| Clyburn sworn in with Gullah Bible
Monday, January 8, 2007
By Dan Huntley - Charlotte Observer
When Congressman James Clyburn, D-S.C. was sworn into the 110th Congress last week in Washington, he held his 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 has been instrumental in pushing a Gullah-Geechee Heritage Corridor Act through Congress over the past two years. The program will help preserve and protect historic Gullah-Geechee sites along the coast between Wilmington, N.C. and Jacksonville, Fla. Clyburn is not Gullah, but his wife, Emily, is a Gullah descendant. Clyburn's oath of office was administered by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Clyburn is the first South Carolinian and the second African-American to ever assume majority whip position in Congress.
Clyburn's Gullah Bible has a Charlotte area connection -- it was created in late 2005 at the JAARS Center, a Waxhaw, N.C.-based group that has translated the Bible into more than 610 languages.
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