Resources
Learn more about the the history behind season one of Curious Roots and the Gullah Geechee people.
Community
Local and national organizations
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The Coalition to Save Butler Island Plantation & House is a group of concerned citizens, environmentalists, naturalists, storytellers, and architects who are trying to keep the Butler Island Plantation & House from being sold to private interests.
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Led by Queen Quet, Chieftess and Head-of-State for the Gullah/Geechee Nation, the Gullah Geechee Nation’s mission is to preserve, protect, and promote our history, culture, language, and homeland and to institute and demand official recognition of the governance (minority) rights necessary to accomplish our mission to take care of our community.
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Sabreee's Gullah Art Gallery is dedicated to educating and preserving the Gullah culture through Sabreee's artworks. Her Gullah artworks are inspired by her growing up on a large farm with 15 siblings. Each picture tells a story that can be healing and heartfelt for anyone willing to connect with the Gullah culture.
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Ujima Geneaology of Coastal Georgia is a network of people researching African American families from Chatham, Bryan, Liberty, McIntosh, Glynn, and Camden counties. Founded by Terri Ward, Adolphus Armstrong, and Michele Nicole Johnson.
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The Harris Neck Land Trust, officially established in 2006, is the organization that represents all the surviving African American families that lived on Harris Neck until 1942. The Trust was created by and is comprised of former Harris Neck community members and their descendants. It is the central and guiding unit of the Harris Neck Justice Movement, the effort to achieve long delayed justice for the people of Harris Neck.
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SOLO's mission is to preserve the culture, heritage, and traditions of the Saltwater Geechee people. We work to achieve food sovereignty by leveraging partnerships to modernize farming practices and expand agricultural development and economic opportunities for the people of Hog Hammock.
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Krak Teet is a nonprofit organization based in Savannah with a mission to get more folk to krak teet about their personal and family history in their own language and dialect. We fulfill our mission with oral histories, workshops, speaking engagements, and articles about local black history and culture—what ain’t taught in schools or textbooks.
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All Things Gullah fosters the preservation, perpetuation, and celebration of Gullah Geechee Culture, Community, and Craft. Through a comprehensive and continual system of engagement and education, All Things Gullah leads an inclusive network of partners, institutions, and residents in achieving a vision of cultural restoration and preservation.
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Hunnah! That’s the word for “Welcome” in the Gullah language created by enslaved Africans brought to the Sea Islands off South Carolina during Colonial times. So Hunnah to the Gullah Museum! We’re located in historic downtown Georgetown, South Carolina. The Gullah Museum offers presentations on Gullah Geechee history, crop cultivation, animal husbandry, distinctive arts, crafts, foodways, music, style of worship, naming practices, and language.
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The Gullah Museum of Hilton Head Island was established by Native Islander Louise Miller Cohen in 2003. We will participate in various events in the Lowcountry, providing lectures and displays of artifacts. Our motto is that we are"Dedicated to maintaining Gullah customs, traditions, language, stories, songs and structures on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina," The Gullah Museum of Hilton Head Island is to revive, restore and preserve the Hilton Head Island Gullah history for the benefit of all – lest we forget. The museum has shown as a community catalyst for the providing context and understanding of Gullah culture’s influence on Hilton Head Island.
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Gullah Geechee Adventures With Ms. Akua: In this web series, we'll be exploring different elements of Gullah Geechee culture from language, to food systems and much more. New episode drops every Friday at 7:15pm Subscribe so you don't miss out!!!
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The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor is a National Heritage Area and it was established by the U.S. Congress to recognize the unique culture of the Gullah Geechee people who have traditionally resided in the coastal areas and the sea islands of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
Books
Fiction and nonfiction books. Book purchase links support Black
and Indigenous bookstores. You can also find all of these books at your local library
Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes
Georgia Writers' Project
Praisesong for the Widow
Paule Marshall
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison
Almanac of the Dead
Leslie Marmon Silko
Vibration Cooking
Vertamae Grosvenor
An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States
Kyle T. Mays
Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Robin D.G. Kelley
When Roots Die: Endangered Traditions on the Sea Islands
Patricia Jones-Jackson
God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man
Cornelia Bailey
The Healing Wisdom of Africa
Malidoma Patrice Somè
An Indigenous People’s History of the United States
Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz
Praying for Sheetrock
Melissa Fay Greene
Mama Day
Gloria Naylor
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
Carol Anderson
Papers
Academic papers and newspaper articles
Empowering the Gullah/Geechee Economy
Makada Henry-Nickie, Regina Seo
Gullah Geechee Indigenous Articulation in the Americas
Sharon Y. Fuller
Video
Visual storytelling and learning
The Language You Cry In tells an amazing scholarly detective story that searches for -and finds- meaningful links between African Americans and their ancestral past. It bridges hundreds of years and thousands of miles from the Gullah people of present-day Georgia back to 18th century Sierra Leone.
Family Across the Sea is Roots - retold as an historical and linguistic detective story. It traces how scholars have uncovered the connection between the Gullah people of South Carolina's Sea Islands and the people of Sierra Leone.
Harris Neck Community Members Testify before the Subcommittee On Fisheries, Wildlife,Oceans And Insular Affairs Of The Committee On Natural Resources U.S. House Of Representatives One Hundred Twelfth Congress First Session Wednesday, December 15, 2011
Nightline report: S. Carolina's Gullah Geechee face land loss from climate change, development Gullah Geechee, descendants of some of the first African slaves in the U.S., have lived and farmed South Carolina's Sea Islands for generations but persistent flooding is threatening their identity.
A Vanishing History: After the Civil War, many former slaves on the Sea Islands bought portions of the land where their descendants have lived and farmed for generations. That property, much of it undeveloped waterfront land, is now some of the most expensive real estate in the country.
Daughters of the Dust is a 1991 independent film written, directed and produced by Julie Dash. Set in 1902, it tells the story of three generations of Gullah (also known as Geechee) women in the Peazant family on Saint Helena Island as they prepare to migrate off the island, out of the Southern United States, and into the North.
The South Carolina Gullah -United Shades of America Kamau Bell visits the Gullah (also known as Geechee), an African American community spread around the coast of South Carolina (and Georgia) that has its own traditions, language and culture similar to that of the creole-speaking communities.
Fox 5 Atlanta report: The future of Georgia's Gullah Geechee communities-The Gullah Geechee people are the descendants of West and Central Africans who were enslaved and bought to North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia to work on the coastal rice.
Music
Sonic storytelling from the spirit
McIntosh County Shouters
The McIntosh County Shouters are the renowned performing artists of the authentic ring shout. It is North America’s oldest living African American musical tradition. The ring shout was part of the Gullah-Geechee culture formed by enslaved people brought from West Africa to the coastal regions of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Florida.
Georgia Sea Island Singers
The Georgia Sea Island Singers are an American folk music ensemble from Georgia, United States. Formed in the early 1900s, the group is formed of African Americans who travel performing songs and other elements of the
Gullah culture.
Marlena Smalls and the Hallelujah Singers
Marlena Smalls founded The Hallelujah Singers in 1990 to preserve the Gullah culture of the South Carolina Sea Islands. She is a sacred music vocalist, also singing gospel, contemporary, jazz and blues. Her programs for schools, reunion and meeting groups incorporate lecture, music and Gullah storytelling.