A Feast of Reconciliation and Fellowship

Before guests arrive at McCrady's Restaurant, Chef Kevin Mitchell checks the arrangements in the Long Room.

Five years ago I attended an amazing event — and after a five-year-long reflection I can now write about it. It was that profound. Held in Charleston, SC, on April 19, 2015, it has become known as Nat Fuller’s Feast.

Guests at Nat Fuller's Feast get comfortable before the dinner program begins.

Original Dinner

It commemorated and celebrated the original dinner held by Fuller, a newly freed African-American chef, to mark the end of the American Civil War and of slavery. Charleston, the epicenter of secession, had surrendered to Union forces on February 18, 1865, and their occupation liberated the approximately 10,000 slaves who had remained there.

Chef B.J. Dennis brings out a tray of hors d'oeuvres at the reception.

To a feast of his making in his restaurant, Fuller invited prominent citizens, blacks and whites, as his guests. Historian David Shields identifies the significance of the occasion: “Here’s a man who realizes that because of the abolition of slavery ... there’s going to be a new ground of social relationships.”

Prof. David Shields (right) with a re-enactor of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment at the reception.

Abby Louisa Porcher, a grande dame of the Charleston planter society, described the feast this way: “Nat Fuller, a Negro caterer, provided munificently for a miscegenat dinner, at which blacks and whites sat on an equality and gave toasts and sang songs for Lincoln and Freedom.”

A table display at the reception with a portrait by artist Jonathan Green to communicate the spirit of Nat Fuller (although no pictures of Fuller have been found).

The 2015 event also recognized the significant role that free and enslaved African-Americans played in shaping Charleston's cuisine in the mid-nineteenth and until World War I. Before being emancipated, Fuller had been an enslaved cook, caterer, marketer of game, and restaurateur, and he was the foremost private chef in the antebellum city. As described by Shields, Fuller was “one citizen who sought to turn the hearts and minds of the public to the future, to teach Charlestonians the values requisite in the new post-bellum world.”

Advertisement in the Charleston Courier on June 12, 1855 by Nat Fuller, who saved money for his catering business by working as the city's chief marketer of game (courtesy of American Historical Newspapers).

Reconciliation Renewed

Shields chaired Nat Fuller’s Feast in an attempt to re-create the 1865 meal as part of the city’s Civil War sesquicentennial. Chef Kevin Mitchell of the Culinary Institute of Charleston served as host. Chef B.J. Dennis, a Gullah-Geechee culinary specialist; nationally noted chef Sean Brock (formerly of McCrady’s and Husk); and Mitchell prepared the food with the assistance of many others.

I enjoyed meeting Natalie Dupree, the Queen of Southern Cuisine, who is an esteemed chef, cooking show host and author of 14 cookbooks.

The evening began with a reception in The Charleston Renaissance Gallery, a fine arts gallery where Bachelor’s Retreat, Fuller’s restaurant renowned for its pastries and its roasted game and meats at 78 Church Street (now 103 Church Street), had been located. Hors d’oeuvres — brioche with foie gras mousse, strawberry jam and pickled spring onions; benne tart shells with lobster salad and caviar; warm rice bread with smoked tongue and chow chow; chicken and truffle pies — were as remarkable as the cocktails: brandy smash, mint julep, gin with bitters, persimmon beer, carbonated shrubs as well as Nat Fuller’s signature concoctions.

A tray of shells with lobster salad is served at the reception.

During the reception, re-enactors of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, an African-American regiment in the Civil War made famous in the movie Glory, sang songs of the era. This regiment had entered Charleston three days after the mayor had surrendered the city to Union troops. After the reception, we were escorted by the re-enactors to the Long Room of McCrady’s Restaurant for the feast. Food prepared as it was in Fuller’s time came out in waves. In the tradition of Fuller’s banquets, Russian-style service brought courses sequentially rather than all at once, and each waiter served small sections of two long dinner tables.

Re-enactors of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment escort the dinner guests from the reception to McCrady's Restaurant.

