**Gullah Geechee**

**History, Language, Society, Culture, and Change**

**Since scholars are not in agreement as to the origins of the terms
Gullah and Geechee, the vernacular use of the terms will suffice for the
purpose of this study. Gullah people are, therefore, those located in
coastal South Carolina and Geechee people are those who live along the
Georgia coast and into Florida. Geechee people in Georgia refer to
themselves as Freshwater Geechee if they live on the mainland and
Saltwater Geechee if they live on the Sea Islands. In some circumstances
the term "Geechee" has been used as a blanket term to describe people
who live in the Low Country, regardless of ethnicity. "Geechee" has also
been used in a derogatory manner to show disdain for an
African-American, from the Low Country region, regardless of specific
location.**

**Gullah/Geechee people of today are descendants of enslaved Africans
from various ethnic groups of west and central Africa who were forced to
work on the plantations of coastal South Carolina, Georgia, North
Carolina, and Florida. Gullah/Geechee people are survivors - unique
groups of African-Americans who lived near the coast and on barrier
islands that were separated from the mainland by creeks, rivers, and
marshes. Because of their geographic protection from outsiders and
strong sense of family and community, Gullah/Geechee people maintained a
separate creole language and developed distinct culture patterns, which
included more of the African cultural tradition than African-American
population in other parts of the United States.**

**The isolation of these sea island communities from outsiders was vital
to the survival of Gullah/Geechee community cultures. Although
Gullah/Geechee people traveled to and from the mainland and to nearby
islands, outsiders seldom came into their communities, especially after
the Civil War. The isolation of Gullah/Geechee people which began in
colonial times in response to tropical fevers later became an isolation
of choice. People chose to come back to their homes, their families,
their language, and their way of life - a slow-paced life among majestic
trees, tidal marshes, and dirt roads traversed by ox and mule carts -
places where small boats, horses, mules and feet were the primary forms
of transportation. Thus, within these rural communities, people were
able to maintain their language, arts, crafts, religious beliefs,
folklore, rituals and food preferences that are distinctly connected to
their West African roots. The islands were accessible only by boat until
the first bridges were built around 1950.**

**Coastal development, changing job markets, and population shifts have
forced many Gullah/Geechee people to leave their ancestral family lands.
The traditional economy of farming, fishing, hunting, and small-scale
marketing of subsistence products has been replaced by a suburban and
resort service economy. These changes threaten Gullah/Geechee cultural
survival and their distinct identity as a people who have survived since
colonial times.**

**Many traditional Gullah/Geechee communities have been lost to real
estate development, encroachment by outsiders, and the resulting
economic hardship. The remaining communities have become models for
understanding negative as well as positive impacts of burgeoning tourism
and large scale economic development in coastal regions of the American
South. Despite the losses of recent decades, the Gullah/Geechee people
remain a testament to the power of human adaptability and survival amid
major stresses and assaults from many fronts in the rapidly changing
economic environment of the modern world.**

**The first inklings of massive impacts on post-Civil War Gullah/Geechee
cultural stability came during the 1920s and 1930s when wealthy
industrialists from the North discovered the abundant wildlife and mild
winter climate of the Low Country and adjoining islands. Magnates, such
as Bernard Baruch, R. J. Reynolds, Howard Coffin, and Tom Yawkey, bought
failed rice plantations from their bankrupt owners and established
hunting lodges for themselves and their friends. In some cases
Gullah/Geechee people who were living on this land were allowed to
continue their farming and/or work for the new landowner, while other
new owners forced black people from the land.**

**With land ownership tangled in years of subdivision of property among
families and inheritance of land without recorded wills (heirs/
property), Gullah/Geechee people could not prove their ownership rights
to their home sites. As years passed and more people died in testate,
the property became more entangled in communal ownership. Many were
forced from their land and/or the land and waterways where they had
traditionally farmed, hunted and fished to supplement their tables and
their incomes.**

