Preface
This story came to me not through a textbook, but through a tradition older than the printed word: passing down. Mrs. Ella Cooper, a retired educator and respected community researcher from Colleton County, South Carolina—someone who has spent her life preserving and honoring the legacy of the Gullah people—shared with me a piece of writing titled The Great Battle.
At first glance, it appeared to be a retelling. But when I read it, I didn’t just read it—I heard it. I recognized the cadence, the rhythm, the phrasing. This wasn’t a story told about us. This was a story told by us. And I knew immediately that the voice belonged to someone like my grandfather. Someone like Renty.
This piece is my reflection on that knowing—my response to the doubters, the translators, and the gatekeepers who question the legitimacy of lived memory. I write not as a scholar of Gullah—I write as Gullah. This is my language, and this is my lineage.
Download The Great Battle, and see for yourself.
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When someone told me I should find a Gullah linguist to translate a piece of writing—to prove it was written in my mother tongue—I was offended. Did this person not know me? Did they not know the story of my people? How dare they instruct me on such a task?
As we say where my mother and father are from: they must don’t know who I am.
I was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. But don’t get it twisted—I know my roots. My mother and father were both born in Hendersonville, South Carolina, and I spent many of my childhood years in that quiet Lowcountry town, just a stone’s throw from the Combahee River. If I don’t know Frogmore Stew, then my name ain’t Bridgit Brown.
My mother speaks Gullah. So do my aunts, uncles, and cousins. We are descendants. And if lineage, memory, and fluency don’t qualify me to claim this story, then tell me—what does?
But I hear Renty’s voice clearly.
It cuts through time like a river winding home—unmistakable, steady, and sure. I hear it in the way he shapes his sentences, in the rhythm of his speech, in the question mark he hangs at the end of a statement. I hear it when he says, “Heyward Scipio and me binna tangle ‘bout a ‘nyoung gal wha bin lib ya.” That’s not borrowed language. That’s his voice—rooted in place, in pain, in pride.
No one taught me to hear that. I was born hearing it. It lives in my mother’s tongue. It echoes in the way my aunts tell stories, in the laughter of my cousins, in the hush of old Lowcountry roads. So don’t tell me someone else wrote The Great Battle. Don’t tell me Renty’s story needed translation.
I am the translation. I carry the language. I know the music of that voice because it’s in my blood.
The narrator of The Great Battle claims this story is a retelling: “I will try to tell the tale, but ‘if I chance to fall below Demosthenes or Cicero,’ it is due to my failure of memory and not to Renty’s lack of dramatic prose.” But that sounds more like a disclaimer than a dedication. An excuse to appropriate—not preserve.
It wasn’t uncommon for soldiers to publish memoirs. Smithfield’s Narrative, for example, was written by a Confederate veteran and is part of the XX Collection at the Colleton County Library in Walterboro, South Carolina. His story was published post-war, drawn from memory, just like Renty’s. This is not a story invented—it is a story remembered.
Old Massa was king of the property. Everyone bowed to him. He spoke to Renty in the harshest of tones. And I’m ashamed—not of Renty—but of the fact that he had to shrink himself, creep in the shadows of another man’s power. I’m ashamed because, in truth, I’ve done the same. I’ve softened my voice in boardrooms, silenced my truth to keep the peace, swallowed my fire so I wouldn’t get fired.
In some ways, I’m still learning how to be free.
That’s the lowest feeling in the world—to sense your own power, but doubt whether the world will let you hold it. It chips away at dignity. It devalues liberty. It’s not just a historical legacy—it’s a present wound.
I remember, years ago, rushing across Commonwealth Avenue, late for my Interpersonal Communication class. The building was a grand old mansion turned lecture hall. As I ran, I heard a voice inside me whisper: “Run harder—for the ancestors.” So I did. I was a first-generation college student, first-generation Northerner. I was just beginning to understand what that meant.
At my school, everyone came from someone. There was Cara DiBona, daughter of Vin DiBona. And then there was me—brown and chubby, carrying stories no one had ever heard before. But I had something. I didn’t know it then, but I know it now: I could listen.
Really listen.
And that’s a skill that matters. That’s why I believe Renty wrote his own story—because when you listen closely to The Great Battle, you hear not just events, but essence. The rhythm of the Gullah-Geechee tongue, the phrasing, the intimacy of speech—it’s all there.
Let me show you what I mean.
In the early pages of the story, Renty recalls a fight he had when “Old Maussa”—the narrator’s grandfather—was still alive. He describes organizing a game of “Stick,” a kind of fencing but with wooden staffs. There was a woman involved—someone Renty was courting. Another man, from Heyward, was also interested in her. Renty and this man, “Heyward Scipio,” came to blows.
Renty says, “’E play stick bery well.” That means the man was skilled. But Renty, never one to back down, says: “I bin de fust stick-player on de ribber.” And that river? That’s the Combahee—the only river that runs through Colleton County, the setting of the story.
He’s not just boasting—he’s locating himself. Placing his story on the land. Speaking names that matter.
And that name, Heyward Scipio, is telling. It’s not just a man’s name—it’s a mark of ownership. “Heyward’s Scipio.” That’s how slavery worked. That’s how people were named, claimed, and erased. But Renty? Renty claimed his story back. Not with fanfare, but with memory. With rhythm. With voice.
So again, don’t ask me to translate.
Just listen.