The Menu

The platters were overflowing:

• Potage: mock turtle soup and oyster soup with celery
• Relishes: mixed pickled vegetables, Bradford watermelon pickles, marinated olives, collard kraut 
• Poisson (fish): fried whiting, shrimp pie, poached bass, Worcestershire anchovy sauce, mushroom ketchup, walnut ketchup, butter caper sauce 
• Volaille (poultry): capon chasseur, aged duck with Seville oranges, partridge with truffle sauce
• Viande (meat): venison with currant demi, lamb chops with mint sauce, beef a la mode 
• Legumes: asparagus, roasted turnips, fresh peas, baby beets, roasted potatoes, Carolina gold rice, potato puree 
• Desserts: Charlotte russe, almond cake, blanc mange, punch cakes, vanilla and pineapple ice creams 

The menu reflects dishes prepared by Nat Fuller in the 1860s.

Several of Fuller’s bills of fare have been preserved. They indicate that he cooked veal more than his peers, liked to fry or poach fish rather than broiling it, and prepared food with mushroom and walnut “catsups” regularly. Near the end of the dinner, Shields led everyone in the toast “To Lincoln and liberty” that was also a part of the 1865 feast.

Two soups, not one, begin the dinner.

Guests

The menu itself conveys a sense of how well-designed and fantastic the evening was, and the 80 who attended included community leaders, historians, scholars, faith leaders, culinarians, artists, writers, and others. In attendance was the great-great-granddaughter of stellar caterer Eliza Seymour Lee, a free black woman, who apprenticed Fuller when he was being trained as a cook. Because Fuller didn’t sell tickets to his 1865 feast, the organizers decided to select the guests — who would not pay for their meal, but receive it as a gift — except for six, who would be winners of an essay contest administered by The Post and Courier, the daily newspaper of Charleston.

My place setting at the dinner.

When I learned about the contest, I was compelled to enter — a chance to participate in an evening of history, food, and racial reconciliation was enticing. Entrants were asked to explain why they belonged at the table by referring to “the ideals of hospitality, culinary community and social justice embodied by Fuller and his feast.” I fortunately was one of the six winners, and a condensed version of my essay was published in The Post and Courier.

Guests are randomly seated at one of the two long tables to stimulate conversation. 

Controversy

In 2018 at a conference hosted by the College of Charleston, Ethan Kytla, a California State University Fresno history professor, refuted the claim that Fuller hosted a reunification banquet in the wake of the Civil War. Nevertheless, the college continues to display its digital exhibit about Fuller and the 2015 dinner.

Baby beets are one of the many vegetables served.

Shields had uncovered details about Nat Fuller and his dinner when researching The Culinarians, a book published by the University of Chicago Press. Although Shields acknowledged to The Post and Courier that his research in documenting the original event was imperfect, he is adamant that “there was a sit-down event where blacks and whites were together.”

A platter of meats is served Russian-style by the team of waiters. Photo: Jonathan Boncek.

Reflection

Six days before the dinner, a video of Walter Scott, an African American, being killed by a white police officer was released that further incited racial tensions caused by the shooting earlier that month. Then two months later nine African Americans, including Rev. Clementa Pinckney, were killed by a white gunman at Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church. Pickney, also a state senator, had been one of the guests at Nat Fuller’s Feast.

The dinner was held at McCrady's Restaurant in historic downtown Charleston. 

The controversy about the authenticity of the 1865 event notwithstanding, the 2015 feast still has merit — a gathering of fellowship in the spirit of racial reconciliation. That it occurred in Charleston is so meaningful in light of the tragic loss of lives that spring. Attending Nat Fuller's Feast was an amazing experience and causes me to reflect frequently on its significance.

Each guest received a program about the event and Nat Fuller's life.

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For more information about Nat Fuller’s Feast, see:

• “Nat Fuller’s Feast: The Life and Legacy of an Enslaved Cook in Charleston,” a digital exhibit hosted by the Lowcountry Digital Library of the College of Charleston 
• “Nat Fuller’s Feast” by Shields 
• “A Charleston Feast for Reconciliation,” a podcast by Philip Graitcer for Southern Foodways Alliance (comments excerpted from my interview begins at 17:04) 
• Letter by Chef Mitchell to Chef Fuller that explains the menu ideas and other planning details for the 2015 event.

