“Now, scholars are always trying to tell us Geechee folk who we are. And some of what they say is good information and some of it is nonsense. Would you believe that some woman named Doris Witt, in her book Black Hunger, had the gall to tell Vertamae Grosvenor that she wasn’t a Geech? … I believe it takes either a mighty load of nerve or an equal measure of ignorance to tell a woman who her own people are. So be careful about what you read—leaven it with a few grains of salty, down-home common sense.”1
Kendra Hamilton, PhD, associate professor of English, Geechee from Charleston, SC
In the Lowcountry of the United States—particularly the coastal areas and Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia—rice was critical. “From the 1720s to the early 1860s, no other commodity was remotely as important to the region. Indigo, cotton, forest products, and manufacturing never came close to matching the riches that planters drew from their rice estates.“2 In order to produce the crop, enslavers would seek out and purchase Africans who came from specific rice-growing regions of West Africa. This was because the plantation owners relied on the agricultural skills and knowledge that these enslaved Africans had from generations of successful cultivation of rice on the shores of West Africa, as we will see in a later page of this site.
Due to this, many of the enslaved found themselves on island and coastal plantations of the Lowcountry with other Africans that had more closely-related cultures and languages than in other parts of the United States. For example, Sapelo Island off the coast of Georgia had one of the largest concentrations of Africans specifically from Sierra Leone—an area known for its peoples’ expert rice-growing knowledge—in the entire United States. 3 The descendants of these enslaved Africans are the Gullah and Geechee peoples of today.
Right: Cornelia Walker Bailey, legendary Geechee griot, sits on a bateau on Sapelo Island, Georgia.
(Left: “Shrimping.” Photograph. Savannah: undated. From Georgia Historical Society: GHS 2126-PH-01-04 pg005, James S. Silva family papers.
Right: Photo by Ben Gray for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.)
“The nature of their enslavement on isolated island and coastal plantations created a unique culture with deep African retentions that are clearly visible in the Gullah Geechee people’s distinctive arts, crafts, foodways, music, and language.”4
The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission
The Gullah and Geechee peoples of the Lowcountry are a culture that recognizes and appreciates the histories within their foods and foodways. In this culture, food, land, stories, the past and the present are intricately interwoven. Each facet leads to another, circling back upon themselves, simultaneously supporting and being supported by the others.
The Gullah and Geechee chefs featured in this website share their histories in a unique and impactful way. Through agricultural and food practices, they are able to bring the past into the present, to ensure the continuation of their knowledge and skill, adding a depth and flavor not found in your typical historical account.
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Footnotes
- Kendra Hamilton, “The Taste of the Sun: Okra Soup in the Geechee Tradition,” Callaloo 30, no. 1 (2007): 85.
- “Carolina’s Gold Coast: The Culture of Rice and Slavery,” Coastal Heritage Museum, S.C. Sea Grant Consortium, accessed March 27, 2022. https://www.scseagrant.org/carolinas-gold-coast-the-culture-of-rice-and-slavery/.
- Judith Ann Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation In the Americas (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). Cornelia Walker Bailey with Christena Bledsoe, God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks About Life on Sapelo Island (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 311.
- “The Gullah Geechee,” Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission, accessed March 22, 2021, https://gullahgeecheecorridor.org/thegullahgeechee/.