Gullah Geechee Cult
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“The Ghosts are Dying.”
35-miles inland of North Carolina, South Carolina,
Althea N. Sumpter Georgia and Florida. Approximately one-million UNESCO defined intangible cultural heritage in 2003 in order to memorialize cultural contributions beyond objects, as those ancestral traditions, language, social, artistic, performing, culinary, craftsmanship and festivities. Gullah Geechee is the single distinctly African creole language in the US. On October 12, 2006 the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, a National Heritage Area, was inaugurated by the U.S. Congress. The goal of the corridor is to preserve and showcase the singular Gullah Geechee cultural manifestations over a 400year period. The corridor specifically maintains the language, arts, craftsmanship and cuisine that was an outgrowth of the enslaved Africans and their descendants, enforced labor on the isolated Sea Island plantations Visitors can immerse themselves in the lifestyles and view tangible, intangible and ongoing history at the 32 designated sites. #DiscoverSC The corridor consists of the Sea Islands and -94- | ExtendedWeekendGetaways ~ February, 2024
people live within the 12,000 square mile Gullah Geechee National Heritage Area. The Gullah have been identified as inhabiting the coast of North and South Carolina while those who live on Georgia and the Sea Islands and Florida’s coast are referred to as Geechee. In the early 1700s slaves were imported into the Low Country in small numbers but, spurred by the need for laborers, the 1790 census shows that 75% of Charleston’s population was enslaved. South Carolina’s crops, indigo, Carolina Gold rice and Sea Island cotton, required intense labor and enduring severe conditions. Two-thirds of the enslaved born in the Low Country did not live to become 16-years old. The vast majority were Africans from West and Central Africa captured because they already had rice growing and metalworking skills. The newly opened International African American Museum (IAAM) is located on Gasden’s
