b'Growing up, Gullah was the language I spoke withFouch Sheppard: I have foundmy mother and grandmother. I was born on Morris Street.that when I changed my perspective, We would go down to the corner of Morris and King where country people,I changed my condition.speaking all the dialects Africans developed on their plantations, brought fish and crops to sell. In my all-Black school, our teachersScan this QR code to watch the Chambers video taught us English as a second language so we would be able to testfeature celebrating her.well. In the third grade, my teacher would crack our knuckles with a short ruler if we replaced th with d or z. I have felt the scorn of others from speaking the Gullah dialect. I have felt shame and embarrassment. I knew I needed to get to the children of South Carolina in the school system to help them under-stand the genius and value of the language and culture. After years of administration work, it was my mother who helped me. I was performing at a Spoleto event at a packed Dock Street Theatre and Dr.Al Frasier was in the audience and was aware my mother was in the audience. He liked my mothers cooking. He requested that she sing one of the traditional Gullah songs in the middle of my show. She stole the show. After that, when she was 87, we became a mother and daughter team. We went up and down the coast. We were something else. I lost everything, including that strong sense of direction, in a home fire in 2012 when I was in my late 60s. Grieving, I came back to Chamber membership then. The invitation to join came at a time when I had become isolated and found it difficult to be in relationship with anyone. Because I was dealing with so much, I stayed in the background for a year, but I wanted to rekindle my poetry and storytelling as a full-time business. Being part of the Chamber, in the company of business leaders, helped me overcome my fears, anxieties and doubts. They make it possible to participate, ask questions and express concerns in a composed and safe environment.I first became involved in the Chamber in the 1980s. I was a legal assistant for a law firm that was the first African American organization to develop a partnership with the Chamber. We were fully embraced from the beginning and had a seat at the table with our voice. These were very fruitful years. Working on committees, we experienced first-hand the Chambers willingness to communicate, collaborate and contribute to the growth and continual development of the Charleston region. The Chamber had its own vision and ideas. Their willingness to sit down with lawmakers and members of the community made a big difference.The Chamber was focused on DE&I long before these terms became public domain, and this indicates how it really saw building small businessesgiving them a place to get information they might not get otherwisehelping them access banking and bankersit was important then and it is important now.There is a freedom in being almost 80. Im not interested in impressing anyone anymore. I ask people always, where is your heart? We deal so much from the head. We say we dont have anything against Black people, Hispanic people, white people, but we continue to judge by appearances before we have gotten to really know each other. We must be honest with ourselves and each other about this.34 CHAMBER RETROSPECTIVE250 YEARS'