Wednesday, September 26, 2012

NY Times on Sapelo Island's Geechees

An excerpt from The New York Times, published yesterday, on "Taxes Threaten an Island Culture in Georgia": 
Sapelo Island, a tangle of salt marsh and sand reachable only by boat, holds the largest community of people who identify themselves as saltwater Geechees. Sometimes called the Gullahs, they have inhabited the nation’s southeast coast for more than two centuries. Theirs is one of the most fragile cultures in America. These Creole-speaking descendants of slaves have long held their land as a touchstone, fighting the kind of development that turned Hilton Head and St. Simons Islands into vacation destinations.