From Scotland to Charleston: bridging Gaelic and Gullah cultures

Scotland’s Makar Peter Mackay visited Charleston, South Carolina in early June to meet with representatives of the city’s arts and heritage sectors to explore a new partnership engaging African American communities, and Gullah-speaking people in particular.

The project began in August 2025 with a conversation at a First Minister’s reception in Bute House between Cabinet Secretary Angus Robertson and the SPL’s director Asif Khan with the former saying that, following discussions with the late Sir Geoff Palmer, he was looking to grow the diversity of the Scottish Connections diaspora to include African American people with Scottish roots and associations.

The SPL was invited to submit a proposal to the Scottish Government for a scoping visit to explore opportunities for readings and exchanges, initially fronted by our national poet.

The poetry library teamed up with the Calvary Icons Project in Charleston, a visual arts commission for America’s first independent Black episcopal church. The Icons team produced an engagement plan and programme for Mackay’s visit taking in the historic experience of Black communities in Charleston, the establishment and development of the Gullah language and meetings with poets, creative practitioners and senior arts administrators.

The programme commenced with a visit to Spoleto USA Festival where Scottish Ballet was performing Mary Queen of Scots at the Gilliard Centre. After the magnificent production, Mackay met with festival director Mena Mark Hanna, who said that there was a delegation of cultural leaders from Charleston who will be visiting Scotland in August to learn from Edinburgh’s festivals’ activities.

The following day, the Makar met with Hayley Tshiyoyo, events and engagement manager for the Scottish Government’s Washington DC office. They were given a tour of the Cavalry Icons studio by project manager Grace Wingfield, who gave a background to the commission with artist Graeme Mortimer Evelyn, and the stories of early worshipers at Calvary Church that were revealed through the discovery of early church records and archives.

Afterwards, Mackay was given a guided tour of the McLeod Plantation, the site of a former cotton slavery plantation, now designated as a Gullah Geechee heritage site. Gullah is the name given to a language and community of African-heritage people who speak a form of creole that possesses similarities with the patois/languages spoken in Jamaica and Barbados.

The McLeod family can trace their ancestry to John McLeod, from Inverness, who was captured in the first Jacobite uprising and shipped to the Carolinas as an indentured labourer in 1716. In all likelihood, John McLeod would have spoken Gaelic. Following the emancipation of the slaves after the Civil War, many would have adopted or kept the McLeod name. The tour guide spoke about the brutal conditions of life on a plantation and the horrors experienced by Black communities during the Jim Crow era that followed Reconstruction, when plantations were divided into share-crop holdings.

The Makar met with Sarah Moriarty, executive director of the Charleston Literary festival at their new French Quarter office. They discussed the opportunity of an event at the festival in November featuring Peter Mackay. The festival had programmed Irish writers in recent years, and Sarah was keen to showcase more international writers, including those from Scotland. They also spoke about ways in which minoritised languages are presented and the proposed event provided the chance to explore commonalities in the preservation and promotion of both Gaelic and Gullah cultures.

Peter also went on a walking tour of the Lost Stories of Black Charleston led by historian Damon Fordham. The tour took in places such as Cabbage Row, the inspiration behind Catfish Row featured the opera Porgy and Bess, and also the site of the Old Slave Mart on Chalmers Street. Peter later attended a special event at the Gaillard Centre to mark the first performance in Charleston itself of Porgy and Bess in 1970 (the opera debuted in Boston in 1935). Several of the original cast members were in attendance in support the funding of a new documentary entitled, Untold Story of Porgy and Bess. Renowned artist Jonathan Green spoke about the African-themed costumes and set pieces he produced in a pioneering adaptation of the opera in Charleston in 2016.

On his final day of the visit, Mackay met with Charleston’s most recent poet laureates, Marcus Amaker and Ashiah Mae. They discussed the role of a city laureate and the opportunities for local poets to showcase and develop their work at a time when the Spoleto festival and its sister fringe programme called Piccolo Spoleto were seeking to be more expansive in their programming. Peter attended Amaker’s lunchtime performance of Generatia, poetry set to the improvised music of Bill Carson and Ron Wiltrout.

Mackay rounded off his Charleston visit with a reading at Drummond Studios with poet and Gullah historian Kendra Hamilton. Kendra is the author of “Romancing the Gullah in the age of Porgy and Bess.” For most in attendance it was their first time of hearing Gaelic. Also in attendance was Kendra’s father, Lonnie Hamilton III, a famous saxophonist and a Charleston cultural icon.

It was a real honour to be in Charleston to explore the connections – historic and present, difficult and creative – between Scotland and South Carolina. There is obviously a complicated history between Scotland and the slave trade, as made manifest in the excellent work done in the McLeod plantation and by local historians like Damon Fordham to tell the stories of African Americans in Charleston, as part of the British Caribbean, through the antebellum years, and the times of Reconstruction and then the Jim Crow Laws. 

But the work of reclamation and joyous storytelling in the poetry of Kendra Hamilton, Marcus Amaker and Ashiah Mae, the music of Lonnie Hamilton and the art of Jonathan Green – as well as the widespread celebration of Gullah Geechee culture, and the vibrancy of the Gullah language – was a pleasure and inspiration to encounter, as a way of retelling and shaping a culture for the present and the challenges of ongoing legacies faced by Black communities in Charleston. It would be fantastic if there could be further links and bridges created across the Atlantic, to help understand the past and shape our futures.

Peter Mackay, Scotland’s Makar