A Burger Fit for Aunt Bee

Want to eat at an old-fashioned place with time-honored values that seems to thrive even as its town has fallen on hard times? Then travel to Siler City, a historic railroad town with about 8,000 residents in a farming community in the center of North Carolina. The town where Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier) retired after starring on The Andy Griffith Show, Siler City is better known as the home of Johnson’s Drive-In.

Johnson’s Drive-In has a history of satisfying customers for more than 65 years. It is the choice for many Southerners traveling on U.S. 421 or U.S. 64 that slices through the town. Now a four-lane road with constant traffic, U.S. 64 was a gravel road when the drive-in was opened by Leonard and Christine Johnson in 1946.

Claxton Johnson, son of the late founders, was on the grill when I arrived. Several customers, standing by a wall, were chatting in small groups and with others in the drive-in that they recognized. Although a few just wanted to order food to go, most were waiting for a place to sit because all 12 seats at the counter as well as the booths by the front window were occupied. As I waited, a long-time local customer clued me in on the restaurant’s history. I was lucky only 10 people were waiting; if the day had not been rainy, the drive-in would have been more crowded.

After a brief wait, I took a stool at the counter next to a lady who travels between Raleigh and Salisbury; this visit was the first time in many attempts that she was able to get a seat. Now that I was only an arm’s length from Johnson, I could observe the master at work. His focus on cooking 12 patties at a time was interrupted by only an occasional greeting from a familiar face. Each burger starts as a hunk of Western grain-fed, USDA-choice beef (the second highest rating after prime) that Johnson presses into a patty after it has withstood the initial sizzling hot surface.

After the only flip, he adds a slab of Velveeta cheese, just cut from a block by the grill. Before taking each patty off the grill, he adds half of the bun for a few moments before laying the patties on the rest of the buns lined in a row at the next station on wax paper and dressed to the customers' orders (with lettuce, tomato, slaw, chili, or other fixin's). As Johnson moves about the grill, family members weave around each other behind the counter without speaking like a dance ensemble that knows each other’s every move in advance.

Open only four hours on Tuesdays through Saturdays, Johnson’s Drive-In (which no longer serves outside but still retains drive-in in its name) is definitely a place no one should arrive late. After the meat bought that morning is gone, the drive-in closes. All fixin’s are also bought fresh in the morning, and nothing is saved for the next day.

As I left, Daniel Routh, known for guitar and vocals with the bluegrass group Nu-Blu that has won the Carolina Music Award for Country Band of the Year, rang up my bill. In 2006 Routh married Johnson’s daughter Carolyn, who has worked in the restaurant all her life and continues the family’s dedication to good food started by her grandfather, who was working at the restaurant only a few hours before he passed in 1985.

Although business at Johnson’s is thriving, Siler City has been beset by several economic problems best illustrated by the closing in 2011 of a poultry plant by Townsends Inc., the town’s largest employer, and the loss of more than 600 jobs. One way that the town has sought to recover from the impacts of such major declines has been to reinvent itself as a hub of creative arts. It is now capitalizing on the economic value of arts-based small businesses and is serving as the home to the N.C. Arts Incubator. However, Johnson himself makes a more significant statement about the economic value of community pride and the benefits of no-frills hard work and excellent service that provides continuity for customers as well as his family in his small town setting.

However, as Aunt Bee might have known, the importance of Siler City is not just the arts (and the monthly Third Friday Artwalk from 6 to 9 pm). It is the sense of community and family shared by many as they eat at Johnson’s. Rather than retire to her native New York City or glamorous Hollywood or Mount Airy (considered by many to be the fictional town of Mayberry, where close friendships in the community were paramount), she chose a small town in central North Carolina, where she fell in love with "all the pretty roads and the trees." When she died in 1989, she was buried in the Siler City’s Oakwood Cemetery, only a few minutes away from the establishment known for its hometown atmosphere, traditional family values and delicious burgers.

Although modern enough to have a page on Facebook, Johnson’s continues to serve old-fashioned burgers in a time-honored tradition that would have made Aunt Bee as proud as the local residents and the current travelers who stop for good food in a family setting.

Making the South Flavorful Throughout the Year

Looking for a flavorful treat that has excellent regional flavors and connections? Although the pecan pie is an excellent Southern desert, particularly during the fall, many homes entertain guests with a “nutty” fruitcake at the end of the year, especially at Christmas. No fruitcake in the United States has gained more attention that the one made in central North Carolina by the Scott family at its Southern Supreme business.

