{"id":2551,"date":"2019-10-23T10:25:20","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T14:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/pcca\/?p=2551"},"modified":"2023-04-07T14:10:23","modified_gmt":"2023-04-07T18:10:23","slug":"reconnecting-with-heritage-the-peace-corps-and-cultural-identities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/pcca\/reconnecting-with-heritage-the-peace-corps-and-cultural-identities\/","title":{"rendered":"Reconnecting with Heritage: The Peace Corps and Cultural Identities"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tWhen President Kennedy signed the Executive Order to establish the Peace Corps in 1961, he sought to \u201cencourage mutual understanding between Americans and people of other nations and cultures.\u201d Kennedy\u2019s words echoed in the ears of those who lived during a decade of social tension and Cold War anxieties. Since the 1960s, the Peace Corps has trained and placed more than 235,000 volunteers, all joining for their own personal reasons: for peace, to improve the lives of others, and to learn new cultures. Several volunteers: Carolyn Gullat, Clinton Etheridge, Yancy Garrido, Shawnette Brandt, and Amina Johari, shared their desire to benefit the countries of their ancestors and reconnect with their heritage.<\/p>\n

Carolyn Gullat<\/strong> is a Black Peace Corps Volunteer from Washington, D.C. She served as a teacher in South India from 1966-1968. Gullatt describes her choice to join the Peace Corps in an interview from Jonathon Zimmerman\u2019s \u201cBeyond Double Consciousness: Black Peace Corps Volunteers in Africa, 1961-1971,\u201d featured in the December 1995 issue of the Journal of American History<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cFor most of her own college career, Gullatt recalled, she had dismissed the Peace Corps as \u2018for whites only.\u2019 Then she met a Black recruiter, who \u2018didn’t run down the usual jive propaganda about how nice it is to help people.\u2019 Instead, \u2018he talked about how I, as a Black person, could get ‘home’ and join with the Brothers and Sisters\u2019 abroad, where \u2018people have grown into Black pride naturally, where Black power is the status quo, and Black action is a working reality.\u2019<\/p>\n

“\u2019Each year the Peace Corps sends hundreds of white ‘do-gooders’ to ‘help’ Black and Brown people throughout the world,\u2019 Gullatt complained. \u2018Black Americans owe it to themselves and to the Brothers and Sisters in developing countries to get up and get involved.\u2019 – Page 1000, interview with Carolyn Gullatt by Donald M. Feeney, c.1971.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Clinton Etheridge<\/strong> joined the Peace Corps in 1970 and became the first African-American PCV to serve in Gambia, West Africa. Read more about Etheridge’s experience in an interview with Peace Corps Worldwide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a secondary school math teacher in Peace Corps Gambia from 1970-1972. I grew up in Harlem, came of age during the Civil Rights Movement, and was a black student leader at Swarthmore College in the late 1960s. Like many young blacks of that generation, I wore an afro and dashiki and was \u2018black and proud\u2019 and fascinated with Africa. I joined Peace Corps Gambia seeking my own answer to the question \u2018What is Africa to me?\u2019 posed by Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen in his 1925 Heritage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started out asking the question, \u2018What is Africa to me?\u2019\u2026Then I asked the question, \u2018What am I to Africa?\u2019 when that Latrikunda schoolboy told me he didn\u2019t have the math book to do the homework with because his father was \u2018a poor Gambian farmer.\u2019 Then, as a Stanford SEED business coach, I came to the conclusion that, moving forward; an important question will be \u2018What is Africa to the world?\u2019\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWhat is Africa to Me?<\/a>\u201d National Peace Corps Association, June 4, 2018.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yancy Garrido<\/strong> was born to Cuban parents who immigrated to the United States during the Cuban Revolution. Between January 1987 and August 1990, Garrido served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras within a community mental health program. In his interview with the Oral History Project<\/a> at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Garrido explains his personal desire to serve in Latin America.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m the son of Cuban refugees. My parents left Cuba because of the Cuban Revolution. Actually, would probably have never met if it had not been for the United States because my mother was the daughter of Batista\u2019s diplomatic photographer\u2014no one of high importance in the government, but still in the government\u2014and my father cut sugar cane on a farm\u2026But they met in New Jersey. And so, always in my mind was just being thankful for living in the United States. For having opportunities that I never would have had. So it was always in my mind, \u201cHow could I give back?\u201d\u2014not necessarily Peace Corps at the time, but to Latin America and represent my country\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the Peace Corps Volunteer came, the way they spoke about the experience was exactly what I wanted\u2026The way it was pitched, I never thought Peace Corps was going to appeal to me\u2026Once I spoke with the volunteer\u2014they went \u201cNo, no, no\u2014don\u2019t get stuck with the messaging. You\u2019re really going and working another country and you are trying to see if you can add value. And, if all goes well when you leave you\u2019ll have helped establish something and people will continue that project without you.\u201d The idea was to help get things started, not to actually take the place of someone. Because the last thing I wanted to do is take someone\u2019s job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I applied, and of course my professors did not want me to go. They were grooming me to go get my doctorate and go be a professor of Spanish literature. My parents did not want me to go because they said \u201cWe left Latin America for you. Why are you going back?\u201d But I went, and it\u2019s the best decision I ever made in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n