Lorenzo Dow Turner: Father of Gullah Studies
by Margaret Wade-lewis

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Summary of Lorenzo Dow Turner: Father of Gullah Studies

Beginning with Turner's upbringing in North Carolina and Washington, D.C., Wade-Lewis describes the high expectations set by his family and his distinguished career as a professor of English, linguistics, and African studies. The story of Turner's studies in the Gullah islands when he was forty, his research in Brazil when he was fifty, his fieldwork in Nigeria when he was sixty, and his teaching and research on Sierra Leone Krio for the Peace Corps when he was in his seventies add to his stature as a cultural pioneer and icon.

Drawing on Turner's archived private and published papers and on extensive interviews with his widow and others, Wade-Lewis examines the scholar's struggle to secure funding for his research, his relations with Hans Kurath and the Linguistic Atlas Project, his capacity for establishing relationships with Gullah speakers, and his success in making Sea Island Creole a legitimate province of analysis. Here Wade-Lewis answers the question of how a soft-spoken professor could so profoundly influence the development of linguistics in the United States and the work of scholars--especially in Gullah and creole studies--who would follow him, herself included.

Turner's widow, Lois Turner Williams, provides an introductory note and linguist Irma Aloyce Cunningham provides the foreword.

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