Gullah Geechee Heritage in the Golden Isles

by Amy Lotson Roberts, Tyler E. Bagwell (Foreword)

The Golden Isles are home to a long and proud African American and Gullah Geechee heritage.
Ibo Landing was the site of a mass suicide in protest of slavery, the slave ship Wanderer landed on Jekyll Island and, thanks to preservation efforts, the Historic Harrington School still stands on St. Simons Island. From the Selden Normal and Industrial Institute to the tabby cabins of Hamilton Plantation, authors Amy Roberts and Patrick Holladay explore the rich history of the region's islands and their people, including such local notables as Deaconess Alexander, Jim Brown, Neptune Small, Hazel Floyd and the Georgia Sea Island Singers.

Genres: History

160 pages, Paperback

Published August 12, 2019

Reviews

[Dana Sweeney · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really excellent local history of Gullah Geechee culture in coastal Georgia, covering St. Simons Island, Jekyll Island, Brunswick, and surrounding areas. There is such rich, layered, urgent history rooted in this region, filled with both sorrows and triumphs, depravity and genius: it is the home place of Robert Abbott, founder of the fearless, indispensable Black newspaper, the Chicago Defender; origin of the Georgia Sea Island Singers, whose songs were recorded in an old schoolhouse by Zora Neale Hurston, Alan Lomax, and Mary Barnicle one hot night in 1935, and which now reside in the Library of Congress; Ibo Landing on St. Simon’s Island, a site where in 1803 a number of West African Ibo people decided they would rather drown than become enslaved; St. Ignatius Church, the place where the amazing St. Anna Ellison Butler Alexander became the first Black deacon in the Episcopal Church; the Jekyll Island landing site of The Wanderer, one of the last ships to transport people from West Africa into slavery, decades after it had been made illegal in the United States; and so, so much more.

I learned a tremendous amount from this slim volume — which is saying a lot, as someone who grew up in the area and has interest in local history! Amy Roberts and Dr. Patrick Holladay have done a great public service by gathering and documenting all of this history. I also learned how much of this history and living Gullah Geechee communities are endangered by developers along the Georgia coast. There is so much preservation work to be done.

My only disclaimer is that I would probably not recommend this book to the casual reader; it is focused on a lot of local, nuts and bolts history. As a reader from the area with a great deal of interest in the subject, I thought this level of detail was fantastic. I suspect that more casual readers might find parts of it dry. So, consider yourself forewarned.

But on the whole: really, really excellent. So glad I picked it up.

[Ashley Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. As someone who was born and raised in the Golden Isles, there was so much history I didn’t know or wasn’t taught. At the same time, much of it was familiar to me like taking summer swimming lessons at Selden Park.

[Stephen Doster · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a great contribution to the body of work documenting the history of Coastal Georgia. Well done!