Exploring Gullah Geechee Culture in Savannah

I’m aging myself here, but some 20+ years ago I worked for a historic house museum in Charleston, South Carolina as a tour guide. It was one of those huge, beautiful homes in the historic district built in the 1800s with gorgeous gardens, original fashionable furnishings, and an incredible view of the harbor and Fort Sumter from the piazzas. We would regale the guests with stories about home’s history, its valuable contents, and the wealthy family that owned it (and actually still does).

What didn’t we talk about? The enslaved people who also lived and worked there. The only part of the tour that mentioned them at all was to point out a small extension at the back of the house that was used (at least partially) as the slave quarters. We only talked about it as an explanation of what that space was used for; nothing about the people or the institution of slavery. If someone on the tour did ask about the enslaved workers, we would say something vague like “We don’t know much about them, but from what we can determine we believe the family treated them well.” (To my knowledge, we didn’t actually have any evidence of that.) Like so many other southern plantations and historic attractions, we were whitewashing history. Most of our tour guides were conservative, older white ladies and they just “didn’t want to talk about it” when it came to slavery. I think some were ashamed, some adopted the “it’s over; let’s not drag it out” approach, and some honestly were just not interested. Even worse, we were given no guidance or tools from management on the topic. Their focus was the conservation of the home, the contents, and the family legacy.

This was not isolated to just the house I worked at; this was typical all over the south. So when I started planning a weekend getaway to Savannah last fall, I was thrilled to see an entire section on the city tourism website about Black Heritage sites in the city. It seemed to me that Savannah had made great progress in recognizing a part of its history that had been suppressed over the last 150+ years, and I couldn’t wait to experience it firsthand. But would the reality live up to my expectations, or was Savannah just scratching the surface?

As much as possible I wanted to see Savannah from the perspective of descendants of those who had been enslaved in the city and surrounding plantations. Luckily, Savannah is blessed to have an active Gullah Geechee community, descended from West African peoples who were enslaved on the rice, indigo and Sea Island cotton plantations of the lower Atlantic coast. I was somewhat familiar with the Gullah Geechee community in Charleston when I lived there thanks to the beautiful traditional seagrass baskets that are made by the women of the community and sold in the city markets, but I was eager to learn more about their history and traditions.

The Pin Point Heritage Museum is not a single museum building but rather a collection of buildings that comprised the former A.S. Varn & Son Oyster and Crab Factory, which was the primary employer of the Pin Point residents, operating 1926-1985. In the buildings are displays that tell the story of what it was like to grow up in Pin Point and to work in the factory. In one building they show an award-winning film with residents reminiscing about the community, including the most famous former Pin Point resident, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Watching him smile and laugh as he recalled his childhood almost makes him seem likable. Almost.

Our guide Gail is also featured in the film, and she can also be heard talking about the museum and Gullah Geechee culture in this Visit Savannah podcast. After viewing the exhibits, a small group gathered outside on benches with Gail as she told us more about Gullah Geechee culture. She explained that Gullah is the language and Geechee are the people, although people tend to use them interchangeably. She grew up speaking Gullah as her first language and English as her second. Gullah has a fascinating history as a language created by enslaved workers in the 18th and 19th century. The enslaved came from different tribes and languages in Africa, so they adopted English as a common language on the plantations but with variations based on their native languages to prevent white owners and overseers from being able to understand what they were saying. Gail taught us some common Gullah words and then would throw out some phrases to have us guess what she was saying.

She also talked to us about the musical tradition of “shouting,” a call-and-response style of singing along with clapping and stomping that clearly sounds African in origin. She tried to prompt us through a short version, and we had quite a few laughs as we realized it’s not nearly as easy as it looks to stay in rhythm together. You can view a example of a ring shout by the Georgia Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters in this video.

Before we left I walked out to the dock to get one more look at the peaceful marshes surrounding us, and to think about how unchanged this particular area is. It has so far resisted the waterfront development that marks much of the rest of the Georgia and South Carolina coasts. But how much longer will this remain a Gullah Geechee community? Will young people stay and carry on the traditions, or will they feel the need to flee to bigger areas for economic reasons?

The next day we gathered at the African American Families Monument at the Riverfront to meet our guide for the day, Sistah Patt Gunn. Sistah Patt is a proud Gullah Geechee woman, activist, storyteller, and owner of Underground Tours of Savannah. Her tours guide visitors through a small section of the city where her enslaved persons including her ancestors arrived from Africa and toiled for 116 years.

Sistah Patt is originally from the Georgia coast, but spent many years in Atlanta where she worked for the ACLU and other social justice organizations. In the late 1990s she returned to Savannah and found her true calling. Realizing that healing can only happen when truth is told, she started her own tour company in 2017 to bring to light the silenced history of slavery in the city. In her words, she sees her tours as a conduit for people to reflect, reconcile, and heal.

