The American coast that refused to let African culture die

Along the US's South-eastern coast, Gullah Geechee communities preserve a distinct culture and language rooted in West Africa that is spoken nowhere else on Earth.

It's low tide at Fish Haul Beach, a marshy stretch on Hilton Head Island's northern fringe. Fish Haul was the first beach I ever visited as a child, and now I have brought my 18-month-old son. My wife and I watch him stumble and slosh through the shallow water of South Carolina's Port Royal Sound.

Just as I didn't realise it on my own first visit, my son has no idea that the sand and salt marshes under his feet are where the first self-governed town of free Black people in the United States was built. Known as Mitchelville, it was created by formerly enslaved people of West and Central African heritage who spoke a language found nowhere else in the world: Gullah.

These people, who came to be known as the Gullah Geechee, eventually established a series of free settlements and communities on the isolated sea and barrier islands across the south-eastern US, developing their own distinct culture while preserving many of their indigenous African traditions.

On 12 October 2026, this roughly 500-mile (804km) strip known as the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor will celebrate the 20th anniversary of when the United States Congress designated it a National Heritage Area. Along this scenic coastal stretch, spanning from North Carolina to southern Florida, Gullah Geechee culture lives on through its unique language, musical traditions and beliefs, offering travellers a window into the many ways African culture directly shaped the US.

Gullah Geechee culture has its roots in the late 17th and 18th Century, when African peoples were increasingly brought to English colonies in what is now the United States and enslaved on plantations. Planters in the Carolina Lowcountry along the Eastern seaboard sought out people from Central African countries and West Africa's Rice Coast, exploiting their agricultural knowledge to cultivate rice, indigo and Sea Island cotton in the coastal wetlands and islands. The working conditions were brutal, but that same geographical isolation helped the enslaved and their descendants retain – and adapt – African cultural practices.

Traditional West and Central African one-pot cooking techniques combined with local seafood, vegetables, grains and meats gave rise to Gullah Geechee cuisine. Lowcountry red rice, which combines rice, tomatoes, spices, smoked pork and sausage, is often compared to jollof rice, a one-pot rice stew cooked with tomatoes, spices and meat strongly associated with the Senegambia region of West Africa. West African coiled basketry traditions were likewise adapted to the Lowcountry, using readily available sweetgrass, bulrush, palmetto and pine. The "ring shout" – a Gullah Geechee ritual where participants form a circle, then move counterclockwise in a rhythmic pattern while stomping their feet, clapping their hands and singing in "call and response" – recalled West African musical and spiritual practices.

A need to communicate with slave owners and Africans who spoke other languages led to the development of Gullah. Colonial English is Gullah's main lexical source but African-derived words, like oona (you all) and nyam (eat) survive in Gullah speech: cooter (turtle) is believed to be related to the Bambara and Malinke kuta, while goober (peanut) is generally traced to nguba in Kimbundu and Kikongo.

The origin of the name Gullah Geechee itself is hazy. "Gullah may derive from Angola or from the Gola people of West Africa. Geechee may come from the Kissi people or Geechee from Georgia's Ogeechee River," said Luana Graves Sellars, cultural preservationist and founder of heritage organisation Lowcountry Gullah.

During the Civil War, many formerly enslaved people from the Sea Islands aided Union troops as scouts, labourers and soldiers. After Union forces captured Port Royal Sound and Hilton Head Island in 1861, hundreds of freedom seekers sought refuge behind Union lines. In 1862, General Ormsby Mitchel initiated the construction of a freedman's town on the north-eastern part of the island, on the former Fish Haul Plantation. Named in his honour, it developed into a self-governed town. After the Civil War, the withdrawal of Union forces and the loss of wartime employment contributed to the town's decline. By the early 1880s Mitchelville had largely been abandoned, and the Great Sea Island Hurricane of 1893 devastated what remained. Meanwhile, Gullah Geechee people across the Sea Islands built free lives.

Today, about one million people in the US claim Gullah Geechee heritage, including singer Darius Rucker and former First Lady Michelle Obama. I am not one of them – I am a Black father raising a Black son in the American South. My parents brought me to Fish Haul because they wanted me to see a place where African culture survived both the Middle Passage and the passage of time; where Black life preserves a more visible continuity with Africa than the one I inherited in Alabama. And now, on our three-day visit to the Gullah Geechee Corridor, that understanding would pass through from me to my son.

