Joseph Opala - Public History Efforts (1997 To 2011)

Public History Efforts (1997 To 2011)

When Opala returned to the U.S. in 1997, Gullah community leader, Emory Campbell, asked him to serve as Scholar in Residence at Penn Center, the Gullah community organization on St. Helena Island, South Carolina. In that position, Opala brought several Sierra Leonean social activists to Penn Center to talk about their nation's tragic circumstances and to open a dialog with local community leaders on what the Gullahs, as U.S. citizens, could do to help. Later, Opala worked with Penn Center to arrange for Gullah families on the island to care for the children of Sierra Leonean war refugees granted asylum in the U.S. until their parents could settle their affairs in their new home.

While at Penn Center, Opala helped organize several more reunions, this time between the Gullahs and their Black Seminole cousins in Oklahoma, Texas, and Northern Mexico. Several Black Seminole community leaders visited Penn Center in the South Carolina low country, while several Gullah community leaders visited historic Black Seminole settlements in Oklahoma, Texas, and Northern Mexico. Opala also helped Penn Center organize a symposium on the link between Gullahs and Black Seminoles that made it possible for the leaders of both groups to meet the scholars who uncovered their historical and cultural connections, including the highly acclaimed linguist Ian Hancock.

After leaving Penn Center in 1999, Opala taught for a decade in the Department of History and the Honors Program at James Madison University (JMU) in Virginia. In 2003 he and his JMU students organized a "Gullah Film Festival" at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. In 2004 he was a fellow at Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (GLC), where with GLC's strong support, he organized the "National Summit on Bunce Island." That event was held in Washington, D.C. at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs in order to highlight Bunce Island's importance for American history. The Summit brought together a cross-section of Washington officialdom, including Members of Congress, Congressional staff, and State Department, Smithsonian and National Park Service officials. Sierra Leone's Foreign Minister and Ambassador to the U.S. also attended the all-day briefing. The following year, Opala was a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany where he had the opportunity to discuss his historical research and his public history strategies with scholars from several countries.

In 2006, Opala curated an exhibit at the New-York Historical Society that focused on "Priscilla's Homecoming," but also highlighted the importance of Bunce Island for African Americans in another high-profile setting, this time in a major museum facing New York's Central Park. Then in 2008, Opala worked with his JMU students once again to create a traveling exhibit on Bunce Island that in its first four years has gone to universities, museums, libraries, and African American community centers across the United States, including the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The exhibit also went to Sierra Leone in 2011 during that country's 50th Anniversary of Independence celebrations. It appeared in Freetown at the U.S. Embassy and the British Council, but wound up on permanent display in the Sierra Leone National Museum.

In 2007, Opala helped establish the "Bunce Island Coalition (US)", at a meeting in Washington, D.C. that included members of several overlapping groups that share a common interest in Bunce Island—prominent supporters of Sierra Leone in the United States, including former U.S. Ambassadors Thomas Hull and Michael Samuels; the African American TV actor Isaiah Washington representing "DNA Sierra Leoneans"; former Peace Corps Volunteers affiliated with the Friends of Sierra Leone group; representatives of the Gullah community; and prominent Sierra Leoneans living in the United States. BIC (US) was established as a non-profit group that aims at raising funds for the preservation of Bunce Island through an ongoing popular education campaign, and three years later wealthy donors pledged $5 million for that effort. Opala moved back to Sierra Leone immediately to act as the project Coordinator, and in October, 2010 Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma agreed to a televised meeting with the Bunce Island Coalition team that signaled his active support of the project. Opala has now lived in Sierra Leone for a total of nearly 20 years.