The reception was held at The Charleston Renaissance Gallery where the Bachelor's Retreat, Fuller's famous restaurant, had been located.

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Note: McCrady's Restaurant closed when the coronavirus pandemic occurred in 2020 and did not reopen.

Temperance Hall: A Place to Debate and Proclaim Vows of Abstinence

Old historic structures always have a tale or two to tell. Temperance Hall, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, near Wagram, NC, has had an important role in its community for decades. Although it's a simple brick building, it has many stories to tell.

Formally known as the Richmond Temperance and Literary Society Hall, this historic structure in Scotland County is believed to be the only structure in North Carolina built to house a temperance society. The hall was the scene of lively debates in its early days and is still used for meetings of civic groups.

The simple structure of Temperance Hall was completed in 1860.

To elevate the moral and cultural life of its community, the Richmond Temperance and Literary Society was founded in 1855 in what was then lower Richmond County in an area settled in 1773 by Highland Scots. Built of hand-molded local bricks, the hall is still standing in tribute to its sturdy construction in 1860 by the Scottish descendants, although it was sacked five years later by U.S. soldiers advancing toward Fayetteville during Sherman’s Carolinas Campaign of the American Civil War.

Influenced by the temperance movement, the charter members vowed to “neither make, sell, buy, nor use as a beverage any intoxicating drink whatever.” The cultured and worried citizens at that time were troubled by the “deadly influence” that alcohol consumption was “exerting over the morality of our country and seeing the ravages that it is daily making in our midst.” Within a few years of organizing, the society built the small one-story, one-room hexagonal building with sixteen-foot sides near what is now the town of Wagram. Here they met and coordinated their “uncompromising hostility to intemperance and untiring zeal for the advancement of literature.” 

The finial on the roof portrays the twin aims of the Richmond Temperance and Literary Society.

The society’s twin aims are illustrated at the peak of the building’s roof by a wooden finial that represents an inverted wine goblet on top of a closed Bible. Both pieces of the finial were reportedly shot down by Sherman’s troops, and pot marks made by their bullets fired during target practice can still be detected on the hall’s exterior. The interior ceiling was once painted blue with a constellation of gold stars; each star represented a member of the society. However, if the member broke the vow of abstinence, the star was painted black. (Several stars had alternating coats of gold and black.) When a member died, the star was gilded with silver. 

The society continued to meet in the hall until the 1890s. In 1899, the area around Wagram became part of the new Scotland County, and the hall found a new role until the 1920s as a school for white students (as segregation ruled during the Jim Crow era). After many years of neglect and decay, the hall was restored as accurately as possible in 1959 by reconstructing a two-tier wooden platform that supports a lectern used by speakers, adding a cast-iron stove similar to the one that originally heated the hall, and rebuilding the pairs of recessed bookshelves on the northeast and south walls. In its role as a museum today, it serves a symbol of cultural attitudes of a bygone era. 

A two-tier platform with lectern was reconstructed in 1959.

The restored home of North Carolina poet-laureate John Charles McNeill, a Scotland County native and grandson of Scottish immigrants, was moved to the site of Temperance Hall in 1960 and serves as the visitor center for both properties. 

Although hexagonal, the hall is architecturally significant because it is a diminutive version of the octagonal mode popularized in North Carolina in the mid-1800s by the concepts of Orson Squire Fowler, who analyzed that an “octagon house” (a term that refers specifically to octagonal houses built in North America during this period) with its eight sides encloses more space than a square one with equal wall space.  

The Richmond Temperance and Literary Society still meets all these years since its founding, although now only annually. The hall is about 1½ miles west of US 401, which is Main Street in Wagram, off Old Wire Road near Spring Hill Cemetery.

Temperance Hall has survived decades as the area around it has changed, and its history is quite phenomenal. Although meetings held in the hall today no longer promote abstinence, its continued use guarantees that its history is not yet complete and it may inspire more tales for future generations to tell.

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Note: The post is influenced by two articles about Temperance Hall that I have written. One is an entry uploaded in June 2019 in NCpedia, the online encyclopedia about North Carolina. The other is an article published in the May 2019 issue of OutreachNC Magazine.

