An interabled couple explore family legacies and
celebrate an extraordinary culture in South Carolina
First, meet Cole and Charisma and learn about their
journey in the video above. Then, join them on their
adventure in the immersive article below.
St. Helena Island, S.C. is a largely rural, Spanish moss-shrouded enclave of working farms, shrimping boats, and marshlands; a stirringly scenic, pleasantly drowsy refuge from the mainland, where everything runs on “island time.” It is also widely considered the heartland of Gullah Geechee culture today.
Cole and Charisma admire the island's signature Spanish moss.
Gullah Geechee people descend from West African enslaved people forced to work on coastal and island plantations along the lower Atlantic shoreline—a corridor stretching from North Carolina to Florida—going back to at least the 17th century. These descendants generally refer to themselves as “Gullah” (thought to derive from “Angola,” the country from which many of these people were forcibly brought, and the “Gola” tribe, a West African ethnic group primarily from Liberia and Sierra Leone), or “Geechee” (thought to derive from the “Kissi” people, who were taken from the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone).
A sign welcomes visitors to the historic island.
The seclusion of these remote plantations created an environment in which these enslaved people, being isolated from the mainland, came to cultivate their own distinct culture, rooted in West African traditions and the island landscape they were forced to tend. The community developed its own language, artistry, spirituality, and foodways.
The ruins of the 18th century Chapel of Ease.
In recent decades, however, there’s been growing concern that these traditions—and, in fact, the whole culture—are fading away. Islands are becoming increasingly developed. Younger generations are moving to the mainland. And, like Charisma, many are losing their connection to the culture with the loss of older relatives. Charisma was just a child when her great-
Charisma, at right, hopes to reconnect with her Gullah Geechee roots.
Relatively untouched compared with many of its South Carolina Sea Island neighbors, a shortage of accommodations on St. Helena Island compels most visitors to stay across the bridge in Beaufort (pronounced “byoo-fert”), a small, charming mainland community of seaside manors and bobbing trawlers.
Cole and Charisma, who are both Marriott Bonvoy rewards program members, were invited to a complimentary stay at Beaufort’s SpringHill Suites as part of their partnership with Marriott Bonvoy and WP Creative Group. Heading out on their first day of discovery, the couple easily agree on what element of Gullah Geechee culture they’ll explore first. As foodies who love getting to know any community through its cuisine, they dive right into the local menu no matter where they are. But eating takes on special significance here.
Cole and Charisma stay at the SpringHill Suites in Beaufort.
“My family always cooked differently from our Virginia neighbors,” Charisma says. “So, I’m excited to find out if that’s connected to our Gullah legacy.” She waxes nostalgic about childhood trips to visit her great-
Charisma remembers visiting her Gullah Geechee great-grandmother as a child.
Gullah Geechee food culture is closely tied to the community’s core values, being part of the broader founding principle of a deep connection to the land. Gullah Geechee people traditionally prize seasonal ingredients from the local land and water, combined with West African staples: okra, beans, and rice among them.
Food is family
Sherry and Tyrone Johnson, owners of the Gullah Express food truck.
St. Helena locals Sherry and Tyrone Johnson, the husband-and-wife team behind the Gullah Express food truck, are at once preserving those foodways and evolving them, cooking contemporary spins on Gullah classics (be warned: they sell out fast). The truck pops up throughout the Sea Islands, but today it’s parked at St. Helena’s Morning Glory Homestead farm. Resident free-range turkeys, Shaka and Prince, waddle out as a welcome party of sorts. Then the real welcome committee emerges, arms wide open. The Johnsons’ easy warmth immediately vibes with Cole and Charisma (“I’m a hugger” is how Cole tends to greet strangers).
Cole and Charisma meet Sherry and Tyrone.
