Gullah Geechee Culture Presentation

Heather Hodges, Executive Director of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission presents on April 25th 4-5:30 pm Harper Library. Preserving and memorializing African and Gullah Geechee burial grounds across the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor is important preservation work that provides communities with opportunities to memorialize ancestors, share local history and to learn more about traditional burial and spiritual practices — some retained from West Africa and others that evolved here. Join us for a talk with Heather Hodges, Executive Director of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission, about how Gullah Geechee funeral and burial practices reflect their shared West African ancestry as well as their specific, historic experiences in the Lowcountry. She’ll discuss the challenges to burial ground preservation as well as the creative ways that some Gullah Geechee communities have found to sustain these important expressions of Gullah Geechee spirituality and lifeways (event organized by John N. Smith Cemetery Restoration and Preservation).