Although begun very humbly in 1985 in the Scotts’ garage, Southern Supreme has become an international gourmet food company. As a result, it has expanded into a modern building with four kitchens and a retail sales room. Sales have grown to more than 200,000 pounds of fruitcake annually. However, the business still retains its family-oriented practices that emphasize quality and value. (Its emphasis on customer service is best illustrated by its record with Better Business Bureau, which gives its highest rating of A+ to Southern Supreme and has no complaints to report.)

Bear Creek, an unincorporated community (zip code 27207) where Southern Supreme is located, is just as traditionally Southern as its products. With only 4,100 residents in 1,625 households in 81 square miles (a population density of 51 people per square mile), neighbors don’t see each other too frequently, except at church -- or at Southern Supreme when they work there part-time. Several dozen residents are hired near the end of the year to meet the seasonal demand for fruitcakes and other specialties. In fact, family members of several students in my college classes have worked part-time there.

For more than 25 years, Southern Supreme has sold its fruitcake and other specialties by mail order as well as from the retail store in the farmland of southwestern Chatham County. Before October, Southern Supreme operates primarily as a mail order business, although the retail store remains open year round.

When is the best time to visit? For most it is mid-October when the Scotts have their annual open house. Despite the isolated location of its retail store, more than 10,000 people visit during the four-day event that starts usually on the second Thursday. After the open house, the store remains a fashionable destination and is so popular that some cities and counties, such as Carrboro Recreation and Parks and Fayetteville-Cumberland Parks and Recreation, offer tours before Christmas.

Although I’ve been to an open house, I dropped in on a rainy Saturday a month early when the store was uncrowded and I didn’t have to stand in line to sample the goodies. I enjoyed being able to taste samples at my leisure, linger at the photo display of days ago and read more information about fruitcakes and Southern Supreme than the average person should know:

• 2,100 calories in one pound of fruitcake


• 21 servings in one pound of fruitcake


• 1,800 eggs cracked in a day


• 2,800 pounds of fruitcake made in a day


• 8 Scott family members who own and operate the shop


• 100 employees during peak season


• 2,400 packages sent out on the first day of a week

However, I missed seeing the store decorated in its finest holiday attire as it is for the open house and I wasn’t able to view cooking stations that are set up to show how cookies, cakes, and other goodies are created. In addition, I missed the picturesque foliage in October when many visitors select the Devil’s Stomping Ground Scenic Byway (NC 902) to travel to Bear Creek from Pittsboro, the county seat to the northeast, or the small towns of Seagrove and Robbins to the southwest. To enjoy the seasonal experience, I might have to return during an open house and be part of the excitement with the crowd again.

Southern Supreme takes advantage of being in the South to use ingredients with wonderful flavors connected to Southern culture in not only fruitcakes but other favorites as well:

• Fruitcakes with regional fruits and native pecans are especially Southern (although fruitcakes are as old as the Romans). Fruitcakes date to the colonial period when European settlers brought traditions of having made them in their home countries.


• Nut specialties feature regional favorites, such as the pecan that is native to the American South and the peanut that has a long tradition in the South. Both are featured prominently in nut boxes, bags, and candies.


• Jams, jellies, and marmalades are also beloved Southern choices, particularly those made with strawberries, blackberries and peaches grown in the South.


• Relishes made using old family recipes depend on garden tomatoes and bell peppers of the South that have been enhanced with mixed spices.

Although fruitcake will always be its claim to fame, Southern Supreme has many regional delights than Southerners enjoy. Rather than struggle with an Internet search for find something generic for the holidays, take a fall trip to Bear Creek where the Scotts’ store still beckons to past guests as well as first-time visitors. The Southern connections to traditional flavors are appreciated not only at the end of the year but also throughout the year.

As Southern as Cajun Music

The American South is known for its musical expression. In fact, Mississippi even proclaims itself as the “Birthplace of American Music,” and giving that state due credit for some genres seems deserved. However, a special form of American music with a rich past is Cajun music in Louisiana.

The home of Cajun music is Acadiana, a 22-parish region of Louisiana officially recognized in 1971 by the state legislature where a large French-speaking population lives. (Acadiana is also home to Native American tribes and mixed-ethnicity Creole people, who historically spoke French and Créole French.) In addition, German settlers immigrated to Acadiana as early as 1721.

Cajuns are primarily the descendants of refugees forced by the British and New Englanders to leave Canada’s maritime provinces during the French and Indian War (1754-63) (the American term for the war known elsewhere as the Seven Years War). When the Acadians arrived in Louisiana in 1764, they brought ballads (many from France) that told stories of the “old days.”

