Gullah Geechee
This Sea Islands culture embraces the crafts, food and traditions of its ancestors’ rich history.
On a Charleston sidewalk, I caught my first glimpse of Gullah culture in the form of a sweetgrass basket. A centuries-old craft that originated in Sierra Leone, these intricate baskets are woven by people who use techniques passed down from generation to generation.
The Gullah Geechee people are descendants of West African slaves who were brought to work on cotton and rice plantations. They live on the islands and in the Lowcountry along the coast of the southeastern United States, dotting a 400-mile strip from Pender County, North Carolina, to St. John’s County, Florida. This area is known as the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor.
While they have preserved much of their African heritage and shared it with the world, the Gullah of South Carolina are disappearing, casualties of progress and development.
Today, fourth- and fifth-generation Gullahs (Geechee refers to Georgia islanders) bring to life their history by serving up flavorful dishes, weaving baskets from sweetgrass and sharing their heritage in museums and tours.
A LEGACY ENDURES
In November 1861, the Sea Islands came under Union control. Wealthy plantation owners fled, leaving more than 10,000 African Americans on their own. Beaufort County became the first place in the southern United
States where former slaves could begin to integrate themselves into free society. Those who stayed claimed land from abandoned plantations, opened businesses during Reconstruction and, as Jim Crow laws took hold, increasingly isolated themselves in communities along the corridor. Amid this shared experience, a new culture was born.
Like me, most visitors first encounter Gullah culture through sweetgrass baskets weaved along the sidewalks of Charleston. Historically, though, this artistry belonged to infirm men put to work weaving large utilitarian baskets for the plantations.
It was on a chance visit to Hilton Head Island’s Coastal Discovery Museum that I came across Gullah Sweetgrass Baskets Creations. Carrying on a proud family tradition, the gallery offers basket-making classes and a chance to watch these crafts being made by seventh-generation basket sewers Michael Smalls and Dino Badger. Using just two tools—a pair of scissors and a spoon or nailbone—the sewers follow no standard pattern. They showed me how the seagrass flows naturally into the shape of a basket. As each takes its own unique form,
Handmade sweetgrass baskets for sale at the Boone Hall Plantation (top, left); the Marsh Tacky Market Cafe on St. Helena Island (right).
they charmingly name each basket based solely on how it looks.
Incomprehensible to most, Gullah’s quick-paced Creole patois clearly has stood the test of time. A complex, singsong mashup of English and African languages from the residents’ native homelands, Gullah words can be traced back to tribes from the West African rice-growing regions of Senegal, Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, and as far afield as Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
As he shook my hand, Michael’s parting words, “We bin ya, they come ya,” left me with no doubts about his resounding sense of self and his strong Gullah bond. What Michael was saying was that the Gullah people belong here; the rest of us are just passing through.
It is only in recent years that the Gullah’s newly exhibited pride has been revealed to the rest of the world. Officially recognized as an international nation on July 2, 2000, today’s Gullah are starting to speak their dialect more proudly and to open businesses with “Gullah” or “Geechee” in the title.
SCENERY AND STORYTELLING
As I traveled to the northeast, illustrious towns of yesteryear hurtled by—including quaint Port Royal and charming Bluffton—delivering me to the graceful oak- and mansion-lined streets of Beaufort, one of only a handful of spots in the U.S. that has its entire downtown designated as a National Historic Landmark. My sanctuary for the night was the immaculate Beaufort Inn.
As a sorbet-hued dusk settled in the courtyard, a crowd gathered and a dynamic ensemble named the Gullah Kinfolk broke into a rousing musical performance. Sublime storyteller Anita SingletonPrather, backed by jubilant singing and dancing, channeled her native Sea Island grandmother as she recounted her slave ancestors’ long-anticipated freedom. Anita’s commitment to unveiling the Gullah way of life was intoxicating. I wanted more.
I found it on St. Helena Island. A welcome antidote to so many of today’s tourist-laden spots, I sensed a difference instantly as salty marshes perfumed the air. Flashes of a soft, long-ago South streamed past the car windows: clapboard cottages peeking out from pine forests, children waving at me from fields of wildflowers and Gullah farmers at the roadside selling their farm-to-table collards and corn from pickup trucks.
Here, the 50-acre Penn Center, founded in 1862, is one of the nation’s most historically significant