Sherry grew up cooking family recipes with her own grandmother, and the way she talks about food indicates Gullah cuisine is as much about family as it is about culture. “I do what I do because I love to cook, and it’s how I show my love,” she says as she whips up her signature mango punch with fresh mango chunks (“a punch to my soul,” as an immediately enamored Cole puts it). “Growing up, we didn’t have money, so we grew what we needed, or we would go fishing or hunting, and nothing went to waste. That’s part of what I’m passing on with my cooking. It’s what I try to teach to my children.”
Sherry serves up her take on Gullah cooking.
Inevitably, everything Sherry serves is a hit: a light but hearty crab and shrimp burger with sweet and tangy “Gullah Saltwater Sauce” (a top-secret recipe that Sherry won’t divulge despite Cole’s best efforts); seafood rice with shrimp and crab; and Big Momma Beans (a mix of peas and lima beans).
As taken as Cole and Charisma are with the food itself, there’s something larger at play. For starters, “The lima beans really remind me of my great-grandmother,” Charisma remarks. “She passed away when I was in elementary school. But even just seeing the beans makes me think of when we’d visit her in South Carolina.” Gullah cooking, she understands now, provides sustenance beyond eating. It’s family and love. “They put everything they have into their food.”
Charisma samples the crab and shrimp burger with 'Gullah Saltwater Sauce.'
After a taste of contemporary Gullah Geechee culture, next, Cole and Charisma are eager to dive into its history. The Penn Center is the perfect place. Once a pioneering school for formerly enslaved people, this intensely green campus of 19th-century gabled white cottages—shaded by hulking, moss-draped oaks—is now dedicated to teaching and preserving Gullah Geechee heritage.
A living legacy
Charisma explores the historic Penn Center.
Cole and Charisma’s guide to all this is Kitty Green, founder of St. Helena-based Gullah-N-Geechie Mahn Tours. Kitty is a vision, her fabulous floral jumpsuit fluttering in tandem with the Spanish moss overhead as, one after the other, she takes Cole and Charisma into her warm embrace. (“I don’t mind hugging a handsome man,” Kitty flirts as she circles her arms around Cole, setting the tone for the next few hours: equal parts spirited and serious.)
Over the course of decades, Kitty has traveled throughout the African diaspora, collecting oral histories before they were lost, including those of St. Helena’s Gullah elders. Though Kitty grew up in Ohio, she married a man from St. Helena, igniting her passion for the island and, eventually, leading her to discover her own Gullah roots.
Cole and Charisma meet Kitty Green.
Over the course of decades, Kitty has traveled throughout the African diaspora, collecting oral histories before they were lost, including those of St. Helena’s Gullah elders. Though Kitty grew up in Ohio, she married a man from St. Helena, igniting her passion for the island and, eventually, leading her to discover her own Gullah roots.
“I’m like just about every other African American, meaning I can trace [at least] one ancestor back to the Carolinas,” Kitty says.
“I’m like just about every other African American, meaning I can trace [at least] one ancestor back to the Carolinas,” Kitty says.
Her tours help conserve Gullah stories in two distinct ways, both teaching them to island visitors and passing them to the next generations of her own family: Kitty’s daughters and granddaughters work for her as guides.
Kitty gives Charisma a guided tour of Gullah Geechee history.
One of the most recognizable emblems of Gullah Geechee culture is the sweetgrass basket: hand-woven using locally harvested plants, grasses and leaves (such as bullrush), and skills that many weavers decline to teach outside their own families. Originally used as winnowing fans to separate rice seed from chaff, today they’re probably most lauded for their artistry, which requires delicate finger work: methodically pulling, coiling, and turning fibers into fine crafts. At the Penn Center, Kitty introduces Cole and Charisma to Jery Taylor, a third-generation basket weaver who’s been at this since the age of five. Her handiwork has been exhibited everywhere from local galleries to major museums.
Jery Taylor, at left, shows her sweetgrass basket artistry.
Sweetgrass weaving techniques vary from family to family, and among Jery’s baskets is a special tribute to her first weaving teacher: Her grandmother. “You know how it is standing on the shoulders of others,” she says, alluding to not only her own direct forebears, but also the generations of weavers who came before, these techniques having been passed from West Africa to the Lowcountry and developed over centuries.
