Category Archives: Gullah/Geechee Ourstory
Celebrate Gullah/Geechee Art, Music and Living History from Charleston to Beaufort County, SC!
De Gullah/Geechee riddim gwine caah we frum Chucktown ta Hilton Head Island and Port Royal, SC! As September turns to October, de Gullah/Geechee Famlee waan hunnuh fa jayn we! Gather with us in celebrations of art, music, foodways and remembrance throughout the South Carolina Lowcountry of the Gullah/Geechee Nation. Each gathering is an opportunity to support native Gullah/Geechee people who are keeping our cultural traditions alive.
Gullah/Geechee Nation Coastal Challenge Update
On the South Carolina Coast: A Tree Saved, a Cultural Overlay Challenged, and Data Centers Given a Path Forward
Monday, September 14, 2026 brought a flood of consequential local-government action along the South Carolina coast. The outcomes were not as simple as “win” or “loss.” The Beaufort County Council did not vote on St. Helena Island’s Cultural Protection Overlay, but the latest Pine Island challenge is moving toward the Planning Commission. In Charleston County, a redesign kept the Sol Legare witness tree standing, but the approved driveway will still enter its critical root zone. In Colleton County, Council did not approve construction of a particular data center; it adopted the comprehensive-plan, zoning-text, and zoning-map changes that make future data centers much easier to permit.
Here is what happened, what did not happen, and what you can do next.
HEADS UP! Protect the Gullah/Geechee Nation’s Coast!
Two counties. Two critical meetings. One coast to defend.
Monday, September 14, 2026, is a critical day for the future of the Gullah/Geechee Nation’s coast!
While Beaufort County Council prepares to discuss yet another attempt to remove Pine Island from the Cultural Protection Overlay District protecting St. Helena Island, Colleton County Council will consider regulations that could determine whether massive data centers gain a foothold in the rural ACE Basin.
These meetings overlap. Therefore, we need the Gullah/Geechee famlee, environmental justice advocates, landowners, preservationists and everyone who values the South Carolina Lowcountry to divide forces and fill both council chambers.
We cannot sit silently while destructioneers repeatedly attempt to wear down the laws that protect our land, water, culture and quality of life.
Honoring the Peaceful Rest of Our Gullah/Geechee Ancestors: Queen Quet Leads the Gullah/Geechee Sacred Site Protection Project
Approximately 3,200 individuals have now been identified within 50 of the 52 known burial sites on St. Helena and Warsaw Islands. Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, is undertaking the enormous work of researching these individuals through the “Gullah/Geechee Sacred Site Protection Project,” a collaboration between the Beaufort County Planning Department and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition.
This is far more than a cemetery survey. It is an act of remembrance, cultural preservation, historical restoration and sacred responsibility.
Living Water, Living Legacy and Living Resistance: September in the Gullah/Geechee Nation
September begins with prayer, but prayer must move our feet, strengthen our voices and guide our hands into action. Throughout this month, the Gullah/Geechee Nation will be filled with opportunities to worship, celebrate, learn, remember, organize and defend the sacred Sea Island homeland.
From Combahee to Angola: A Gullah/Geechee Journey in the Footsteps of a Souljah
We gathered. We protested. We poured libation. We demanded that the ancestors be properly acknowledged, studied with dignity and returned to the earth. We fought against allowing another building to erase them beneath concrete and steel.
As I stood beside the African mother, father and child represented there, I felt protected. I felt a throng of ancestors standing with me as I touched the baby’s hand.
Black Philanthropy and Sowing into Gullah/Geechee Land and Legacy
Here in the Gullah/Geechee Nation from Jacksonville, North Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida, our ancestors transformed the Sea Islands and coastal lands into places of cultural continuity, spiritual grounding, economic independence and self-sufficiency. After centuries of enslavement, they purchased land, built praise houses and schools, established farms and fisheries, and created family compounds in which Gullah/Geechee traditions could thrive.
Today, the same land that sustained our ancestors is under tremendous pressure from escalating taxes, heirs’ property disputes and partition sales, destructionment, climate change impacts, cultural exploitation and displacement. When Gullah/Geechee land is lost, we lose more than acreage. We lose access to sacred burial grounds, fishing and farming traditions, family compounds, community gathering spaces, native foodways, linguistic landscapes and the living environment in which our culture has endured. This is why Black Philanthropy Month must move us beyond celebration and into action.
Gullah/Geechee Nation Appreciation Week 2026: Hunnuh Mus Tek Cyare de Root fa Heal de Tree
Throughout the Gullah/Geechee Nation stretching from Jacksonville, North Carolina down to Jacksonville, Florida and inland to the St. Johns River, lies a rich cultural legacy that has endured for centuries. Every year during late July and early August, communities across the region come together to celebrate Gullah/Geechee Nation Appreciation Week.
Saving de Gullah/Geechee Witness Tree at Sol Legare
The center of the Gullah/Geechee Nation’s flag is embossed with a Gullah/Geechee family tree that consist of human bodies that are intertwined and rooted in the soil of the Sea Islands. The oak tree is a powerful symbol within Gullah/Geechee culture—mirroring the sacred tree rooted at the very center of the Gullah/Geechee Nation’s national flag. Protecting it represents a refusal to allow the physical markers of our heritage to be erased. “Save James Island” folks have made it clear: “You can’t replant history.” The historic live oak tree at Sol Legare cannot simply be replanted either. It is truly a witness to what our ancestors of Sol Legare went through and now it is a witness to the encroaching destructionment no longer in the distance across the creek from Mosquito Beach but right under its own branches. However, like native Gullah/Geechees, webe de tree planted by de rivers of wata. We shall not be moved!
Purposeful Planning of the St. Helena Gullah/Geechee Multipurpose Center
Thirty years ago, I made a conscious decision to ensure that St. Helena Island would be the base of operations for the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition which is the oldest organization in world history that has “Gullah/Geechee” in its name. When I founded, the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition, one of our missions was to ensure that authentic Gullah/Geechee culture would be supported not simply verbally but politically and financially. So, I am sure that the ancestors that were fighting to protect St. Helena from being destroyed by a four to five lane highway expansion and against what I consider “destructionment” were smiling when the Beaufort Open Land Trust purchased the parcel of land at the intersection of Sea Island Parkway and Polowana Road in order to secure it for the St. Helena Island community. That parcel could have been a supermarket, the library location or the post office location since all of these were proposed in the past. Now there is a feasibility study being done for this to be the location of the St. Helena Island Gullah/Geechee Multipurpose Center which many natives of St. Helena Island requested years ago.