Instruments of Cajun music start with the fiddle and include traditions of twin fiddling brought to Louisiana by immigrants. One fiddle plays the melody, while the second provides backup. When accordions arrived in Acadiana in the 1890s, they quickly became popular and a main component of Cajun music. Later in the 1930s when Texas groups began to influence Cajun music, instruments such as mandolins, pianos, and banjos were added to create a jazzy swing before country music became a major influence in the 1940s. During this time, bass and steel guitars became common components of Cajun music. However, the accordion regained its popularity as the lead instrument after World War II. Finally, modern influences added the acoustic guitar (mostly as a rhythm instrument) and the triangle for percussion. In addition, some groups often include drums, electric bass, and electric guitars.

Song lyrics are usually entirely in Cajun French, and the songs also derive from folk influences of black, white and Native American traditions. Born from ballads, Cajun music has transformed to dance music, which has been is promoted and sustained by a network of radio stations in Arcadiana. For example, KBON (101.1 FM) in Eunice, the most listened to state radio station on the Internet, devotes more than 85 percent of its airtime to Louisiana artists.

Cajun music is also promoted and preserved by the Cajun French Music Association, which was founded in 1984 in Basile, Louisiana, and has expanded to a membership of more than 2,000 families in Louisiana and southeast Texas (and one in Chicago). The association is the host of the annual LeCajun Awards (the equivalent of the Grammy Awards for Cajun music). The Grammies also has recognized the importance of this musical genre with a category of Cajun Music Album in the folk music category until 2012, when Cajun albums will be considered in the Best Regional Roots Music Album category.

In addition, the Cajun Music Festival in Mamou, held annually, includes a variety of Cajun musicians and groups. Visitors can enjoy the music or join the crowds on the dance floor. The festival includes classes in dancing, accordion making, and Cajun music and also offers contests such as egg throwing, boudin eating, a washer board tournament, the Cajun "dizzy dash," and watermelon eating.

However, the best effort to preserve Cajun music probably occurs at Fred’s Lounge in Mamou, a quiet town of 3,500 citizens in Evangeline Parish, which bills itself as “The Cajun Music Capital of the World.” Its musicians, particularly musicians who have performed at Fred’s (literally a shrine for Cajun music), have helped to expand the audience for Cajun music far beyond Southwest Louisiana.

Although Fred’s Lounge is open on only Saturdays (8 a.m.to 2 p.m), it features a weekly live Cajun music show broadcast for two hours on a local AM radio station, although the music starts about 9 a.m. and continues usually until 1:30 p.m. The two-hour radio broadcast has been continuous since 1962 (now heard over KVPI in Ville Platte). The music is clean family fun, dancing to the music is pretty much nonstop, but Fred’s is a bar, and most customers are enjoying a liquid breakfast before walking to a diner for a late lunch and good Cajun food. Fred’s celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1996 when Louisiana Governor Mike Foster participated in a ceremony and unveiled a plaque in memory of Alfred “Fred” Tate (who died in 1992). When I was in Mamou as part of a field trip conducted by Southern Foodways Alliance, Fred’s impressed me as truly authentic (as a YouTube video illustrates) and unadulterated by other cultural influences.

The field trip also included a visit to Les Rendezvous des Cajuns Radio Show held at Liberty Theater in Eunice. When I visited, the Jambalaya Cajun Band was onstage featuring fiddler Jamey Bearb and being broadcast on radio throughout Acadiana. Because Cajun music is dance music, the floor in front of the band was never empty.

Cajun music is as Southern as jazz, blues, gospel, and country. As part of the rich musical expression in the American South, Cajun music will continue to be an important part of the musical traditions of this region and beyond.

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.

Motivated Students and Dedicated Instructors

Imagine being a student in the first class of a school that provided the opportunity to achieve an education that had been long denied. Consider being an instructor in that school as it opened and being able to educate such a student. Because firsts in American education are such major achievements, the Beach Institute in Savannah, Georgia, has a noteworthy place in the heritage of educational triumphs, particularly in the American South.

Standing next to a chalkboard first used only two years after the American Civil War had ended, I had a sense of awe when I stood at the front of a classroom in the Beach Institute. As I looked the desks used when the school opened for newly emancipated African Americans, I tried to understand the obstacles that both students and instructors faced and consider their goals to improve lives through education.

The Beach Institute opened in 1867 with 600 students. With only eight classrooms, the institute was operating at more than full capacity as it tried to meet the needs of such eager students. A male principal led a staff of nine female teachers, most of whom were white and from the North.

