Ossabaw Island: Culture Preserved on the Coast of Georgia

The barrier islands that line the Georgia coast offer special opportunities to explore history and culture of the American South. Ossabaw Island, about twenty miles south of Savannah, has a rich history that can teach us many lessons about survival, freedom, and perseverance.

Ossabaw is the third largest barrier island of Georgia, according to the Ossabaw Island Foundation, which promotes and manages educational and scientific programs on the island. Not linked to the mainland by bridge or causeway, the island is used by colleges, universities and researchers as an “unspoiled living laboratory for monitoring environmental changes over time and for learning from one another in a setting where humans lightly tread.”

For example, the foundation has presented programs with the Georgia Historical Society on interpreting the Gullah/Geechee heritage. The Gullah/Geechee people were enslaved Africans captured from the rice-producing regions of Senegambia, Angola, and Sierra Leone in West Africa and brought initially to the port of Charleston. When Georgia removed its ban on slavery in 1750, many West Africans were brought to Ossabaw Island and other parts of coastal Georgia as enslaved labor.

On the island are three restored tabby cabins built in the 1820s-1840s by skilled enslaved labor. The cabins were the homes for enslaved families who worked the fields and tended livestock. The buildings were later used by their descendants who worked as sharecroppers for the island’s owners. To create tabby, a cement-like material, the enslaved workers mixed oyster shells, sand, and water with lime from burned shells, according to Paul Pressly, Director of Ossabaw Island Education Alliance. Other examples of early life on the island that are less visible are now being uncovered by scholars.

For example, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has conducted investigations at North End Plantation, one of the plantations where indigo, rice, and sea island cotton were grown, to develop an archaeological record of enslaved Africans at that part of the island. The earliest human artifacts found on Ossabaw date to more than 4,000 years ago when Native Americans inhabited the island. Records of early Spanish explorers (who left hogs that became feral and produced offspring that still survive 400 years later) indicate that a Guale Indian village called Asapo was probably located on Ossabaw. In the 1730s the British began to occupy the area, although an early English treaty reserved the island as a hunting and fishing area for Creek Indians. However, the Creek in 1758 (25 years after Savannah and the colony of Georgia were established) were forced to convey the island to King George II.

In the decade before the American Civil War, almost 300 enslaved people called Ossabaw home, according to Allison Dorsey, professor of history at Swarthmore College, with whom I visited the island as part of a workshop. During the war, Union General William T. Sherman confiscated the Ossabaw plantations as part of his March to the Sea campaign. In the spring and summer of 1865, under the authority of Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15, the plantations were redistributed in 10- to 40-acre allotments to former U.S. Colored Troops soldiers and emancipated blacks. The field order was in response to Sherman’s meeting in January 1865 in Savannah with black leaders who convinced him that true freedom required ownership of land “to turn it and till it by our own labor.” However, the U.S. government revoked the order and returned the land to its Confederate owners in January 1867, thus ending the hope of freedmen to start life anew on Georgia’s sea islands.

The Ossabaw Island Foundation sponsors several events each year, including a Gullah Geechee day trip in the spring so participants can learn about the African roots of enslaved and freedmen families who lived on the island from the early 1800s through the mid-20th century, although the island is no longer inhabited by African Americans. In the late 1890s after severe hurricanes, island residents began moving to the mainland and established the Pin Point community (where U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was born in 1948).

In 1978 the state of Georgia acquired the Ossabaw. The island has now been set aside as the Georgia’s first Heritage Preserve, which restricts its use to natural, scientific and cultural study, research, and education. However, the island, with 26,000 acres of forest and tidal marshland, is still listed as one of America’s 11 most endangered historic places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

When I visited the island as part of a workshop on African American culture and history conducted by the Georgia Historical Society for the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ossabaw seems more than 20 miles and minutes away from modern America. I hope to return one day and learn more about its rich history.

Sapelo Island: Preserving the Past and Studying the Forgotten

The Georgia coast and its barrier islands have been invaluable for recording and preserving information about the people and cultures of the American South. Islands such as Sapelo, about sixty miles south of Savannah, are treasures of Geechee-Gullah heritage; the sea islands were also early scenes of vibrant African Muslim communities whose traces have faded over time. Even with a documented historical importance, only a few locations have been protected for future generations (and sometimes unintentionally by unknowing stewards).

Gullah-Geechee Heritage

The Gullah-Geechee were taken from the rice-producing regions of Senegambia, Angola, and Sierra Leone in West Africa and brought to rice plantations of the American South as enslaved labor. They were brought to Sapelo in 1802 when Thomas Spalding, who introduced the cultivation of sugar cane and manufacture of sugar to Georgia, began buying portions of the island and created several plantations (which included a sugar mill) operated by as many as 400 enslaved workers in cotton, sugar cane and livestock activities.

