[Wisconsin]

30 years ago I worked running a mobile navigational radio station in locations all over the south.

I was born in South Carolina, my mother's family is from North Carolina, My father's from Memphis.I had little trouble with accents.

Then I had a location near Plain Dealing, Louisiana, just across the river from Texas. Predominantly a poor rural black population, I could not understand what they said, nor they, me. I had to have a translator -- the daughter of a black minister/famer who had worked in Los Angeles.

It was a strange experience. I have always wanted to see a linquistic study the area and to tell me the origin of the local dialect. I suspect it may have been an African language. It did not seem to be the creole one associates with Louisiana.

[wizardoz]

Did you find out anything about the origins of the population? Had they by chance come up from Central America somewhere?

[sanctumsanctorum]

What you were hearing was a dialect called Gullah, spoken by black people (and not a few whites) throughout the coastal South - all the way from Maryland down to Texas.
There are African elements in the speech pattern, but it is a dialectical variant of the English language.