Although Georgia custom and law prohibited teaching slaves to read and write, several secret schools in Savannah helped many enslaved Africans become skilled readers and writers (as the example of Susan King Taylor illustrates). Thus, when the Beach Institute opened, scores of students who enrolled could already read and write. According to Vaughnette Goode-Walker, director of cultural diversity and access at the Telfair Museums in Savannah, the number was as high as 200 (because learning was not against the law – only teaching).

Named for Alfred E. Beach (a philanthropist who donated land for the building), the institute was funded by the American Missionary Association (AMA), a society founded in 1846 by Congregational, Baptist, and Presbyterian abolitionists of New Haven, Connecticut. After the start of the American Civil War, the AMA began focusing on education for freed slaves. By 1868, the AMA, which also established many historical black colleges and universities, had more than five hundred teachers and missionaries throughout the South.

When the Beach Institute opened, its Greek revival style of architecture made it an impressive building. Even more impressive than its architecture is its social history, including efforts to fund and build it, supply skilled teachers and administrators, provide a credible education to its students, and maintain the structure as a historic structure when its days in education had ended.

Located in the historic district of Savannah, the three-story wood frame structure is the oldest surviving African American educational center in Georgia. The Beach Institute continued as a school until 1970 and has had only a few modifications to its floor plan, even though it also served as an elementary school high school, trade school, and center for adult education. It has now been recast as the Beach Institute African American Culture Center with a charge of collecting, interpreting, preserving, and presenting African American history and culture through educational events and exhibits, according to Darlene Wilson, a staff member and docent. As a result, the center continues its ability to generate public interest that dates back to October 3, 1868, when Harper’s Weekly featured the institute in an article about newly constructed schools for African Americans.

Other college instructors who were participating in a workshop on African American culture and history conducted by the Georgia Historical Society for the National Endowment for the Humanities shared my sense of awe when we entered a classroom. Although the original student desks are hard and uncomfortable by today’s ergometric standards, no one could pass the opportunity to sit at such historic desks and imagine being in the classroom in 1867. The educational challenges of today seem so minor when compared to the significant achievements that others before us accomplished.

Ossabaw Island Hog: 400 Years Later

Although I once believed that the hog and everything from ham to pulled pork were originally and uniquely Southern, I soon learned that the hog was a present to the Americas from Spanish explorers. However, I was really surprised when I encountered a hog in Georgia that closely resembles its colonial counterparts.

As part of a workshop on African American culture and history conducted by the Georgia Historical Society for the National Endowment for the Humanities, I visited Ossabaw Island to learn more about how culture has been preserved on the coast of Georgia (see “Ossabaw Island: Culture Preserved on the Coast of Georgia” for details).

The island’s mixture of salt marshes, freshwater ponds, forest, sandy beaches, and dunes has also helped preserve a special resident – the Ossabaw Island hog, which has flourished on its namesake Georgia home for about 400 years. Many historians believe the Spanish left hogs on Ossabaw in the 1500s.

The Ossabaw Island hog remains the closest genetic representative of the historic stock that Spanish explorers brought to North America, according to The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. Because of the Ossabaw hog’s isolation, Oklahoma State University also considers it to resemble accurately its Spanish heritage unlike other Spanish pigs that escaped, became feral in southeastern forests, and eventually mixed with domestic pigs.

As a result, Colonial Williamsburg in 2005 began using Ossabaw Island hogs in its educational programs about animal husbandry and culinary practices of the 1700s because how closely they resemble their colonial counterparts (although they can no longer be removed from the island). “Their hair was heavy because they lived outside, and they were dark and oval. Today, pigs are rectangular and pink,” says Elaine Shirley of Colonial Williamsburg.

The hog that I encountered during a field trip to Ossabaw Island was not the typical Piggly Wiggly. In contrast to modern hogs, Ossabaw Island animals are typically black and have thick coats, upright ears, and long snouts; they also are rarely more than 20 inches in height or weight more than 100 pounds in their natural habitat. On Ossabaw, they also reproduce so frequently that one of the two Georgia wildlife technicians on island has a quota of reducing the swine population by 1,800 each year.

According to the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, the Ossabaw Island hog is phenomenal because it has survived in a challenging environment known for heat, humidity, and seasonal scarcity of food. Although it may be as small as 100 pounds, it can store amazing amounts of fat to survive when little is available to eat. In addition, it has also been highly tolerant of dietary salt as it has learned to survive on the Georgia sea island.

Although the hog is not native to the American South, how we enjoy food from ham to pulled pork is connected to the culture of the region. The next time you eat high on the hog or fry some bacon, thank the Spanish explorers for contributing to our foodways and the Ossabaw Island hog for being a living record.

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.