Centering Stories of Agency: Bringing Georgia’s Gullah Geechee Community in K–12 Classrooms

• In Event: Georgia Places: Language, Race, and History in Place-Based Georgia Education

Abstract

When “Gullah Geechee” is mentioned, many might only have recollections from popular culture to draw upon such as the children’s television show, Gullah Gullah Island, which taught children about Gullah culture, life on an island, and getting along with others. Yet, while this contemporary connection is crucial to understanding the Gullah Geechee people and culture in regards to their foodways, arts, crafts, music, and language, the community’s roots run deep within the story of the United States (U.S.) South and must be contextualized within the narrative of U.S. enslavement.
During this session, we will detail a collaborative self-study (Han et al., 2014) of three teacher educators (TEs) who consistently challenged one another to center Gullah Geechee narratives in their social studies methods courses. This collaborative relationship evolved over time beginning with the Nobis Project in 2021. The Nobis Project is a non-profit educational organization that works to promote justice-oriented community practices among students, teachers, and local communities. As part of a professional learning experience, we, alongside K-12 educators from across the country, examined the history, influences, and impact of enslaved Africans, specifically the Gullah Geechee community in the Low Country. We also explored how enslaved men, women, and children practiced self-determination through the creation and maintenance of dynamic communities and cultures.
With this knowledge, we explored the ways Gullah Geechee narratives should live in and alongside the K-12 social studies curriculum. The Southern Poverty Law Center (Shuster et al., 2018), in conjunction with Learning for Justice, notes that often when we discuss the institution of enslavement, we tend to teach about it through a lens of whiteness (Leonardo, 2013) thereby continuing the dehumanization of enslaved Africans. Additionally, their hard histories framework calls on educators to repair this curricular violence (Jones, 2020) through highlighting the agentic work of enslaved peoples. By centering the Gullah Geechee community and urging our pre- and in-service teachers to do so as well, our work seeks to address the harm engrained in the traditional social studies curriculum (e.g., King & Chandler, 2016).
In a time of “divisive concepts” where narratives around race and enslavement are either stripped down or removed, our work reveals the importance of centering these narratives and illuminating “hard” histories in the classroom. As TEs, we have compiled teaching resources that reveal how the Gullah Geechee people have impacted (and continue to impact) the land and culture of coastal Georgia, as well as how they were exploited and displaced during and following the period of enslavement. Additionally, in this session, we will highlight the ways in which the Gullah Geechee community continues to resist the loss of their histories and removal from the lands they lived and labored as well as the ways they thrive (e.g., preserving communal knowledge and practices). Centering these stories of resistance and activism allows stakeholders involved in various education spaces and places to showcase how Gullah Geechee narratives from the Low Country are similar to descendants of other enslaved communities throughout the U.S.

Authors

• Delandrea Hall, University of North Texas

• Ariel Cornett, Georgia Southern University

• Michelle Riedel, Georgia Southern University