By Dawn Felder Boren
There are many scholars that have contributed to African American history and the preservation of it, but the subject would not exist if it weren’t for Dr. Lorenzo Dow Turner. Turner’s curiosity of linguistics led him to be a pioneer in the dissection and connection of African dialects. His philanthropy to the diaspora of Gullah Geechee people confirmed speculations of a language, culture and heritage, cultivated from Africa. Turner’s academic work is a rarity that has been proven to be a product of a literary genius.
Turner was born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina on October 20, 1890 and he was the youngest of Rooks Turner and Elizabeth Freeman four sons. His parents stressed the importance of education and as a result, Turner and two of his brothers earned degrees in law, medicine and education. Rooks Turner’s education journey began at the age of twenty-one when he started the first grade. He went on to earn a master’s degree from Howard University. Elizabeth Turner attended school for six years, which was the maximum for African American women at the time.
A love of academia was evident in Turner’s life. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Howard University (1914), a master’s degree from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Chicago. Turner returned to Howard after earning his Ph.D and served as Head of the English Department for 8 years. After Howard, he joined Fisk University for nearly two decades. Turner taught prominent literary figures such as Zora Neale Hurston, John Hope Franklin and Frank Yerby. In 1946, he accepted a position at Roosevelt College being its first African American professor. He stayed at Roosevelt until 1966 when he retired due to his declining health, but he remained as a professor emeritus for an additional two years. In 1972, Turner died from heart failure at the age of 81.
During the summer of 1929, Turner overheard a conversation between Gullah Geechee students at South Carolina State College, which is now South Carolina State University. The rare vernacular sparked an interest in what was then called broken English. Turner embarked on a journey to prove the history and relationship between African, African American and Afro-Brazilian dialects. This simple conversation at a Historic Black University and College in the Lowcountry of South Carolina grew to be the foundation of Turner’s career. It would also lead to him being remembered as the “Father of Gullah Studies”.
Turner was the first African American to explore and study Gullah Geechee language. He visited Gullah regions in coastal South Carolina and Georgia to capture the language. In doing so, he was able to learn about Gullah Geechee customs through first-hand experience in the culture. Turner was also able to record and transcript folk stories, songs and accounts of Gullah Geechee life. He used a 100 pound recorder to gather audios of the Gullah people. To further his studies, Turner traveled to different countries in Africa to gain a broader understanding of the dialects. He spent a lot of time in Sierra Leone studying their Krio language. This language was linked to Creole, which he connected to dialects used by African Americans in Louisiana, Brazil and Portuguese. Turner’s research proved that African languages were directly related to Gullah and Afro – Brazillian Portuguese by preserving words used in these languages and confirming the same dialect in Arabic and Niger-Congo languages. According to Dr. Joko Sengova, “Among the inventory of nearly 40 Sub-Saharan Niger-Congo languages that influenced Gullah, about a dozen are languages spoken in the Mano River tri-states of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in West Africa. These are Fula, Gola, Kissi, Kpelle, Krio, Kru, Mandinka/Malinke, Mende, Susu, Temne and Vai. According to a review article written in 1965 by British historian P.E.H. Hair, Mende and Vai account for nearly 25 percent of Turner’s 4,000 entries (within the book “Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect”). Translated into rough statistics, this means that Mende and Vai contributed approximately 600 personal names, 60 words used in ordinary conversation, and 90 expressions in folklore and prayers, a total of about 750 retentions.”
Photo courtesy Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum
Turner’s book “Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect” changed the way the world saw Gullah Geechee language and culture and it started the new field of African American studies. Turner listed almost 4,000 words used by Gullah Geechee people and traced their origins to African languages. When discussing Turners works on the complex relationship of African languages and other African based dialects, Curator Alcione Amos stated, “Until then it was pretty much thought that all of the African knowledge and everything had been erased by slavery. Turner showed that was not true, He was a pioneer. He was the first one to make the connections between African Americans and their African past.” Turner’s contributions to the Gullah language and Africanisms are invaluable. His work has led to the advancement of African American studies and additional research on the importance of African linguistics.
Reference:
Kelly, J., (2010). Lorenzo Dow Turner, PhD’26 A linguist who identified the African influences in the Gullah
dialect. University of Chicago Magazine. Retrieved from https://magazine.uchicago.edu/1012/features/legacy.shtml
Turner, Lorenzo D., (1949). Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. University of Chicago Press.
Sengova, J., (2024). Dr. Lorenzo Turner and the Gullah language. Retrieved from:
https://www.folkstreams.net/contexts/dr-lorenzo-turner-and-the-gullah-language