Celebrating Freedom: Understanding the Emancipation Proclamation

When we celebrate the Fourth of July, we rightfully embrace the Declaration of Independence. However, the freedoms that we cherish are only partially enshrined in that document. Without the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, our liberties would be particularly constricted. Citizenship and its rights were also more clearly defined during American Civil War era and its aftermath, although clearly the Civil Rights Movement was indispensable for guaranteeing these rights to Americans who had long been denied them.

After the Civil War had ended, three Amendments to the Constitution were necessary to abolish slavery (13th), define citizenship (14th), and prohibit barriers to voting (15th). However, Congressional resolutions, such as the Crittenden Compromise, establish that the principal initial goal of the war was to preserve the Union, not to end slavery. As the war continued and thousands of lives were invested in establishing a “more perfect Union,” the goal of firmly dealing with slavery as a legal institution and ending its practice in the states in rebellion became equally prominent.

Even before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Congress had sent him at least four acts significantly affecting the practice of slavery. The D.C. Emancipation Act ended slavery in the Capitol on April 16, 1862. On June 19, 1862, a law ended slavery in all current and future U.S. territories. In addition, two confiscation acts were passed to seize property from Confederate supporters in the South and emancipate their slaves who came under Union control. The Emancipation Proclamation broadened this effort and established the end of slavery as a wartime measure directed against the Confederacy.

Although limited in scope, the Emancipation Proclamation provided an additional foundation for national changes brought about by the constitutional Amendments ratified during Reconstruction. Because 2013 is the sesquicentennial anniversary of the issuance of the Proclamation, it and its preliminary version have received much attention. Even as significant as the Proclamation is in American history, it is often misunderstood and Lincoln's language “henceforward shall be free” is frequently misidentified as the provision that ends slavery.

Exhibit at the N.C. Museum of
History in 2013 included a copy
of the Preliminary Proclamation.

The exhibit Freedom Coming, Freedom for All at the North Carolina Museum of History in mid-2013 brought the preliminary Proclamation for public display. When I visited, only three others were present, and I wished more people were interested in seeing this historic document because few Americans have actually read the Proclamation. If they had, they would observe limitations of the document, unusual exceptions that significantly limit “henceforward shall be free,” different language than that typically associated with Lincoln such as his poetic Gettysburg Address, and the opportunity for Confederate states to avoid the authority of the Proclamation. In fact, reviewing the reaction of critics to the Proclamation also helps to place it in better focus.

Stamp issued in 2013
for the Proclamation's
sesquicentennial anniversary.

Much of the misunderstanding is caused by a tendency to reduce important and sometimes complex documents to only a few words or a catchy phrase such as “All men are created equal” as in the Declaration of Independence. The Emancipation Proclamation is often reduced to “henceforward shall be free,” as the U.S. Postal Service did when it issued a stamp in 2013 to mark the sesquicentennial of the Proclamation. (However, contrast the assertive language of this stamp with the plain stamp issued in 1963.)

First and importantly, the Proclamation did not apply to all states. Exempt were the border states of Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, and West Virginia where slavery remained legal. In addition, areas of states that had seceded were also except such as parts of Virginia and Louisiana. In fact, the entire state of Tennessee was excluded. Also lost in the passage of time is the irony that the effective date of the Proclamation was known in the South as “Hiring Day.” Many owners “rented out” enslaved workers who were three to five times more likely to be hired out than bought or sold. Throughout the South, New Year’s Day serving as “Hiring Day,” and hiring contracts ran from January 1 to December 25. Thus, the Proclamation became effective on the day that new hiring contracts were also effective.

The stamp issued in 1963 for the
Proclamation's centennial celebration
did not include the assertive language
of the 2013 stamp.

Even though the Proclamation is often interpreted as specifically making the end of slavery a goal of the war for the United States on the level of the aim of preserving the Union, it clearly offers a state in rebellion “an out,” as explained by Prof. Reginald Hildebrand at a lecture on “The Meaning of the Emancipation Proclamation” that I attended. Specifically, a seceded state had 100 days to rejoin the Union, and if a state ended its part in the rebellion, the Proclamation no longer applied to it. In addition, the Proclamation lacks the authority of law. The other limitations on slavery were enacted by Congress, but the Proclamation is only an executive branch policy.

