The Gullah Geechee people are direct descendants of enslaved Africans who picked rice, indigo and the distinctive Sea Island cotton prized by traders in Manchester. What makes the community unique is its connection to a shared culture that began to form in the 18th century, when plantation owners in low-lying coastal areas decided that rice could be profitably grown there. The planters engaged in a brutal slave trade. They sought out African people who had particular expertise in rice cultivation in west Africa, capturing them and forcing them into enslavement to produce rice on their plantations.
Even before “emancipation” at the end of the US civil war, many Gullah Geechee people lived in relative isolation on the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina, away from absentee landowners who often left overseers in charge of their plantations, especially in the malarial rainy season. For generations, these enslaved Africans maintained their shared culture through music, language, religion, food and knowledge of the land and sea.
To help preserve this historic corridor, which includes a 475-mile stretch of coastal land and islands, the US Congress designated it a national heritage site in 2006. More than 200,000 Gullah Geechee people, some of whom speak Gullah, a mix of English and west African languages, still live in the corridor along the Sea Islands. It is where Black people long sought refuge from “buckra”, a west African word for white people that was originally used in the Sea Islands and the Caribbean to refer to slave masters.
But all along this heritage corridor, Gullah descendants are still battling to preserve their history, language and land against a wave of gentrification and displacement. In Savannah, Gullah descendants are fighting to preserve quarantine sites where English slave ships first arrived from west Africa in 1766 with 78 enslaved Africans. In Hilton Head, South Carolina, a Sea Island that attracts millions of tourists, the fight is to stop developers building luxury resorts atop Gullah land and cemeteries next to the sea. On Sapelo Island, off the Georgia coast, which is not accessible by car – descendants of the enslaved are fighting to retain their property.
“Our African cultures are so evident in our way of living and have been intact and passed down generationally,” said Victoria Smalls, the executive director of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. “It’s important to preserve this culture because it was our ancestors that built America, brought the wealth to America and in many cases have not been recognised.”