A beam of white light illuminated actor Anita Singleton-Prather’s face. “War was on the way,” she said, addressing the audience.
Portraying a formerly enslaved African in heaven, Singleton-Prather wore a white dress and held a large wooden staff. “Folks was asking us, what side we was going to fight: red or blue?” she said, referring to the Continental Army’s blue uniforms and the British army’s red coats during the American revolutionary war. Both sides implored enslaved Africans to fight by offering them freedom, which was rarely granted. She was joined on stage by a chorus of Black singers also clad in white who served as holy angels. They repeated her words as though they were a church congregation engaged in call-and-response.
“I’m fighting for freedom for me and you,” Singleton-Prather said. The patriots and loyalists had one thing in common, she added. “Both sides lie.”
So goes a scene from Da’ Gullah American Revolutionary Experience, a new historical fiction play and musical by the South Carolina-based non-profit Gullah Kinfolk Traveling Theater Inc. The performance retells the American revolution from the Gullah Geechee perspective, the descendants of formerly enslaved Africans in the south-east US.
In the play, formerly enslaved Africans in heaven decide whether historical figures, such as enslavers George Washington, can enter the pearly gates. Singleton-Prather, the CEO & artistic director at Gullah Kinfolk Traveling Theater Inc, acts as the narrator, a Sierra Leonean child named Priscilla who was enslaved by South Carolina’s Ball family in real life. She wrote the play to highlight the often untold contributions of Black people in the American revolution.
Da’ Gullah American Revolutionary Experience premiered in July 2025 and will be performed again on 18 July 2026 in Bluffton, South Carolina. Singleton-Prather hopes that viewers recognize the American founders’ hypocrisy of upholding enslavement as they fought for independence from the British.
“Even now in America today”, she said, “until we work for freedom and equality for everybody, everybody is still in bondage.”
‘I ran so my people could fly’
Da’ Gullah American Revolutionary Experience was commissioned by and has received about $150,000 in funding from the SC American Revolution Sestercentennial Commission (SC250). The group was established by the South Carolina legislature in 2019 to commemorate the state’s contributions to the American revolution.
“Part of our charter from the legislature is to ensure that all voices are told in the story of South Carolina’s role in winning the American revolution,” said Molly Fortune, CEO of SC250. Fortune hopes the show will continue to tour the country to show the Gullah Geechee’s contributions to the state.
“The reason that South Carolina was one of your wealthiest colonies … is due to the labor, the rice, the indigo,” Fortune said. “And it’s not just the labor, it’s the food, it is the culture that comes over that becomes so ingrained within the South Carolinian psyche and music and clothing.”
When she began researching the topic to write the play, Singleton-Prather found scant information about Black South Carolinians in the 1700s. She worked backwards by researching white enslavers such as General Francis Marion and farmer Eliza Lucas Pinckney, and then identifying the Africans whom they enslaved. Singleton-Prather learned that an enslaved man, John “Quash” Williams, helped Pinckney produce the indigo crops that she later became famous for.
“Behind every great man is a great woman,” Singleton-Prather said, “but behind every so-called great American revolutionary war hero, there’s some Africans somewhere.”
One of her greatest challenges was capturing the complex feelings for Black people who remained enslaved after the US gained its freedom. “The first Fourth of July, we probably weren’t enjoying no picnic. We were probably still working in the alligator swamps of the rice fields, or picking the long fiber Sea Island cotton until our fingertips were bleeding,” said Singleton-Prather, a Gullah woman born and raised in South Carolina. “How do you tell the story and honor the 250th without trying to sugarcoat stuff?”
The play highlights the hypocrisy of enslavement by depicting European immigrants who fled persecution in their home nations only to oppress marginalized groups in the US. One scene features Paris O’Ree, a boy of African descent who was enslaved by a well-known French Huguenot family in South Carolina.
“Master, you remember you and your family was French Protestants come here from a foreign country to escape cruelty, violence,” the fictional O’Ree said in the performance. He wore a straw colored hat and short trousers. “Come right here and do the same things to we colored people.”
“I ran,” the fictional O’Ree said on stage, flapping his arms to mimic a bird in flight, “so my people could fly.”
In real life, O’Ree escaped slavery at 15 years old and traveled to Charleston to fight for the loyalists during the revolutionary war. After their loss, the British evacuated O’Ree and other formerly enslaved Africans who fought for them to Canada.
“They were on the losing side. They didn’t feel like there was a real opportunity for them,” said Robert Adams Jr, South Carolina’s Penn Center’s executive director and one of O’Ree’s descendants. The Penn Center was one of the first schools for formerly enslaved people in the US and now preserves Black history and promotes social justice.
“Canada probably needed some of these bodies,” Adams said, “to help develop what had been a really vast territory”. Willie O’Ree, the first Black National Hockey League player, is another one of O’Ree’s descendants.
Keonda Grant Taylor, who plays the enslaved woman Ona Judge, said the performance helped her connect to her Gullah roots. Grant Taylor and her family continue to live on Oaks plantation on St Helena Island, where her ancestors were once enslaved hundreds of years ago.
“It really brings me back home,” said Grant Taylor, who also works in finance. “I get a chance to speak my dialect in a way that I can’t do from nine to five.”
Judge served as the maid for George Washington’s wife, Martha Washington, until she escaped while they ate dinner on 21 May 1796. In the performance, Martha Washington seeks to gain entrance into heaven, but she’s questioned by St Peter, one of Jesus Christ’s 12 apostles. When Martha Washington asks her former maid to vouch for her, Judge recounts the dehumanizing experience of being promised to her granddaughter as a wedding gift.
After watching the performance, audience members sometimes tell Grant Taylor that they are inspired by Judge’s legacy. “The children come up to me and say, ‘I’m going to be strong too, and I’m not going to let anybody treat me in any kind of way,’” Grant Taylor said. “It’s a really beautiful experience, someone knowing their worth.”
The performance also helped the actor Alison Chambers, who played Pinckney, come to terms with her own family’s ties to enslavement. During her undergraduate studies in history, Chambers was taught that Pinckney was a successful businesswoman who had popularized indigo. Her view of Pinckney grew more complicated over the past few months, as she learned that enslaved Africans helped build her empire.
In February, Chambers was disheartened to discover through census records that one of her ancestors enslaved Africans. “I was very upset with the things I learned about [Pinckney],” Chambers said, “and also upset with the things I learned about my own family.”
She sees the performance as a cautionary tale for America’s next 250 years. “It needs to be told, because we need to know where we come from,” Chambers said. “We also need to make sure we don’t repeat any of this.”
Da’ Gullah American Revolutionary Experience allowed Singleton-Prather to hold the US accountable for its past wrongdoings, she said, while celebrating the resilience of marginalized communities. “When I look at the true patriots of the American revolutionary war, it’s not George Washington, it’s not Francis Marion.” Singleton-Prather said.
“It’s those Blacks and Native Americans that fought for freedom knowing that they themselves would be denied. They are the true patriots.”