Page 1 of the
Preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation

Further, reaction was particularly less than positive by some critics of Lincoln. If slavery is such a moral issue, how can a 100-day delay be justified? Much of the world had already eradicated slavery, at least officially. In the Western Hemisphere, every nation except Cuba and Brazil had outlawed slavery. The diary of Adam Gurowski, a Polish writer in exile in the United States, establishes what could be viewed as contempt for the Proclamation. When Lincoln issued the preliminary Proclamation, Gurowski wrote on Sept. 22, 1862 that the delay of 100 days and allowance for a state to end its rebellion — and thus keeping slavery intact — was “the last desperate effort made by Mr. Lincoln” to save slavery. Gurowski was equally critical of Lincoln’s language. He wrote that the Proclamation “is written in the meanest and most routine style; not a word to evoke a generous thrill, not a word reflecting the warm and lofty comprehension and feelings of the immense majority of the people on this question of emancipation.”

The Declaration of Independence was indispensable for starting a revolt against King George III, but it only partially explains the freedoms of Americans “created equal ... with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Other documents are equally central, and we need to view all of them carefully and objectively to appreciate their meanings. 

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Note: The lecture by Prof. Hildebrand was part of the program "Old and New: Studying the South in the 21st Century" that I attended as a recipient of the Bushing Humanities Fellowship from Sandhills Community College.

Sapelo Island: Preserving the Past and Studying the Forgotten

The Georgia coast and its barrier islands have been invaluable for recording and preserving information about the people and cultures of the American South. Islands such as Sapelo, about sixty miles south of Savannah, are treasures of Geechee-Gullah heritage; the sea islands were also early scenes of vibrant African Muslim communities whose traces have faded over time. Even with a documented historical importance, only a few locations have been protected for future generations (and sometimes unintentionally by unknowing stewards).

Gullah-Geechee Heritage

The Gullah-Geechee were taken from the rice-producing regions of Senegambia, Angola, and Sierra Leone in West Africa and brought to rice plantations of the American South as enslaved labor. They were brought to Sapelo in 1802 when Thomas Spalding, who introduced the cultivation of sugar cane and manufacture of sugar to Georgia, began buying portions of the island and created several plantations (which included a sugar mill) operated by as many as 400 enslaved workers in cotton, sugar cane and livestock activities.

The porous soils, temperate climates, tidal influences, and saline atmosphere of Sapelo and its marshes are ideal for the cultivation of rice and Sea Island cotton, according to Buddy Sullivan, manager of the reserve when I visited as part of a workshop on African American culture and history conducted by the Georgia Historical Society for the National Endowment for the Humanities. In fact, the freshwater rivers of the Carolina and Georgia coastal areas permit rice cultivation to thrive, particularly as alternating cycles of flooding and draining fields (skills brought by enslaved West Africans to the Atlantic coast) are repeated; this coastal system was later adopted by the planters on large river plantations.

The 1860 census indicates that the Spalding family had 252 enslaved residents living in 50 cabins. Following the American Civil War, the freedmen created several communities throughout Sapelo, although only Hog Hammock now remains. This community, home to about 50 Gullah-Geechee descendants, includes the historic Behavior Cemetery and the First African Baptist Church that traces its origins to 1866. Because Hog Hammock no longer has its own school (the last one closed in 1978), children take the ferry to the mainland and then a bus to school.

Accessible by only ferry or airplane, the island is remote. Because the Gullah-Geechee were so isolated, many generations were able to preserve their distinct culture. When I visited Sapelo, I met Cornelia Bailey, storyteller and folklorist, who wrote about growing up on the island and preserved many Gullah-Geechee memories in her book God, Dr. Buzzard and the Bolito Man. “We still drink, love, hate, and remember we are still living for our ancestors,” says Bailey (who traces her lineage back to an African Muslim named Bul-Allah, the head enslaved manager for Spalding) in her essay “I Am Sapelo.”

