They grew okra, yams and African red peas, cooking them with rice, seafood and wild game into spicy gumbos. Because of their long isolation, the Gullah-Geechee people have kept more of their African roots than any other black group in the United States, according to William Pollitzer, professor emeritus of anatomy and anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Their language is also unique. But for how much longer, no one is sure. Causeways arch across the marshes to several sea islands.
Highways crisscross once-rural coastal counties as migration to the Sun Belt continues.
Strangely, the success of the civil rights movement prompted many Gullah-Geechees to leave the small communities where they had scratched out a living. And, in the wider world in the 1960s, some became ashamed of their old ways. It's called Geechee. Some people call it Gullah now, and people praise it now. But they used to make fun of us back then.