Word, Shout, Song: Lorenzo Dow Turner – Connecting Communities Through Language

Event Details

Exhibit Hours: 10:00am -5:00pm Mon – Fri and Saturday from noon - 4pm (for the run of the exhibit).

Developed by the Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Community Museum, this beautiful and thought provoking assemblage of artifacts, photographs and text documents the life and work of Dr. Lorenzo Dow Turner, considered the first African-American linquist. The exhibit examines the visceral connections between African diasporan cultures on three continents: the Gullah-Geechee of South Carolina and Georgia; the Afro-Brazilian community of Bahi, Brazil; and the West African cultures from which the other two were born. Turner’s work brought worldwide attention to one of our nation’s most unique and hidden treasures: the Gullah culture. By cracking the linquistic code of the Gullah language of the Lowcountry, Dr. Turner garnered international attention to the sea island ways of life and validated Gullah culture and dialect as a complex Creole language melded from African, European and Native American languages.