Islamic Heritage

Although the First African Baptist Church congregants continue to worship on the island, what has faded is awareness of how significantly Sapelo and neighboring coastal islands constituted the largest assembly of African Muslims in early North America. Such knowledge is the result of painstaking research by scholars such as Michael Gomez, professor at New York University, who describes the Muslim presence in the coastal American South as “active, vibrant, and compelling.” As Gomez points out, of the 388,000 Africans brought into British North America during the Atlantic slave trade, more than 224,000 came from regions influenced by Islam.

By analyzing interviews conducted by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s and related family narratives, Gomez has identified how many practices of enslaved Africans show a picture consistent with serious pursuits of Islam, such as attempts to adhere to Islamic dietary requirements, observance of Muslim feast days, and other elements of Muslim life, such as prayer mats, veiling, and daily ritualized prayer. The longing of many to preserve their religion and culture is also shown by the pattern among American-born enslaved to carry Muslim names and retain vivid memories of their ancestors’ religious practices, even as the number of Christian converts increased. In addition, Gomez has confirmed Sapelo as an important Muslim community based on listings of enslaved Africans when plantations were sold as well as advertisements for enslaved runaways. (Names are clearly Muslim such as Mustapha, Sambo, and Mamado.) Other research by the Georgia Historical Society substantiates the Islamic influences in early African communities on the southeastern U.S. coast.

Protection

What protected Sapelo from the boom of coastal real estate development, the fate of some islands such as Hilton Head, S.C., that also share the Gullah-Geechee heritage? Several islands were acquired by wealthy Northerners in the fifty years after the American Civil War. The story of Sapelo is similar to Ossabaw and a few other islands whose purchase protected them from the typical development. For example, in 1912, Howard E. Coffin, a Detroit automotive pioneer, purchased all of Sapelo from its various owners except for the African American communities. During the Great Depression, Coffin sold his property to North Carolina tobacco heir Richard J. Reynolds, Jr., whose widow later sold it in two transactions (1969 and 1976) to the state of Georgia.

The 16,500-acre Sapelo Island, the fourth largest barrier island of Georgia, is now home to an estuarine research reserve (6,110 acres as part of the 27-reserve national system) and a wildlife refuge (8,420 acres). Equally important is that Hog Hammock is the last intact sea island community of Geechee-Gullah people in Georgia. As a result, Hog Hammock has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Except for this small community (434 acres), the island (97%) is state owned and managed.

Preserving Culture

The Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society annually conducts several educational events, including a cultural day each fall that features storytelling, arts and crafts (including quilt-making and sweet grass basket-making), dancing, music, and food. These efforts, although small, are vital for preserving the full history of the American South. More concerted actions are needed to retain a critical awareness of how past generations have shaped our values and traditions.

The Ring Shout

How do you connect musically and culturally with traditions of past generations? Many of us in the American South are fascinated to learn how our contemporary music and other artistic aspects of culture have been shaped by our ancestors. When I experienced the “ring shout” performed in Savannah, Georgia, I connected immediately to several musical genres of the South — spirituals, gospel, blues, jazz, and others.

With features that are clearly West African in origin, the ring shout is a religious dance that combines a counter-clockwise movement, call-and-response singing, and percussion. Still performed in coastal Georgia, the ring shout is probably the oldest surviving African American performance tradition in North America. It has survived well beyond several generations of Africans enslaved in coastal Georgia and South Carolina on the cotton and rice fields who could preserve their own Geechee and Gullah cultures on the sea islands because they were so isolated from the American mainland.

The term shout, although used to describe all elements of the tradition, specifically refers to its dancelike movement. (The word shout may derive from the Afro-Arabic saut that refers to movement around the Kabaa in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, according to a linguist.) A “songster” (or song master) sets a song by beginning slowly at first and then accelerating to a faster tempo. His lines are answered by singers (known as basers) in a call-and-response pattern. The stick-man beats a simple drum-like rhythm with a wood stick, and the basers add rhythm with hand clapping and foot patting.

As the tradition developed in America during slavery, Christian themes were grafted onto the practice (much like candomblé in Brazil). (In fact, when I observed the ring shout performed at the Second African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia, I was immediately attracted to the counterclockwise shuffle, call-and-response singing, and handclapping that I had observed in Brazil at a candomblé service conducted by African descendants.)