The porous soils, temperate climates, tidal influences, and saline atmosphere of Sapelo and its marshes are ideal for the cultivation of rice and Sea Island cotton, according to Buddy Sullivan, manager of the reserve when I visited as part of a workshop on African American culture and history conducted by the Georgia Historical Society for the National Endowment for the Humanities. In fact, the freshwater rivers of the Carolina and Georgia coastal areas permit rice cultivation to thrive, particularly as alternating cycles of flooding and draining fields (skills brought by enslaved West Africans to the Atlantic coast) are repeated; this coastal system was later adopted by the planters on large river plantations.

The 1860 census indicates that the Spalding family had 252 enslaved residents living in 50 cabins. Following the American Civil War, the freedmen created several communities throughout Sapelo, although only Hog Hammock now remains. This community, home to about 50 Gullah-Geechee descendants, includes the historic Behavior Cemetery and the First African Baptist Church that traces its origins to 1866. Because Hog Hammock no longer has its own school (the last one closed in 1978), children take the ferry to the mainland and then a bus to school.

Accessible by only ferry or airplane, the island is remote. Because the Gullah-Geechee were so isolated, many generations were able to preserve their distinct culture. When I visited Sapelo, I met Cornelia Bailey, storyteller and folklorist, who wrote about growing up on the island and preserved many Gullah-Geechee memories in her book God, Dr. Buzzard and the Bolito Man. “We still drink, love, hate, and remember we are still living for our ancestors,” says Bailey (who traces her lineage back to an African Muslim named Bul-Allah, the head enslaved manager for Spalding) in her essay “I Am Sapelo.”

Islamic Heritage

Although the First African Baptist Church congregants continue to worship on the island, what has faded is awareness of how significantly Sapelo and neighboring coastal islands constituted the largest assembly of African Muslims in early North America. Such knowledge is the result of painstaking research by scholars such as Michael Gomez, professor at New York University, who describes the Muslim presence in the coastal American South as “active, vibrant, and compelling.” As Gomez points out, of the 388,000 Africans brought into British North America during the Atlantic slave trade, more than 224,000 came from regions influenced by Islam.

By analyzing interviews conducted by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s and related family narratives, Gomez has identified how many practices of enslaved Africans show a picture consistent with serious pursuits of Islam, such as attempts to adhere to Islamic dietary requirements, observance of Muslim feast days, and other elements of Muslim life, such as prayer mats, veiling, and daily ritualized prayer. The longing of many to preserve their religion and culture is also shown by the pattern among American-born enslaved to carry Muslim names and retain vivid memories of their ancestors’ religious practices, even as the number of Christian converts increased. In addition, Gomez has confirmed Sapelo as an important Muslim community based on listings of enslaved Africans when plantations were sold as well as advertisements for enslaved runaways. (Names are clearly Muslim such as Mustapha, Sambo, and Mamado.) Other research by the Georgia Historical Society substantiates the Islamic influences in early African communities on the southeastern U.S. coast.

Protection

What protected Sapelo from the boom of coastal real estate development, the fate of some islands such as Hilton Head, S.C., that also share the Gullah-Geechee heritage? Several islands were acquired by wealthy Northerners in the fifty years after the American Civil War. The story of Sapelo is similar to Ossabaw and a few other islands whose purchase protected them from the typical development. For example, in 1912, Howard E. Coffin, a Detroit automotive pioneer, purchased all of Sapelo from its various owners except for the African American communities. During the Great Depression, Coffin sold his property to North Carolina tobacco heir Richard J. Reynolds, Jr., whose widow later sold it in two transactions (1969 and 1976) to the state of Georgia.

The 16,500-acre Sapelo Island, the fourth largest barrier island of Georgia, is now home to an estuarine research reserve (6,110 acres as part of the 27-reserve national system) and a wildlife refuge (8,420 acres). Equally important is that Hog Hammock is the last intact sea island community of Geechee-Gullah people in Georgia. As a result, Hog Hammock has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Except for this small community (434 acres), the island (97%) is state owned and managed.

Preserving Culture

The Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society annually conducts several educational events, including a cultural day each fall that features storytelling, arts and crafts (including quilt-making and sweet grass basket-making), dancing, music, and food. These efforts, although small, are vital for preserving the full history of the American South. More concerted actions are needed to retain a critical awareness of how past generations have shaped our values and traditions.

The Ring Shout

How do you connect musically and culturally with traditions of past generations? Many of us in the American South are fascinated to learn how our contemporary music and other artistic aspects of culture have been shaped by our ancestors. When I experienced the “ring shout” performed in Savannah, Georgia, I connected immediately to several musical genres of the South — spirituals, gospel, blues, jazz, and others.

