The Gullah people were primarily under the auspices of Baptist or Methodist churches. Since the 1700s, slaves in the lowcountry were attracted to “Evangelical Protestantism.” Evangelical Protestantism includes Calvinist Methodist, Arminian Methodist or Baptist (which includes Arminians and Calvinists).

As we look toward resurrecting the U.S. economy today, we would do well to take up the cause of education as Frederick Douglas advocated it. “True knowledge unfits a man to be a slave” is a maxim that applies to freeing us all to be effective citizens of our republic.

Having learned how to read as a young person, Douglass clearly understood that education was essential. He lived up to his own words, “Once you learn to read, you will forever be free,” by continuously reading and writing to mentally escape as a slave.

Literacy plays an important part in helping Douglass achieve his freedom. Learning to read and write enlightened his mind to the injustice of slavery; it kindled in his heart longings for liberty. He believed that the ability to read makes a slave “unmanageable” and “discontented” (2054).

Gullah, also called Sea Island Creole or Geechee, English-based creole vernacular spoken primarily by African Americans living on the seaboard of South Carolina and Georgia (U.S.), who are also culturally identified as Gullahs or Geechees (see also Sea Islands).

gē’chē Filters. Used as a disparaging term for a person who speaks a nonstandard local dialect, as in Savannah, Georgia, or Charleston, South Carolina.

200,000

The Black Seminoles or Afro-Seminoles are black Indians associated with the Seminole people in Florida and Oklahoma. They are mostly blood descendants of the Seminole people, free blacks and of escaped slaves (called maroons) who allied with Seminole groups in Spanish Florida.

Black Seminoles, also called Seminole Maroons or Seminole Freedmen, a group of free blacks and runaway slaves (maroons) that joined forces with the Seminole Indians in Florida from approximately 1700 through the 1850s. The Black Seminoles were celebrated for their bravery and tenacity during the three Seminole Wars.

To destabilize British colonization in the north, Spain encouraged British slaves to escape to Florida, where they could convert to Catholicism and become Spanish citizens. In the 1730s, a black Spanish community formed in St. Augustine, the capital of Spanish Florida, and founded a town called Fort Mose.