**The pressures began even earlier for Gullah/Geechee people who were
involved in commercial fishing. Proximity to the sea fostered an early
tradition of seafood harvesting, ranging from cast netting to
small-scale commercial shrimp boats. Economic gain from catching and
selling seafood began before the end of slavery and continued into the
20th Century. The African-American shrimping fleet was a major factor in
the development of commercial fishing in the region. Competition came
from more sophisticated fishermen with greater capital resources.
According to Benjamin Blount (2000) the formerly self-sustained
Gullah/Geechee fishing boat captains were largely replaced by others and
their role reduced to that of laborers in the fishing industry.
Pollution from the expanding timber industry, recent catastrophic
hurricanes, and pressures on commercial fishing worldwide have also
contributed to further decline of the maritime economy of Gullah/Geechee
people.**

**The military has also played a significant role in the process of
change. The Marine Training Center at Parris Island in Beaufort County,
South Carolina, was constructed during the 1880s. During World War II,
traditional Gullah/Geechee lands in McIntosh County, Georgia, were used
by the federal government for coastal defense purposes.**

**The great transformation, however, began in 1957 when Charles Frasier
launched the construction of Sea Pines Plantation on Hilton Head Island.
The availability of air conditioning suddenly made the sea islands
appealing to affluent people. It was not very long before other
developers joined in, and resorts sprang up all over the island.
Although only about 20% of the island was actually owned by
Gullah/Geechee residents, much of the remaining land was owned by
absentee landlords who allowed free access to their property. The
absentee landlords quickly sold out to developers. Between l950 and
2000, the South Carolina Low Country counties increased by 151% while
the national population as a whole increased by only 86%.**

**Before construction of Sea Pines Plantation, Gullah/Geechee residents
had been free to hunt and fish all over Hilton Head Island. Suddenly
fences and gates blocked much of the land. Residents were cut off from
their hunting and fishing grounds as well as their traditional burial
grounds. Fences meant that Gullah/Geechee islanders could no longer "go
in duh creek" to get supper. The Sea Pines story has been repeated many
times over on islands all over the study area. Nick Lindsey, local
historian, asked an old friend on Edisto to talk about the differences
between the "old days" and today (2000).**

> ***Everything change up now. In the old day, money? Take him or leave
> him, be all right. Now? Must have him now. Everything change up
> now.***

**Novels such as *The Water Is Wide* and others by Patrick Conroy (1972)
expressed the distinctive beauty of his beloved Carolina coast in a way
that appealed to people worldwide. Although it was not the author's
intent, the popularity of these stories hastened the influx of people to
the area. There was a resulting population shift on the Sea Islands from
the traditional rural black majority to an affluent white majority. This
change brought intensified racial prejudice and segregation to islands
where Gullah/Geechee people had lived for years in relative isolation
from the outside world. Although Daufuskie Island, which Conroy called
Yamacraw in his novel, still has no bridge to the mainland, but nearly
half of the island has been lost to resort development. The delineation
between resort and rural agriculture is dramatic.**

**Resorts, golf courses, and coastal suburban development on the islands
led to steadily increasing property values and skyrocketing taxes.
Island economies changed from rural subsistence farming to a
service-based economy. Native islanders were often unable to bear the
tax burden, and many were forced to leave their homes. Not just Gullah/
Geechee people but all islanders of modest means, black and white, have
been adversely affected by the rising taxes caused by development and
population growth.**

**With the loss of land and easy access to fishing and hunting, came a
loss of Gullah/ Geechee self sufficiency and autonomy. Displaced and
landless Gullah/Geechee people increasingly turned to hourly labor,
out-migration, or both. Although some islanders chose to remain in the
vicinity to work in the resort industry, they soon found that only
minimum wage service sector jobs were available to them. Low income
forced these resort workers to face ever-increasing commuting distances
required to find affordable housing.**

**During the 1960s, as the number of outsiders relocating to the islands
rose to a peak, there was a second major out-migration of Gullah/Geechee
people to the North. They were essentially pushed from their homeland by
loss of land for agriculture, lack of job training, lack of skilled
jobs, and few opportunities for advancement (Lemann 1992). Many of these
people sent their children home to the islands in the summertime, so
that the youngsters could get to know their relatives and experience the
simplicity of island life. Others, however, may have forever lost the
connection to their ancestry and culture. It is interesting to note that
some of the people who left in the 1960s are now returning to their
roots and are among the most active in trying to preserve Gullah/Geechee
community and tradition. Some of the "returnees" spoke with the field
research team and expressed a strong, almost irresistible, spiritual
need to return to their ancestral roots in the Low Country.**