With features that are clearly West African in origin, the ring shout is a religious dance that combines a counter-clockwise movement, call-and-response singing, and percussion. Still performed in coastal Georgia, the ring shout is probably the oldest surviving African American performance tradition in North America. It has survived well beyond several generations of Africans enslaved in coastal Georgia and South Carolina on the cotton and rice fields who could preserve their own Geechee and Gullah cultures on the sea islands because they were so isolated from the American mainland.

The term shout, although used to describe all elements of the tradition, specifically refers to its dancelike movement. (The word shout may derive from the Afro-Arabic saut that refers to movement around the Kabaa in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, according to a linguist.) A “songster” (or song master) sets a song by beginning slowly at first and then accelerating to a faster tempo. His lines are answered by singers (known as basers) in a call-and-response pattern. The stick-man beats a simple drum-like rhythm with a wood stick, and the basers add rhythm with hand clapping and foot patting.

As the tradition developed in America during slavery, Christian themes were grafted onto the practice (much like candomblé in Brazil). (In fact, when I observed the ring shout performed at the Second African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia, I was immediately attracted to the counterclockwise shuffle, call-and-response singing, and handclapping that I had observed in Brazil at a candomblé service conducted by African descendants.)

During the American Civil War, outside observers described in detail the ring shout’s practice in coastal Georgia and South Carolina. According to the Georgia Humanities Council, the ring shout continued to be practiced even as it was influencing forms of spiritual and gospel music and elements of jazz. However, because many communities had stopped shouting as early as the 1900s, experts thought that the ring shout was no longer being practiced until they learned in 1980 about the Bolden community in McIntosh County on the Georgia coast that annually performs the ring shout on New Year’s Eve at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church. (The ring shout continues to be separate from formal worship, although it takes place in the church’s annex.)

In fact, if not for this group, performing the ring shout may have become an extinct form of expression. (When the tradition became better known to outsiders, a performing group from the community that calls itself the McIntosh County Shouters was organized. The ages of their ten members range from 24 to 94.) Because all members of the group are related by blood or marriage, they have known each other since birth, and they have been interviewed and observed by historians, linguists, anthropologists, folklorists, and Gullah Gechee experts.

The ring shout has been shared by grandparents — and sometimes great grandparents — with their descendants. (In fact, at the performance that I attended, long-term member Harold Evans had been replaced by 24-year-old Brendon Jordan, grandson of baser Caretha Sullivan, as the stick-man.) To maintain the integrity of the ring shout, elders teach and practice it as they learned from their ancestors, although no two shouters “shout” alike.

As they move in a counter-clockwise pattern, each one has distinctive hand motions or other movements. The ring shout affirms oneness with the Spirit and ancestors in an expression of community cohesiveness. However, because the shout was criticized by white missionaries and some black clergy, it often occurred in the church after formal worship, in "praise houses" in the woods, and sometimes even in homes or barns. Yet the movement is “in the service of the Lord”; thus it is a forward shuffle -- the feet never are crossed or are raised high off the floor because, as the narrator at a performance explains, such movements could be viewed as “unholy” dancing.

The shout songs, once known as “running spirituals,” often carry coded references to slavery. When I observed the McIntosh County Shouters at the Second African Baptist Church (a historic church that has met at the same location since 1802 -- its history includes an overflow crowd to welcome Emancipation authorities in 1864 when the church was host to U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Union General William T. Sherman), their songs included “Teach Me, Lord, How to Wait” with references to Job and his suffering. The first verse ends:

Job said, “I will surely wait.”
Teach me, Lord,
Teach me, Lord,
How to wait.

Many congregants of Second African Baptist joined in response to the call of Freddie Palmer, a strong lead singer who became the songster when Lawrence McKiver, who had been the group’s patriarch, recently passed. In addition, C. MeGill Brown (a Savannah native), pastor of Second African Baptist Church, showed his connection by being a joyful participant in the call-and-response.

According to the Georgia Humanities Council, the ring shout has survived in coastal Georgia because the Bolden community has been relatively stable, and several elder practitioners have been deeply committed in continuing the tradition and encouraging its practice by a new generation, and the value of the tradition has received significant external recognition. For example, the McIntosh County Shouters were featured on the HBO documentary Unchained Memories in 2002. In 2010 they received the Georgia Governor’s Award in the Humanities. The book Shout Because You’re Free by Art Rosenbaum further documents this tradition.

Knowledge about the ring shout is also being expanded by websites. For example, a recent presentation in Washington, DC, is on YouTube (57-minute video). This performance with a narrator is basically the same program that I observed in Savannah (without the introduction by the Director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the Arts Services Manager for the Georgia Council for the Arts). Several short videos are also on YouTube, including a 39-second video showcasing the forward shuffle and a slightly longer one focusing on a baser.

According to the McIntosh County Shouters, they are like other cultural heritage organizations that help people “to remember and celebrate their shared experiences, traditions, identities, struggles, and aspirations.”