Lorenzo Dow Turner (August 21, 1890 – 1972) was an African American linguist who did seminal research on the
Gullah languageThe Gullah language is a creole language spoken by the Gullah people , an African American population living on the Sea Islands and the coastal region of the U.S...
of coastal South Carolina and Georgia.
Born in
Elizabeth City, North CarolinaElizabeth City is a city in Pasquotank and Camden counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. The population was 17,188 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Pasquotank County and the principal city of the Elizabeth City Micropolitan Statistical Area....
on August 21, 1890, Turner was the youngest of four sons of Rooks Turner and Elizabeth Freeman. His father completed his masters degree at
Howard UniversityHoward University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States....
even though he did not begin first grade until he was twenty-one years old.
Lorenzo Dow Turner (August 21, 1890 – 1972) was an African American linguist who did seminal research on the
Gullah languageThe Gullah language is a creole language spoken by the Gullah people , an African American population living on the Sea Islands and the coastal region of the U.S...
of coastal South Carolina and Georgia.
Early life
Born in
Elizabeth City, North CarolinaElizabeth City is a city in Pasquotank and Camden counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. The population was 17,188 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Pasquotank County and the principal city of the Elizabeth City Micropolitan Statistical Area....
on August 21, 1890, Turner was the youngest of four sons of Rooks Turner and Elizabeth Freeman. His father completed his masters degree at
Howard UniversityHoward University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States....
even though he did not begin first grade until he was twenty-one years old. His mother gained the education allowed to black women at the time (six years). Two of Turner's brothers earned degrees in medicine and law. Turner's family background provided the inspiration that helped him achieve great academic success.
Academic career
Turner earned a master's degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. in English literature from the
University of ChicagoThe University of Chicago is a private, coeducational research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by oil magnate and benefactor John D...
. He taught at Howard University from 1917 to 1928, and during his last eight years, he served as Head of the English Department. After leaving Howard, he founded the Washington
Sun newspaper which closed after one year. From 1929 to 1946 he served as Head of the English Department at
Fisk UniversityFisk University is a historically black university founded in 1866 in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. The world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers started as a group of students who performed to earn enough money to save the school at a critical time of financial shortages. They toured to raise funds to...
where he designed the curriculum for the African Studies Program. In 1946 he began teaching at
Roosevelt UniversityRoosevelt University is a private institution of higher education with full service campuses in Chicago's Loop and northwest suburban Schaumburg...
in Chicago where he was Chairman of the African Studies Program and cofounder of the Peace Corps training program for preparing young volunteers for service in Africa. Turner retired from Roosevelt in 1967; and after his death in 1972 a junior high school in Chicago, the Turner Drew Language Academy, was dedicated to him (and Charles Drew, an African American scientist who invented a technique for the storing of blood).
Gullah research
Lorenzo Dow Turner is best remembered as the father of Gullah studies. His interest in the
Gullah peopleThe Gullah are African Americans who live in the Low Country region of South Carolina and Georgia, which includes both the coastal plain and the Sea Islands...
began in 1929 when he first heard
Gullah speakersThe Gullah language is a creole language spoken by the Gullah people , an African American population living on the Sea Islands and the coastal region of the U.S...
while teaching a summer class at
South Carolina State CollegeSouth Carolina State University is a historically black university located in Orangeburg, South Carolina. It is the only state funded, historically black land-grant institution in South Carolina and is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund....
(now University). Although established scholars at that time viewed Gullah speech merely as a form of substandard English, Turner sensed that Gullah was strongly influenced by African languages, and he set out to prove it. For the next 20 years, he made trips to the Gullah region in coastal South Carolina and Georgia, interviewing Gullahs (often in isolated locations) and making detailed notes on their language.
When he finally published his classic work
Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect in 1949, Turner made an immediate impact on established academic thinking. His study of the origin, development and structure of Gullah was so convincing in its detail that scholars quickly accepted his thesis that Gullah is strongly influenced by African languages. Many scholars have followed Turner over the years in researching the African roots of Gullah language and culture, and he is credited with launching this new field of study.
Lorenzo Dow Turner was strongly influenced by the American linguistic movement which he joined at its inception. Through his Gullah research he on gave shape to several academic specialties: Gullah studies,
dialect geographyDialectology is the scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features...
and
creole linguisticsA creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates from a mixture of various languages. The lexicon of a creole usually consists of words clearly borrowed from the parent languages, except for phonetic and semantic shifts...
.
Turner died in 1972.
Sources
- Wade-Lewis, Margaret (1988) "Lorenzo Dow Turner: First African-American Linguist," Philadelphia: Temple University, Institute of African and African-American Affairs, Department of African-American Studies.
- Wade-Lewis, Margaret (2007) "Lorenzo Dow Turner: Father of Gullah Studies," University of South Carolina Press.
External links