**The construction of Interstate 95 in the mid 1970s was a major factor
in the transformation of coastal zones. I-95 is the New York to Miami
corridor and is thus one of the most heavily traveled interstate
highways in the United States. Coastal regions of the study area, other
than specific resort developments, were still relatively remote and
isolated until after the construction of I-95. The highway not only gave
easy access to Hilton Head Island and its neighboring resorts in South
Carolina, but also created access to pristine islands and beaches.
Development along I-95 in Georgia has been slower to occur, perhaps
because the highway lies along the inland edges of great salt marshes.
These marshes are likely to be viewed by uninitiated tourists as
"swamps", rather than as the highly productive ecosystems that they, in
fact, are. Almost 50% of the remaining salt marsh along the eastern
seaboard of the United States lies along the Georgia coastline and much
of it is currently protected by government agencies.**

**The Sea Islands are not the only areas at great risk. Mainland
Gullah/Geechee communities are also threatened by increasing coastal
development and population growth with the resulting encroachment into
rural neighborhoods. Once there were several postbellum freedmen
communities in or near Mt. Pleasant, SC, in upper Charleston County.
Among these are Phillips, Greenhill, Snowden, and Scanlonville.
Greenhill and Snowden, though surrounded by suburban development, appear
to be holding their own. Both Scanlonville and Phillips are under
serious threat and have sought help from the South Carolina Department
of Archives and History to be designated as Historic Neighborhoods. Both
communities have been thwarted in their preservation efforts by the lack
of standing historic structures at least fifty years old, as ordinarily
required for National Register status.**

**Scanlonville was formed as a voluntary association of freedmen, who
sought to be landowners. Robert L. Scanlon purchased the 614-acre Remley
Plantation at auction and held the land in trust for the Charleston Land
Company. By 1870 the land had been platted into home sites, farm lots,
and a communal park and cemetery. The cemetery has been approved for
listing on the National Register of Historic Places, but cannot be
officially listed until a lawsuit involving the property is resolved.
Developers want to move the graves so that the historic site can be used
as waterfront residential property (Trinkley 2001), which would
effectively eliminate the historical significance of the property under
existing criteria of the National Historic Preservation Act. Both
Scanlonville and Phillips have been thwarted in their preservation
efforts by the lack of historic structures.**

**National Significance of the Gullah/Geechee People and Their Culture**

**The Gullah/Geechee people of the Low Country and Sea Islands of South
Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina are a distinctive people.
They are also the only African American population of the United States
with a separate, long-standing name identifying them as a separate
people. They are distinct among African American peoples in this
development of a tradition that depends as much upon maritime resources
as upon land resources. Historically they are speakers of the only true
African American creole language of the continental United States.**

**Gullah/Geechee people are the most African of African Americans in
physical type, language, and culture; yet they are a uniquely American
cultural type formed by the fusion of African cultural heritage and
American experience. Through the diffusion and expansion of their
population, the Gullah/Geechee people have become the source for many
elements noted in other African American cultures. Of all African
American cultures in the United States, the folk customs, oral history
and literature, crafts and arts of the Gullah/Geechee people show the
strongest continuities with indigenous cultures of Africa. The
Gullah/Geechee culture also bears strong similarities to creole and
maroon cultures of the Caribbean.**

**In many respects the Gullah/Geechee cultural region directly parallels
that of the Afro-Carib Garifuna people of Belize. The "cultural space\"
of these Garifuna people was selected in 2001 by UNESCO, the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, as a
Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, a
distinction for which the Gullah/Geechee people themselves might qualify
(Global Garifuna Network, Electronic Document; UNESCO, Electronic
Document).**

**Thus, Gullah/Geechee cultural heritage, eating habits, cooking styles,
music, language and traditions have made significant contributions, not
only to the lives of southerners but also to all Americans. Recognizing
the pivotal place that Gullah/Geechee people, language, folklore, and
culture have occupied in African American scholarship.**