Gullah Heritage on the Hammock Coast

You cannot understand this coast without understanding Gullah culture, and Georgetown is one of the best places in the country to begin.

Gullah is a language and a culture created by West Africans brought to the South Carolina Sea Islands and coastal mainland to grow rice and indigo. The agricultural knowledge that made Lowcountry rice cultivation possible came with them. Georgetown County, at the height of the rice economy, held one of the largest enslaved populations in the country — and by 1840 was producing close to half the rice grown in the United States.

What emerged from that history is not a historical artifact. It is a living culture with its own Creole language, foodways, crafts, music and spiritual traditions, and its influence runs through Lowcountry cooking, sweetgrass basketry, storytelling and everyday speech on this coast.

The Gullah Museum at 123 King Street in Georgetown offers tours, presentations and demonstrations of traditional Gullah and Lowcountry crafts. It covers the role of Gullah people in rice, indigo and cattle cultivation, and the development of the language itself. Learn more about the Gullah Museum here.

In the food. Rice remains the foundation of Lowcountry cooking for reasons that begin here. Red rice, okra soup, shrimp and grits and purloo all carry Gullah lineage. Eating well on Front Street is, among other things, an education.

In the craft. Sweetgrass basketry is one of the oldest African-derived art forms practiced in the United States, and it is still practiced on this coast.

Approach it as learning, not sightseeing. The most useful thing a visitor can do is go to the Gullah Museum first, listen, and let what you learn there shape everything else you see in Georgetown.