Preface

This blog is dedicated to a magical place called Sapelo Island, Georgia. It's one of the Georgia Sea Islands. Because of the Georgia Sea Island Singers, I had heard about them long before I actually visited. They are renowned for having kept much of their African heritage intact. Reading up beforehand, Sapelo seemed like the only one of the islands as yet unspoiled by tourism. Cornelia Bailey's wonderful first-hand account, God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man (2000) sold me on the place.. In fact when it came time to reserve a place to stay, Cornelia was the first and only person I called (her place is on the internet). It took a couple of times before I connected. "Grandma's at church," a young voice informed me the first time. She turned out to be the epitomy of informality and accommodation.

Sapelo, after the Indians died off from European diseases, was originally slave plantations growing rice. They imported slaves from a particular part of West Africa where the inhabitants had already been growing rice in similar soil for centuries. The most knowledgable slaves showed their owners how to do it. Later the plantations switched to the more profitable crops of sugar and cotton.

In the Civil War, the slaveowners fled inland, taking their slaves with them. The US Navy bought supplies from the few who remained. After the War, when Congress granted former slaves the right to "40 acres and a mule" from the old plantations, many returned, along with others who saw the island as a place to farm. When Congress changed its mind and wanted money for the land, most former slaves became share-croppers on the new plantations. Some, sooner or later, were able to buy their land, and settled mostly on the northern end. In the 1930's, tobacco king R.J. Reynolds took over, although still growing the existing crops, not tobacco. He hired the farmers to work for him on the southern end, and induced them to trade their parcels for homesites near his fields, where there was access to electricity and indoor plumbing. When he died, his widow sold his land, essentialy the whole island except 434 acres, to the State of Georgia, which still owns it as a wildlife reserve and field station.. The descendents of the slaves either left, continued to do odd jobs, or eked out a living on their small plots.. Some returned to retire. About 50 souls live there now, protected from development by the state's ownership of the land and the lack of any connection by road or auto ferry to the mainland. It's the last of a vanishing way of life.