Joseph Opala - The Gullah Homecomings

The Gullah Homecomings

Opala is best known for the series of "homecomings" he organized, starting with a visit by Sierra Leone's President Joseph Saidu Momoh to the Gullah community on St. Helena Island, South Carolina in 1988. National Public Radio called that remarkable event the "Gullah Reunion." Later, Opala organized three more historic homecomings for Gullahs returning to Sierra Leone -- the "Gullah Homecoming" (1989), the "Moran Family Homecoming" (1997), and "Priscilla’s Homecoming" (2005). These were not random events, but commemorations of the new -- and increasingly detailed -- information on the Gullah Connection that Opala and his colleagues were uncovering. To organize these events, Opala worked with the Sierra Leone Government and the U.S. Embassy in that country, and with Gullah community leaders in the U.S. He also helped produce the documentary films that show what happened when Sierra Leoneans and Gullahs came back together on ancestral soil centuries after the Atlantic slave trade tore their families apart.

These documentaries -- Family Across the Sea (1991), The Language You Cry In (1998), and Priscilla's Homecoming (in production) -- chronicle the four homecomings Opala organized between 1988 and 2005. Broadcast repeatedly in both the U.S. and Sierra Leone, they have received high praise in both countries. The videos have also generated a great deal of public discussion on lost family among Sierra Leoneans and Gullahs, and between those groups. After seeing the videos, some Sierra Leoneans and Gullahs of means crossed the Atlantic on their own to make contact with their long-lost family. The documentaries -- all of them containing deeply affecting moments confronting the hard reality of Bunce Island -- also put that historic site on the map. When Opala began his research and public history work on Bunce Island in 1976, very few people in Sierra Leone or the U.S. had even heard of that site.

In 2010, Opala announced the start of a five-year, $5 million project to preserve Bunce Island. Opala is the director of a non-profit, called the Bunce Island Coalition (US), whose goal is to halt the erosion that threatens the island, stabilize the ruins of the slave castle, transform the island into a modern historic park, and construct a museum in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital city, devoted to Bunce Island's history. The museum will also feature Sierra Leone's connections to the Gullahs and other communities in the African diaspora. The Bunce Island Coalition signed a memorandum of understanding with the Sierra Leone Government in July, 2010, and is now overseeing the preservation work on Bunce Island under government authority.