LAST CHAPTER OF MY NEW NOVEL - RAIN CHAPTER NINE: RAIN’S RAINBOW Yvonne’s wedding was one of the biggest events the Gullah people ever hosted. Nearly a million people gathered on Port Royal Island and Hilton Head Island to celebrate the occasion. The wedding itself was held on a raised platform on a beach that faced the beautiful sea where boats, yachts, and other gaily festoon small craft danced on the ebbing waves. The Gullah people turned out in force. They had always venerated the Good Queen Hamdiyah who, in her carriage, would visit them and hear their complaints and do whatever she could to alleviate their suffering. Sometimes it was food, sometimes sending her White step-children to purchase a husband, wife, or children being sold south. She would often give away her fine dresses to her deserving people and would hold an after church picnic every Sunday for the children attending Sunday school. Local poor Whites also shared in the affection for her because she blessed them also with her generosity and kindness. Unlike other families of the Southern aristocracy, the Rhett’s were respected and admired by the slaves and poor alike and were the true gentry in the region. Thus the Gullah came to see the Gowoni Bloodline as the soul of a people who were searching for a soul. It was woven into a network that nurtured and sustained them and moreover, gave them self-respect and pride. Although Rain was the true heir of Hamdiyah, Yvonne’s marriage into the Gullah bloodlines created the first significant blood tie to the Gowoni bloodline not based purely on allegiance. With Yvonne’s marriage to Fred, hope was raised that perhaps one day, Rain would marry a Gullah girl and cement those bonds with Africa and New Africa. The people celebrated and were overjoyed to hear that the couple was going to settle down in South Carolina. The people had remained on the land, waiting for freedom for a long time. It was a long time since South Carolina had seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860. In November, 1861, a Federal fleet circled Port Royal Sound, firing at all fortifications. By noon of November 7th, the Confederates fled before the Union forces. Hilton Head Island fell. Pinckney Island was occupied soon afterward. Victory that day for the Union meant freedom for 1,000 slaves on the Sea Islands. Black males on Hilton Head Island and in the surrounding areas were pressed into service, becoming the first black troops for the Union. General Mitchell, before his death, began construction of adequate housing for several thousand homeless slaves who had gathered on the island since the War began. Mitchellville, the first freedmans village in the United States, was established along the Beach City Road area. It had almost 1,500 residents. The first school in the South for freed slaves was established during the Civil War on St. Helena Island. This was the beginnings of the Gullah nation. One of the missionaries descending upon the newly forming Gullah nation Harriet Ware wrote a letter describing her visit to Hamdiyah’s plantation chapel, Praise House on Port Royal Island where slaves had gathered to pray and dance shouts and sing spirituals. Yet the community grew and formed a leadership evolved from the crucibles of adversity and courage. From men like Frederick Douglas Smalls’ ancestor, Robert Smalls, who delivered the Confederate gunboat Planter to the Union navy. It was their service in the Civil War that forever silenced the myth that blacks could not fight. In fact, the bravery and tactical skill of black soldiers not only met but often surpassed that of their Northern and Southern counterparts. Moreover, their deep raw faith was just as visible as their great courage. Robert Smalls was raised as a slave in Charleston, South Carolina, where he learned steamboats and piloting large vessels along the Atlantic seaboard. Because of his exceptional navigational skills, at the outbreak of the Civil War, he was forced into service for the Confederacy as quartermaster on the Planter, a 300-ton side-wheel steamer. Smalls was the ship’s pilot but he did not hold that title, for such an important post was not allowed a black slave in the Confederate south. On the evening of May 12, 1862, while the Planter was docked in Charleston, the Confederate officers left the ship to attend a party onshore, leaving Smalls and the rest of the crew to ready the ship for departure the next morning. Recognizing the potential for escape, Smalls alerted the families of the crew to be in hiding nearby. Upon receiving his signal, they boarded the ship and immediately headed toward open sea. Knowing he would have to pilot the ship past Confederate sentinels, he disguised himself with the captain’s uniform and hoisted the Confederate flag. Moving slowly, and blowing the usual signals, Smalls successfully slipped out of the Planter’s berth without much notice. Smalls and his crew still faced two major obstacles; Fort Johnson (which Smalls safely passed, giving the customary steam-whistle salute). The second and more ominous threat was Fort Sumter, the starting place of the Civil War. As the Planter approached its stark gray walls, some of Smalls’ crew began to lose courage and urged him to turn back. They feared that the Sumter guards would board and inspect the ship. However, rather than retreat, he continued bravely on course. As they approached Fort Sumter, Smalls, turned his back slightly to the sentry in order to obscure his own face and features. He then signaled with the whistle, asking for permission to pass. The crew waited in tense expectation; and after what seemed like hours, the Confederate guard finally answered, “Pass the Planter!” When the Planter eventually reached the outer edge of Confederate waters, Smalls replaced the Rebel flag with a white sheet of surrender. The commander of an oncoming Union vessel, the US Onward, had almost given the command to fire on the Planter before recognizing the flag of truce. The Union crew boarded the vessel. When they asked for the captain, Smalls proudly answered, “I have the honor, sir, to