During the American Civil War, outside observers described in detail the ring shout’s practice in coastal Georgia and South Carolina. According to the Georgia Humanities Council, the ring shout continued to be practiced even as it was influencing forms of spiritual and gospel music and elements of jazz. However, because many communities had stopped shouting as early as the 1900s, experts thought that the ring shout was no longer being practiced until they learned in 1980 about the Bolden community in McIntosh County on the Georgia coast that annually performs the ring shout on New Year’s Eve at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church. (The ring shout continues to be separate from formal worship, although it takes place in the church’s annex.)

In fact, if not for this group, performing the ring shout may have become an extinct form of expression. (When the tradition became better known to outsiders, a performing group from the community that calls itself the McIntosh County Shouters was organized. The ages of their ten members range from 24 to 94.) Because all members of the group are related by blood or marriage, they have known each other since birth, and they have been interviewed and observed by historians, linguists, anthropologists, folklorists, and Gullah Gechee experts.

The ring shout has been shared by grandparents — and sometimes great grandparents — with their descendants. (In fact, at the performance that I attended, long-term member Harold Evans had been replaced by 24-year-old Brendon Jordan, grandson of baser Caretha Sullivan, as the stick-man.) To maintain the integrity of the ring shout, elders teach and practice it as they learned from their ancestors, although no two shouters “shout” alike.

As they move in a counter-clockwise pattern, each one has distinctive hand motions or other movements. The ring shout affirms oneness with the Spirit and ancestors in an expression of community cohesiveness. However, because the shout was criticized by white missionaries and some black clergy, it often occurred in the church after formal worship, in "praise houses" in the woods, and sometimes even in homes or barns. Yet the movement is “in the service of the Lord”; thus it is a forward shuffle -- the feet never are crossed or are raised high off the floor because, as the narrator at a performance explains, such movements could be viewed as “unholy” dancing.

The shout songs, once known as “running spirituals,” often carry coded references to slavery. When I observed the McIntosh County Shouters at the Second African Baptist Church (a historic church that has met at the same location since 1802 -- its history includes an overflow crowd to welcome Emancipation authorities in 1864 when the church was host to U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Union General William T. Sherman), their songs included “Teach Me, Lord, How to Wait” with references to Job and his suffering. The first verse ends:

Job said, “I will surely wait.”
Teach me, Lord,
Teach me, Lord,
How to wait.

Many congregants of Second African Baptist joined in response to the call of Freddie Palmer, a strong lead singer who became the songster when Lawrence McKiver, who had been the group’s patriarch, recently passed. In addition, C. MeGill Brown (a Savannah native), pastor of Second African Baptist Church, showed his connection by being a joyful participant in the call-and-response.

According to the Georgia Humanities Council, the ring shout has survived in coastal Georgia because the Bolden community has been relatively stable, and several elder practitioners have been deeply committed in continuing the tradition and encouraging its practice by a new generation, and the value of the tradition has received significant external recognition. For example, the McIntosh County Shouters were featured on the HBO documentary Unchained Memories in 2002. In 2010 they received the Georgia Governor’s Award in the Humanities. The book Shout Because You’re Free by Art Rosenbaum further documents this tradition.

Knowledge about the ring shout is also being expanded by websites. For example, a recent presentation in Washington, DC, is on YouTube (57-minute video). This performance with a narrator is basically the same program that I observed in Savannah (without the introduction by the Director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the Arts Services Manager for the Georgia Council for the Arts). Several short videos are also on YouTube, including a 39-second video showcasing the forward shuffle and a slightly longer one focusing on a baser.

According to the McIntosh County Shouters, they are like other cultural heritage organizations that help people “to remember and celebrate their shared experiences, traditions, identities, struggles, and aspirations.”

Civil War Music: Themes for Yesterday and Today

Civil War music usually doesn’t enjoy the same popularity as other musical traditions of the American South. However, prominent Southerners such as Martin Luther King, Jr. have frequently used lyrics of Civil War songs to connect to our shared history as they emphasize ideas. Much like country music, blues, and gospel, music of the Civil War era can portray haunting themes of the American South with powerful language, alluring rhythms, and familiar characters.

