Let Black Women Be Soft

Gullah Geechee: After the Civil War, former slaves across the South left the region to escape white terrorism. But along the Carolina coast, many remained. They claimed land from abandoned plantations, opened businesses during Reconstruction and, as Jim Crow laws took hold, increasingly isolated themselves in communities along the coastal corridor, especially on sea islands where their descendants settled for generations. They farmed collards, lettuce, tomatoes and butter peas; fished for oysters, shrimp and sea bass; and raised hogs and chickens. Their relative isolation from white society left intact much of the traditional culture that had developed during slavery and harks back to African and Caribbean roots.

Gullah communities built wooden one-room praise houses to worship with energetic singing and shouts. Many painted their shutters and porches a shade known as 'haint' blue to ward off angry dead spirits. The Gullah culture can be seen in the sweet-grass baskets some still weave on the sidewalks of Charleston or in the creativity and adaptability of Gullah soul food that incorporates the ingredients available to cooks during slavery — rice, seafood, sweet potatoes, grits, local vegetables and basic spices. More than anything else, Gullah people share a distinct dialect, a creole language that has similarities to some West African languages melded with English to create a quick-paced, easily flowing language.

“Yes, I am black! and radiant—

O city women watching me—

As black as Kedar's goathair tents

Or Solomon's fine tapestries.

Will you disrobe me with your stares?

The eyes of many morning suns

Have pierced my skin, and now I shine

Black as the light before the dawn.”

Song of Songs 1:5

“Witch-Wife

Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1892 - 1950

She is neither pink nor pale,

And she never will be all mine;

She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs; In the sun 'tis a woe to me!

And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can,

And her ways to my ways resign;

But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine”

🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️🧜🏾‍♀️

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