present the Planter, formerly the flagship of General Ripley!” The ship was now in Union hands; but even more valuable to the Union was Smalls’ extensive knowledge of Confederate fortifications and troop placements around Charleston. President Lincoln personally invited Robert Smalls to Washington, where he and his crew were recognized for their bravery. Smalls was then commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the 33rd Regiment of United States Colored Troops. For a black American, this was extremely rare and an exceptional honor: at that time, most officers – even of black troops – were white. After receiving his commission, Smalls was made the official pilot of the Planter, now sailing for the Union. The Planter was assigned to transport service, delivering supplies along the coastal waterway near Charleston. On a routine trip in November 1863, the Planter came under Confederate bombardment. The shelling proved so intense that the Union captain of the ship panicked, wanting to surrender. Smalls refused, knowing that he and the crew would be killed if they surrendered to the Rebels. The frightened Captain fled below deck, leaving Smalls in command. Smalls brought the ship safely through the shelling, landing amidst the cheers of thousands gathered at the dock awaiting the supplies. Union Major General Quincy Gillmore immediately promoted Smalls to Captain, a position he held until the end of the war. Smalls eventually rose to the rank of Major General in the South Carolina Militia. After the War, Smalls was elected as a Republican to the South Carolina House and then to the United States Congress, where he served for nine years. As a Member of Congress, he pursued equal treatment for black Americans, often explaining, “My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.” These were precisely the sentiments of his heirs of the Gullah nation as they began to take equalizing actions of their own. Their immediate task was to rebuild the African family and its lifelines. To renew its leadership and levels of trust. To restore love in the empty hearts of the soulless people who mistake pain for love. Big Momma watched as her daughter glided upon the stage and realized that all of Mona Lisa Dumas’ dreams had come true. That her Cinderella was Black and Black dreams can also come true. She glowed within, seeing her daughter sitting on the large cushion next to Fred, garbed as the Prince and Princess in their own fairytale. Below them, well wishers and performers passed in an endless gift bearing stream. The young couple was given a fortune in gifts that day. Many television hosts and journalists could not understand what had drawn such a prodigious pilgrimage of Black people to a wedding of non-celebrity persons. They came from all over Africa, South America, and the Caribbean that was a week long celebration even before the wedding began. Everyday announcements were made in news conferences about some type of development being initiated in the young couples names; everything from housing cooperatives to textile mills. What was unique about these developments was they were being financed by Blacks themselves. They had resurrected the dreams of all the lynched persons crucified in Jesus’ name. The dreams of the chalk outlines that reappeared on the asphalt streets and concrete jungles. The dreams of Africans who had disappeared and left behind legends that they had flown away to leave others sitting in the woods wondering if they could fly away too. They were dreams that were spun from the threads of pain and sorrow. Even their dreams of emancipation were laced with the sobering truth that freedom had no clothes, no home, no food, no dignity … no land … no justice. They didn’t have to runaway anymore to freedom. Freedom had come to them in rags announcing the news that there was no where to run to. Not even in Africa. The 40 acres had to be paid for and yet White people stole all of the money they had saved to pay for it from the Freedman’s Banks they had created for their especial “help”. Those that recovered their money had no relief from it during the reconstruction land crisis because it took sometimes ten years before even part of it was repaid. The crucible of slavery created an African that was a reclusive individual and not the socialized extended family member that was kidnapped from his home in Africa. Slavery had shorn him from everything and cast him into hovels of humiliation and despair. When freedom came, they couldn’t wait to run away from the shanty “quarters” of self-hating scorners to isolate themselves from the strangers they had been tossed among and had become. They tried to flee the whips and voices of derision, the nooses, fires, dismembering axes, and savage mobs of the lynching trees. The noble among them became the strength that helped them weather the storms; provided shelter from the rain until the day the rainbow would appear. Yvonne called to the noblemen and they responded. They returned from their hills and valleys, burrows and caves. They returned from fortresses of fear guarded by pit bulls and children trained to distrust and menace. They had always sought shelter from the rain but then they became the Rain and the Rain reigned over them. The wedding was the unification of the people who had lost their souls and were in search of a soul. Long after the wedding ended and the marriage consummated, the people laughed, sang, and danced around the Sea Islands and ghettos and barrios everywhere showing off their new selves. They danced and celebrated long into the night when a cool Rain came and washed the earth and the people with baptismal waters. With the dawn, a huge, glowing Rainbow glowed over the horizon as all the White people joined them in showing off their new selves too. Rain then danced among them announcing, “Jubilee! Jubilee! Jubilee!” The Rainbow of Forgiveness!” “It’s Jubilee!” “The Rainbow is Jubilee!” The End By Husayn Sayfuddiyn As-Sufi Copyright 11/18/13 All Rights Reserved
Posted on: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 18:34:42 +0000