Early on in the tour I got my answer to my original question of “Is Savannah doing enough to elevate Black history in the city?” While Sistah Patt would agree that progress has been made, she thinks the city has a long way to go. As she said, “They have the information, but they’re not telling the story.” There are hardly any public markers in the city commemorating the city’s history with slavery, nor tributes to Black heritage. But there are still plenty of statues and parks honoring Confederate generals or politicians who fought to keep the “peculiar institution” alive. Any changes to the status quo can take years of effort to finally enact.

As an example, Sistah Patt points to Calhoun Square, a public park bearing the name of former vice president and slavery advocate John C. Calhoun. In April of 2020, a 68-page City of Savannah Report entitled ‘Negro Burial Ground’ confirmed that graves of enslaved people were located in that square. Sistah Patt and other activists began advocating for the square to be renamed. It took two years but finally the city agreed. The process is still ongoing, though, as the city is currently in the process of accepting nominations for the new name, and it won’t be officially re-named until September 2023.

Another example of the city’s slowness to acknowledge its slavery history is the site of the biggest slave sale in US history. In 1859, 436 men, women, and children were sold during a two-day auction in order to settle the gambling debts of a wealthy plantation owner. This event has come to be known as “The Weeping Time.” It’s a spot that is enormously important in telling the truth of Black history in Savannah, but the city didn’t erect a marker to it until 2008. Today there is still an ongoing battle over the spot as activists want to erect a more substantial memorial commemorating the location of this terrible event, but the city wants to build a homeless shelter there.

As we walked with Sistah Patt, she pointed out that the legacy of slavery is all around us, hidden in plain sight. For instance, the “charming” cobblestone streets and alleyways are actually made from ballast stones originally carried by slave ships to add weight, then dumped once the ship docked in Savannah. Many of the bricks in the roads and buildings were made by enslaved workers at nearby plantations; some have the plantation name on them. Sometimes you can even see the indentations made by their hands or fingers still reflected in the brick. In a sick modern development, the stones and bricks are often dug up and sold to collectors of slavery artifacts. She also pointed out how enslaved craftsmen had cleverly inserted Adrinka symbols in much of the work they created. Adrinka symbols originated in Ghana to convey various concepts, and they can be seen all over Savannah.

Eventually we came to the mysterious and controversial “Cluskey Vaults,” a series of four vaulted brick structures. Sistah Patt, along with many other locals, believes these were likely used as holding pens for enslaved people. Their appearance does closely resemble those found along the African coast, and their location in Savannah between the boat dock and the largest slave auction site in the city makes logical sense. The city, though, claims that the research does not support that theory, and no mention is made of that possibility in the signs nearby; only their use as storage is mentioned.

Nevertheless, Sistah Patt used one of the vaults as the perfect spot to tell us of her own visit to Africa, and then to perform three traditional spiritual songs that connect her with her ancestors. It was a moving experience and I’m so grateful to have been able to witness such a personal display. Below is video I filmed that day.

We ended the tour in Johnson Square, named after Governor Robert Johnson of South Carolina. He was one of the men responsible for bringing slavery into Georgia over the wishes of the colony’s founder, Gen. James Oglethorpe. In the center of the square is a large obelisk marking the grave of Nathanael Greene, who owned hundreds of slaves on his nearby Mulberry Grove Plantation.

Johnson Square is also the site of Savannah’s main slave auction block, but in typical Savannah fashion there is no marker to tell you that. It’s staggering to think about how many people were sold in that spot, how many families were ripped apart over many decades, and yet most people who stroll through that pretty square today would have no idea. Sistah Patt motioned to the massive live oak trees surrounding the square and referred to them as “witness trees.” She pointed out that unlike the other live oaks in Savannah, these trees have no moss hanging from them. Drawing on her African ancestry’s close connection to the Earth, she attributes that to the trauma the trees have experienced from what they have witnessed below them in that square.

It was a really powerful way to end the tour, and I sat in the park for quite some time afterward staring at those trees and imagining everything they had witnessed. I tried to imagine what enslaved people were thinking as they looked at those exact same trees while their lives were being shattered. The magnitude of the history of that spot is immense, and it’s completely shocking that there is absolutely nothing there to tell that story.

I recently caught up again with Sistah Patt over Zoom, and at the end of our conversation I asked her “what do you want people to do after they take your tour? What do you hope their takeaway is?” She quoted the late John Lewis and said, “Go make good trouble!” That has certainly been her modus operandi as she tirelessly fights to tell the truth about Savannah’s history, and I hope people all over the South follow her lead in telling the stories that have been redacted over the decades.