The Society for the Preservation of Spirituals Gullah Geechee Collection

Abstract

Since the antebellum period, the Sea Islands region of South Carolina and Georgia has been an ideal environment from which to obtain undisturbed artifacts of plantation life. Scholars attribute this cultural richness to the geographic isolation of these small islands, which extend along the coastline from Charleston, South Carolina, to Savannah, Georgia, and the large numbers of Black inhabitants who were descendants of West and Central Africans.1 More-over, white plantation owners moved to the mainland during the malarial summer months, leaving the enslaved even more isolated. Such conditions enabled enslaved Africans to retain much of their storytelling, basket weaving, artwork, music, foodways, medicinal herbs, and language traditions, known today as Gullah Geechee culture. Most scholars believe the term Gullah is a corruption of Angola, the home of many of the enslaved, while Geechee refers to a former settlement of freed Blacks living near the Ogeechee River in Georgia.