Jery is a third-generation weaver.
Though Charisma didn’t have an opportunity to learn specific, generations-old skills from her own relatives, both she and Cole are struck by a tangible familiarity in their experience of St. Helena so far: the warmth and openness of the community. The three matriarchs—Sherry, Kitty, and Jery—have all welcomed the couple with literally open arms. “They really make you feel like family,” Charisma says. “My family is like that, too. As soon as they meet you, they make you feel very welcomed; like you’re a part of it all.”
Charisma studies the intricate work of sweetgrass weaving.
“You can’t talk about Gullah culture without talking about the praise house,” Kitty insists as she guides Cole and Charisma to their last stop of the afternoon.
A sacred space
Coffin Point Praise House and its custodian, Mary Rivers Legree.
The Coffin Point Praise House is one of only three remaining on the island, where there used to be dozens. A white, wooden, cabin-like structure under a stand of bright green trees, it has room for only a few wooden benches and a handful of chairs. Much more intimate than a conventional church, praise houses were private sanctuaries away from plantation owners, in which Gullah culture was steadily cultivated. As Coffin Point’s custodian, Mary Rivers Legree, explains to Cole and Charisma, the praise house was where the community, “could speak in their Gullah tongue freely among each other…share news… sing songs.”
Kitty and Mary explain the significance of praise houses.
Incredibly soft-spoken with a warm smile, Mary asks Charisma if she has local kinfolk. And while Charisma doesn’t know of any relatives specifically on this island—though her great-grandmother was based in the region—Mary gently assures her that “Gullah is not geography,” but rather “a way of life.”
Inside Coffin Point Praise House.
After the Civil War, more conventional churches gradually replaced tiny praise houses, but the deep significance of spirituality in the community remained: uplifting services that brought moments of joy in the face of adversity; a place to form a family when kinship bonds had been stripped away.
A community
connected
Brick Baptist Church, St. Helena Island's oldest.
And that spirit of resilience remains to this day. To end their time on St. Helena, Cole and Charisma attend a regular Sunday service at the 19th-century Brick Baptist Church. Thanks to 50 or so faithful in their Sunday best—plus an extra-elegant choir and piano player—the church fills with rousing music.
But Cole and Charisma find what happens next even more moving: The pastor reads out the name of everyone among the assembled who has a birthday that month, and the entire congregation stands and sings “Happy Birthday” to them. Charisma, in particular, finds the moment incredible. “It just feels like a big family,” she says. “The pastor knows your name, he knows your story, he knows your birthday. You just feel so connected to everyone.”
Cole and Charisma attend a Sunday service.
Later that evening, soaking up a peaceful sunset and salt marsh views from the short, out-and-back Marsh Boardwalk Trail, Cole and Charisma reflect that their trip has, in some ways, been bittersweet. “It’s been so sweet learning about this culture,” Cole says, “but so bitter knowing that it could fade.” He notes the posters around the island imploring people to “Save St. Helena” and help preserve the Gullah Geechee community here, and a general lack of awareness about a culture so crucial to America’s story, and yet so often missing from the history books.
Sunset on the Marsh Boardwalk Trail.
That said, the pair hope their journey might inspire others to visit St. Helena and learn about Gullah Geechee culture, helping preserve it by spending their tourist dollars within the local community, and continuing to talk about their stories when they get home. “The more I understand all of this,” Cole adds, “the more I feel like I understand Charisma and her family. That’s super-important, because we’re going to have kids one day, and I want them to know their heritage.”
As Charisma agrees, she realizes she wants to return. “I do feel a stronger connection to my Gullah heritage now,” she says. “I’d love to come back and dive even deeper and find out more about my own family's history here, if I can.”
Charisma resolves to return and explore more of her heritage.
As Charisma agrees, she realizes she wants to return. "I do feel a stronger connection to my Gullah heritage now," she says. "I’d love to come back and dive even deeper and find out more about my own family's history here, if I can.
