services’ Community Sings.
Finally, this collection is important because it documents Gullah Geechee communities during the Civil Rights Movement. Penn Community Services was as one of the only places in the South where Whites and Blacks could meet and organize during the Civil Rights Movement (Burton 2014: 74-76). Dr. Martin Luther King visited Penn Center five times, and many believe that King wrote part of his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech there.
While the recordings in this collection do not address the Civil Rights Movement directly, several testimonies document Gullah people’s efforts to battle disenfranchisement—a core tenet of the Civil Rights Movement. For example, Deacon James “Garfield” Smalls offers an extended testimony about the importance of Gullah land:
I want to say, to the mother[s] and the father[s], have a desire. A desire for what? A desire for your child to do something great. Have a desire that your child may be able to hold the inheritance in which their father and mother leave for them. That’s this valuable land . . . that we’re traveling across daily. You can see across the island, everywhere you go, you can see some two buildings [being] put up. Mother[s] and father[s] . . . if you all don’t instruct these children to hold onto these inheritances . . . you know in past years, a number of years ago, people on this island been getting land for one dollar an acre. Now today, an acre of land costs a hundred dollars or more. Mother[s] and father[s], I say have a desire, teach your children to realize the blessing that God has given, to them, to the inheritance of their great-grandparents. Because as you can see widely, the island is drifting away, no matter about these homes, these homes don’t mean anything. Don’t mean nothing, if you all don’t realize how to take care of this land that the parents left. To be sure, the most of us ain’t gonna be able to buy none of them. Why? It’s too high. We [are] not thinking that much, we [are] not making that much preparation . . . wake up young men and young women. The time that you had already, you ain’t gon see that time anymore.
At the time of the recording, Smalls was in his mid-30s. He later became one of St. Helena Island’s most respected elders and singers. In 2018, he received the Jean Laney Harris Folk Heritage Award for his contributions to South Carolina’s traditional arts. He passed away in 2020 at the age of 100. In the podcast (22:55 – 27:38), Dr. Crawford reflects on Smalls’ legacy and the central role of land in Gullah Geechee culture.
The Penn Community Services collection is just one of more than twenty-two collections related to the history and culture of Gullah Geechee people at the American Folklife Center, spanning from 1926 to 2024. You can explore these collections at the American Folklife Center’s Research Guide on Gullah Geechee Collections or by visiting the American Folklife Center Reading Room.
Works Cited:
Burton, Orville Vernon. 2014. Penn Center: A History Preserved. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.
Cooper, Melissa L. 2016. Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Crawford, Eric Sean. 2013. “The Penn School’s Educational Curriculum: Its Effects on the St. Helena Songs.” Journal of African American Studies 17(3): 347–369.
Crawford, Eric Sean. 2021. Gullah Spirituals: The Sound of Freedom and Protest in the South Carolina Sea Islands. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
Manigault-Bryant, LeRhonda. 2014. Talking to the Dead: Religion, Music, and Lived Memory among Gullah/Geechee Women. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Siceloff, Courtney. Papers. Penn Community Services Collection (AFC 1957/009). American Folklife Center. Library of Congress. Washington, D.C.
Footnotes:
[1] Penn Community Services has had several name changes since its inception. From 1862 to 1901, the institution was called Penn School. In 1901, it became Penn Normal, Industrial, and Agricultural School reflected a change in its pedagogy. In 1948, the institution changed its name to Penn Community Services, Inc. as it transitioned its work from a school to a community center. In 1950, according to the organization’s website, the institution became Penn Center. While this collection was made in 1955 and 1956, much of the collection at the American Folklife Center still identifies the organization as Penn Community Services. Indeed, even the stationery used in 1955 and 1956 lists the organization as Penn Community Services. With more certainty, I can share that, today, the institution continues its work serving Black residents of St. Helena Island under the name “Penn Center.”
[2] The dichotomy between “formal” and “informal” education can be a fraught, and debatable, distinction. I use these terms here as they are the words used by Courtney Siceloff, in this letters about the collection and from his observations of local Black culture on St. Helena Island in the 1950s. These letters can be accessed in the Penn Community Services collection materials in the American Folklife Center Reading Room. For a more detailed analysis about Penn School’s educational mission and the musical activities of Penn School, see Crawford 2013.