Cross-Institutional Students Support a Coastal Georgia Legacy

There was a wonderful blend of partnerships during the latest service-learning trip to Sapelo Island. The trip was the culmination of a semester of work […]

Lot for sale

Research Brief #02: Land Loss

Descendants owned nearly 1100 acres on Sapelo Island around the year 1900; Almost 300 acres in Hog Hammock in 1891. While still the majority owner […]

Map of Hog Hammock, 1938

Research Brief #01: Population

Sapelo Island’s Black population and Black landownership both steadily increased throughout the 1800s. Following the Civil War and the failure of the U.S. government’s attempt […]

Maurice Bailey photo

How to hold back the ocean

Making Contact’s reporter Claire Reynolds interviews coastal residents, activists, and scientists about responding to sea level rise on Sapelo Island and beyond. As climate change […]

Owner map

“We’re still here”: An Abolition Ecology Blockade of Double Dispossession of Gullah/Geechee Land

by Dean Hardy, Maurice Bailey, and Nik Heynen in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers Narratives of resilience to sea-level rise too often […]

Map clipping

“I am Sapelo”: Racialized Uneven Development and Land Politics within the Gullah Geechee Corridor

by Dean Hardy and Nik Heynen in Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space The history of land struggles in the United States demonstrates how […]

New York Times Article about Sapelo Sugarcane Project

Reviving a Crop and an African-American Culture, Stalk by Stalk On the Georgia coast, Maurice Bailey is making sugar cane syrup as a way to […]

Story in The Bitter Southerner that covers Sapelo Island Sugarcane Project

Story by SHANE MITCHELL | Photographs by RINNE ALLEN (excerpt from bottom of story) The next morning, before leaving on the ferry, Maurice Bailey handed […]

Article in Georgia Farmers and Consumer Market Bulletin about Sapelo Sugarcane Project

Sugarcane is the foundation of efforts to preserve, revitalize Geechee culture on Sapelo Island By Amy Carter amy.carter@agr.georgia.gov Sapelo Island was the epicenter of early […]

Scalawag article by Maurice Bailey and Nik Heynen: Sweet (and sticky) redemption

Gullah/Geechee of Sapelo Island reclaim sugarcane to fight cultural erasure There is no U.S. agricultural history without the expertise and labor of African people who […]

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