The Bard of the Santee: Archibald Rutledge and the Spirits of Hampton Plantation

 

The article below explores the connection between a Southern poet and an Intergalactic philosopher. It is a look at the landscape that inspired Rutledge and the poetry that captured the "majestic" spirit Sun Ra.

The Bard of the Santee: Archibald Rutledge and the Spirits of Hampton Plantation



​When Archibald Rutledge returned to Hampton Plantation in 1937, he found a world that felt disconnected from modern time. The following image captures the atmosphere of the Santee River delta as he described it—haunting, ancient, and filled with a natural power that Sun Ra would later interpret through a cosmic lens. 

Rutledge’s Poetry and the Sun Ra Connection

​Sun Ra often looked for "vibrations" in text that spoke to a higher discipline or a connection to the divine. While Rutledge wrote hundreds of poems, certain themes in his work likely resonated with Ra’s "Myth-Science" philosophy.

​1. The Theme of Natural Mastery

In poems like "The Brave Deceiver," Rutledge wrote about the hidden wisdom of nature. Sun Ra, who believed that "Nature is the signature of God," would have appreciated Rutledge’s depiction of the natural world as a complex system of codes and survival.

​2. The Concept of the "Ancient Soul"

In his collection "Deep River," Rutledge often wrote about the Black inhabitants of the Santee with a sense of mystical reverence. One of his common poetic themes was the idea that these individuals possessed an "ancient peace" that the modern, industrial world had lost.

​Sun Ra's interpretation: Ra likely viewed this "ancient peace" not as a simple folk trait, but as proof of an extraterrestrial or "primordial" origin—a leftover of the "Cosmic Man" before he was trapped by Western "History."

​3. "The Sanctuary"

Rutledge wrote a famous poem (and later a book) titled "The Sanctuary," which described the plantation as a place of refuge from the "chaos of the world."

​The Parallel: Sun Ra viewed his Arkestra and his teachings as a "Sanctuary" or a "Space Place" where Black people could go to escape the "Land-Guage" and terrestrial laws of America.

​Bridging the Two Worlds

​Sun Ra’s use of Rutledge’s work is a classic example of "Ra-ology"—the ability to take a text from a traditional, even reactionary source, and "flip" it to serve a revolutionary, Afro-futurist purpose. By presenting a white Southern poet’s awe of Black spiritual power to his Berkeley students, Ra was saying: "If even the master of the plantation is forced to bow to the majesty of your spirit, imagine what you could do if you realized your true place in the Cosmos."

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