Rep. Clyburn Sworn in With Hand on Gullah Language Bible

When U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., was sworn into the 110th Congress last week in Washington, he held is right hand on a Bible.

What was unusual was that it was a Gullah Bible.

Gullah is a Creole language born on Africa’s west coast in the 1600s and is still spoken by some slave descendants along the coastal islands of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. Gullah is known as Geechee from Savannah southward.

Clyburn’s Gullah Bible was created in late 2005 at the JAARS Center, a Waxhaw-based group that has translated the Bible into more than 610 languages.

Clyburn has been instrumental in pushing a Gullah-Geechee Heritage Corridor Act through Congress. The program will help preserve and protect historic Gullah-Geechee sites along the coast between Wilmington and Jacksonville, Fla.

Clyburn is the first South Carolinian and the second African-American to assume majority whip position in Congress.

Reprinted with permission from the Charlotte Observer. Copyright owned by the Charlotte Observer.