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 As many know I went to South Carolina this past March 2008.  I was following the old anti-bellum " Slave History, " of the American past.  In the above photo I am standing next to the " Angel Oak," on James Island off the coast of  Charleston, South Carolina.   James Island is where the great Jewish Jazz man George Gershwin studied black Americans for his Broadway hit Porgy and Bess-------and other black-American music lines for his music.

Gershwin rented a beach house from a black family on James Island while he went to " Cabbage Row, " to study the black-Americans.   How wonderful !

While on James Island----- I prowled the many Slave Plantations, with many slave cabins still there-----and the ghosts of slaves who's stories have long since ( lost ) to American History.  As I moved through James listening to my black-guide it was plain to see the " black Slaves " of the region were NOT the happy darkies portrayed in Showboat/or Porgy & Bess.

These were some fighting/ and people who would poison the Master and his family.  Sounds like my kind of Folks, had I been in the same position.This Angel Oak tree is a great  tourist attraction on the island, besides it's many slave plantations, and descendants of Gullah/ Slaves from West-Africa, who worked the farms, and rice fields.  This Oak tree sprawls for about almost a city block.  Park  Officials say this tree is over ( 1400 ) hundred years old. If you use a time  line, you can understand this Angel Oak was around before Columbus,  before many great events in Europe.  Branches of this Angel Oak-----  ramble left and right------ with trunks so large the Park rangers use metal  braces to hold the branches up.  

This tree knew Native Kiawah Indians  who hunted and roamed these islands long before the first African Slaves were brought to work ( rice ), and long before the first Spaniard ever laid eyes on this part of the New World.  At the Military Fort the " Citadel " you  also see trees almost this old-------with Spanish moss hanging from it's limbs. South-Carolina was one of the places in America where some of the largest Slave rebellions occurred in the American South.   I would image large Oak trees like this were meeting places for Native Americans/or African slaves plotting to run away/or slaughter every white planter on the island.  From trees like this-------meeting places would start, or settlements would begin, even cities would spring up around old trees like this.  Traveler's in colonial times in America or African would leave letters to be delivered by anyone who passed, items were often left by trees like this to be delivered by anyone who passed in days of old.  In America and some places in the world--- large wise trees like this also acted as ( markers/or Landmarks ) for travelers traveling from here to there on this earth.   Pirates like " Blackbeard " who sailed the many islands of the Carolina's kept supplies/guns/and sometimes treasure by large wise-trees like this huge Angel Oak tree.  God almighty I was glad to meet this old-beautiful Angel Oak tree this past March 2008.God almighty !  At my age now. . . I try to look at the earth everywhere I go-------even in my hometown Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Not even Jesus the man lived for fourteen hundred years, I thinked he was murdered at the age of 33 years.  I don't think I would like to live for 1400 hundred years at all. Never !

artist/ african-diaspora traveler/ cultural speaker:

Gerald Duane Coleman

Media & News ________Gerald Duane Coleman