Although Civil War music doesn’t often enjoy being the central focus of musical productions, it did when the Theater of the American South in Wilson, N.C., selected Civil War themes to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War. “The Civil War in Song and Legend,” one of the productions, featured more than 40 songs of the Civil War era. It also showcased the musical talents of Bill Schustik, who bills himself as an American troubadour and often performs as a one-person show.

For this performance, Schustik was accompanied by the 17-member Unity Choir of St. John AME Zion Church (organized in 1868 as the first African-American church in Wilson) that sang harmony as well as lead vocals, and its soprano soloists provided a sweet contrast to Schustik’s rich baritone. In addition, The Many Thousand Gone Youth Chorus added 12 local youthful voices as they boosted the rhythm with toe-tapping beats.

During the performance at the Boykin Cultural Center (built in 1919), Schustik played a variety of folk instruments such as the banjo, guitar, dulcimer, drum, harmonica, and Jew’s harp. (Choir director Bill Myers also played the flute and melodica.) As Schustik moved among the instruments and changed from one musical style to another, he wove stories with his song selections to tell the history of a nation – divided between North and South – and personal narratives of the men and women who lived through or died in the Civil War.

Some songs such as “The Vacant Chair,” written to commemorate the death of soldier in 1861, were popular in both the North and the South. This song hauntingly depicts the loss at the family table:

We shall meet but we shall miss him.
There will be one vacant chair.
We shall linger to caress him,
While we breathe our ev’ning prayer.

Other songs such as “Goober Peas” acknowledge the tough duty of a southern soldier who often had little to eat except boiled peanuts (or “goober peas”), which frequently served as an emergency ration:

Just before the battle, the General hears a row.
He says, “The Yanks are coming, I hear their rifles now.”
He turns around in wonder, and what d'ya think he sees?
The Georgia Militia, eating goober peas.

“Lorena,” an antebellum song with Northern origins, was a favorite of soldiers of both sides because it expresses the longing for a wife or sweetheart back home. In fact, one Southern officer lamented that the song reduced his soldiers’ effectiveness because the mournful lyrics made them too homesick:

A hundred months have passed, Lorena,
Since last I held that hand in mine,
And felt the pulse beat fast, Lorena,
Though mine beat faster far than thine.

“Taps,” which concludes many military funerals today, was used by both Confederate and Union forces, although it was arranged by Union Army Brigadier General Daniel Butterfield in July 1862 to replace a previous French bugle call used to signal "lights out.”

Contraditions are inherent in some songs, such as “The Ballad of Shiloh Hill,” which is about the Battle of Shiloh (a biblical name that means “place of peace”) in southwestern Tennessee that resulted in 20,000 casualties in April 1862:

It was an awful struggle and will cause your blood to chill;
It was the famous battle that was fought on Shiloh Hill.

'Twas on the sixth of April, just at the break of day;
The drums and fifes were playing for us to march away.
The feeling of that hour I do remember still,
When first my feet were tromping on the top of Shiloh Hill.

Some music has definite religious connotations. “Nearer, My God, to Thee” was played by the Confederate army band as survivors of the disastrous Pickett’s Charge in the Battle of Gettysburg returned from their failed infantry assault on July 3, 1863. Another example is “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” often used today as a patriotic song and included in many church hymnals; it which was created in 1861 by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe when she wrote new words to a military marching tune. The song’s lyrics appear in sermons and speaches of Martin Luther King, Jr. -- most notably in his last sermon “I've Been to the Mountaintop,” delivered in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968 on the night before his assassination. King's final public words, in fact, end with the first lyrics of the song, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

The Civil War playlist is rich and includes boastful, mournful, and raucous songs. More noteworthy is how lyrics and songs are used today to represent a nation healed of Civil War divisions still seeks to attain a more perfect Union, an objective evident as the two-hour show ended with Shustik singing the little-known latter verses of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

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For more resources on the Web related to Civil War music, consult the following:
American Civil War Music
Songs of the Confederacy
Music of the American Civil War