Gullah Geechee culture developed in a landscape shaped by water, marshes, Sea Islands, rivers, creeks, forests, and coastal farmland.
For generations, Gullah Geechee families have lived and worked in communities along the southeastern coast. The land and water were not simply the background to everyday lifeβthey helped shape how people worked, traveled, grew food, gathered plants, fished, built communities, and passed knowledge from one generation to the next.
People learned when the tides changed, where certain plants grew, where to fish and gather seafood, how to farm coastal land, and how to use the natural resources around them.
Much of this knowledge was learned through experience:
Watching. Listening. Helping. Remembering. Teaching.
The water helped sustain them.
And generations learned how to live with both. πΎ
Along the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida are many islands known collectively as the Sea Islands.
For generations, these islands have been home to Gullah Geechee communities. Places such as St. Helena Island in South Carolina and Sapelo Island in Georgia are especially important in Gullah Geechee history and culture.
Because many island communities were historically separated from larger mainland populations by waterways and limited transportation, geographic isolationβalong with strong family and community connectionsβhelped Gullah Geechee people maintain and develop distinctive cultural traditions.
Language, foodways, farming and fishing knowledge, spiritual traditions, music, storytelling, craftsmanship, and family and community practices were carried forward across generations.
The waterways surrounding the Sea Islands could make travel to the mainland more difficult, but water also connected communities.
People traveled by boat, fished and gathered seafood, worked along rivers and creeks, and developed deep knowledge of tides, marshes, and coastal waters.
The Sea Islands were not isolated from the worldβbut their geography played an important role in the development and preservation of Gullah Geechee culture.
They are home to generations of Gullah Geechee history, family, and culture. πΎ
For generations, Gullah Geechee people living along the coast developed deep knowledge of the rivers, creeks, marshes, tides, and ocean waters around their communities.
Knowing the water could help families understand when and where to fish, crab, gather oysters, travel by boat, and safely move through coastal waterways.
Coastal water does not stay at the same level all day. Tides rise and fall, changing shorelines, creeks, marshes, and the places where people can travel or gather food.
Learning the tides could mean knowing when a creek was deep enough for a boat, when certain areas were exposed, or when conditions were better for gathering seafood.
Experience taught people about the places around them:
π¦ Crabs β understanding the creeks, marshes, and tidal waters where blue crabs can be found.
π¦ͺ Oysters β knowing where oyster beds grow and how changing tides expose them.
π Fish β learning which waters, seasons, tides, and conditions may bring different fish.
π¦ Shrimp β learning coastal waters and seasons and developing skills such as using a cast net.
Much of this knowledge could be learned by going with someone who already knew.
A child might accompany a parent, grandparent, relative, or community member and learn by watching:
Where do we go?
What do we look for?
When is the tide changing?
What should we leave alone?
How do we do this safely?
Over time, those experiences could become knowledge that the next generation would carry.
Sometimes you learn by going with someone who knows. πΎ
For many Gullah Geechee families, land is more than property.
Land can be the place where a family built a home, raised children, grew food, gathered together, worked, worshiped, and created memories across generations.
During the Civil War and in the years following Emancipation, some formerly enslaved people and their descendants were able to acquire land in coastal communities and on the Sea Islands.
In places such as the South Carolina Sea Islands, Black families purchased land during the Civil War-era tax sales and in the years that followed. Landownership could provide families with a place to live, farm, build communities, earn a livelihood, and pass something valuable to future generations.
Over generations, some of that land remained within families.
The value of family land cannot always be measured only in dollars.
A piece of land may hold:
π³ Generations of family history
π An ancestral homeplace
π± Gardens and farmland
π Access to creeks, marshes, or fishing grounds
π§Ί Access to plants used in cultural traditions
β€οΈ Memories and connections to the people who came before
Today, Gullah Geechee communities face pressures that can make keeping ancestral land difficult, including rising property values and taxes, coastal development, heirs' property challenges, and development pressure.
When ancestral land is lost, a family may lose more than acreage. Communities can also lose access to places where cultural knowledge and traditions have been practiced for generations.
Land can be livelihood.
Land can be memory.
Land can be legacy. πΎ
Gullah Geechee culture is connected to the places where generations of people have lived, worked, gathered, and built communities.
When coastal land changes, the culture connected to that land can be affected too.
Development, changing coastlines, severe weather, rising costs of keeping property, and loss of access to traditional gathering places can create challenges for Gullah Geechee communities.
Protecting culture can therefore mean protecting more than stories and traditions.
It can also mean caring for the land and water that helped those traditions grow.
Think about what we've already learned:
π§Ί Sweetgrass baskets need natural materials and places where those materials can be gathered.
π¦ Fishing, crabbing, shrimping, and oystering depend on healthy coastal waters and access to them.
π± Farming and gardening traditions depend on land.
ποΈ Historic communities need places where families can continue living and passing traditions forward.
π‘ Family land can connect generations to the places their ancestors lived.
When those places are protected, communities have a better opportunity to continue the traditions connected to them.
You don't have to own land or be an adult to care about protecting Gullah Geechee places.
You can:
Learn the history of your community.
Listen to elders and family stories.
Respect marshes, waterways, plants, and wildlife.
Discover where your family comes from.
Share what you learn with others.
Support the people and communities keeping Gullah Geechee traditions alive.
πΎ Preserve the knowledge.
β€οΈ Carry the culture forward.