We timed our visit to Hilton Head for Juneteenth, when the island comes alive with days of celebrations. The day after visiting Fish Haul Beach, we headed to Bluffton – a historic river town dating to 1825. Leaving Hilton Head's luxury resort and golf club traffic for the Lowcountry mainland, we were unconsciously retracing the steps of Gullah Geechee families when they settled in this area after Mitchelville was abandoned.

As we drove through Old Town Bluffton, we saw moss-draped oaks, clapboard cottages and broad porches raised on brick piers above the May River. My wife, who often wraps her hair in scarves printed with traditional West African patterns, was pleased to see that we were surrounded by Black women wearing those same textiles. As we approached Martin Family Park, rhythmic beats halted us in our tracks. My son pointed towards the sound.

There was a small group gathered around five or six people who were clapping and stomping to a rhythm. One voice called. The others answered. A ring shout.

An unfamiliar melody in a familiar cadence struck something deep in me. Their songs sounded like an old Black hymn, like those I grew up hearing in church in Alabama. Now they felt like echoes across an ocean and time. First, my son stomped, clapped and mimicked the sounds. I'm typically reserved, but soon my wife and I were swaying, too.

"[A ring shout] has that effect," Sellars later told me. "There are celebratory ring shouts. Religious ring shouts – ring shouts only for grown folks. But they all capture your attention and almost beg you to participate."

Open invitations to participate are just one of the ways visitors can experience Gullah Geechee culture in Bluffton. I saw locals hauling sweetgrass baskets on their shoulders, and caught Gullah words passing between neighbours – brief snatches of oona and gwine (going to). For Sellars, language is only one form of expression. "Understanding the Gullah Geechee language is about understanding that everything we do speaks," she said.

Even the food – today, it remains a comfort that spans generations. Dishes like shrimp and grits, purloo (one-pot rice and seafood stew) and gumbo (thick stew with okra, shrimp and sausage) are ever-present at Gullah Geechee homes, and Gullah Geechee restaurants dot the cities of the Corridor.

Back, in Hilton Head, I ventured to Ruby Lee's, a cosy spot with exposed-brick walls lined with Gullah Geechee art, and ordered Hoppin' John: a dish made of rice and black-eyed peas. The first taste reminded me of the jollof I'd tried at a Nigerian friend’s house. Hoppin' John was less spicy, but smoky and well-seasoned, like the rice and peas my mother makes. The distance between Africa and home closed in a bite.

"For us, food represents a way of living," said Alex Brown, a fifth-generation Gullah resident and Hilton Head councilman. "Our historic culture of bartering is what produces these dishes. [Someone] may have some okra. Someone, rice. Someone else, shrimp. But together, suddenly we have okra gumbo."

Later that day, we drove to Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park. Herons flew above a weathered praise-house replica, while we passed ghostly abandoned homes before paying respects at placards honouring Harriet Tubman's role in emancipating more than 700 Gullah Geechee slaves.

For Brown, Gullah Geechee culture is essential to America's founding. "Our people are an important part of America's story," he said. "The story of American democracy cannot be told in full without mentioning Gullah sites like Mitchelville. Folks know Williamsburg. Folks know Jamestown. They have got to get to know Mitchelville."

More like this:

• The chef preserving Gullah culture through storytelling

• The southern US county honouring its dark past

• The lost Black community swallowed up by the Pentagon

Though the Corridor designation has helped preserve and connect Gullah Geechee sites, displacement, ancestral land loss and climate change continue to shadow Gullah Geechee communities today. "Cemeteries where our founders rest are being disturbed, land straits once connecting islands are impassable," Sellars said. The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission warns that heirs' property owners also face pressure from developers.

"Our ancestors here not only founded a freetown but built a fort, Fort Howell, to defend that freedom," Brown said. "Black soldiers helped construct it in 1864. It was built with our hands and stationed by our bodies. This land is important to us."

While the Corridor's land may be under threat, its percussive, enlivening language still moves up and down the coast, connecting Black people to African diasporic traditions and American democracy. My son will not remember standing at Fish Haul Beach. But one day, I hope he understands why I brought him.

--

If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.

For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.