Uphill, Both Ways

Jekyll Island, GA

May 13, 2022

In February of 1733, the frigate Anne approached the open mouth of the Savannah River. One hundred and fourteen passengers disembarked, and commenced a colony. 

Within three decades, more nefarious ships would fill that harbor. For a couple days, we’re exploring a community that descends from their “cargo.”

The original charter given by George II to James Oglethorpe offered religious liberty for all, rich prospects for England’s working poor, and an escape-hatch for abused inmates of debtors’ prisons. It also banned slavery – the first of Britain’s American colonies to do so. 

Tho’ Oglethorpe genuinely opposed human bondage, the prohibition was likely for reasons more economic and pragmatic than ethical and pure. The proprietors wanted to reserve work for impoverished settlers from the Mother Country. They were also wary of enticing the Spanish from nearby Florida into inciting slave revolts in Britain’s newest outpost.

Oglethorpe remained prominent during the fledgling colony’s first decade. In the War of Jenkins’ Ear, he led an unsuccessful siege of St Augustine. 

A couple years later, he forced the Spanish from St Simons in the battles of Bloody Marsh and Gully Hole Creek. The Treaty of Madrid later affirmed British claims to the colony of Georgia.

A year after that treaty was signed, a new decree came from the Crown. With the Spanish threat removed from coastal marshes, plantations of rice, sugar, and indigo continued to sprout. To facilitate the expansion, plantation owners applied political pressure to permit slavery. 

In 1751, Georgia’s proprietors relented. Within a decade, the port of Savannah teemed with ships stacked with African slaves.

Inhabitants of the Gold Coast and around the Gulf of Guinea had for centuries cultivated the crops that colonial Georgians wanted to raise. The region was also littered with indigenous slave merchants willing to sell their own people for their personal profit.

These African brokers of bondage would skim the coast and scour the interior, grabbing unsuspecting natives to be sold for passage on European vessels. Most of the apprehended had no idea why they were captured, or where they were going. All they knew is that they were separated from family…then beaten, chained, and piled onto ships in infernal conditions that would make Dante blush.

Many who somehow survived the ghastly crossing to see the Georgia coast recognized its resemblance to their native land. Some assumed after months of horror on the transatlantic trip, that they’d been returned to their original place. They thought it had been some sort of cruel joke…and they didn’t find it funny.

At lunch today in Brunswick, we heard the story of one such tribe. Native to Nigeria, a group of resolute Igbo were aboard a ship of slaves that docked in 1803 at the port of Savannah. Seventy-five of them were sold into forced labor on rice plantations of St Simons Island.

Igbo pride is as steadfast as their strength, and runs deep as their determination. They’re known to be be fiercely independent, and repulsed by the concept of being another person’s property. Sailing south from Savannah en route to St Simons, they proved it. 

They overcame the crew, and drowned their captors. The ship ran aground in Dunbar Creek on St Simons. Rather than succumb to slavery, they walked into the water or marched into the marsh.

By most accounts, the entire tribe was found lifeless in the swamp…a collective suicide in final acts of individual sovereignty. Oral tradition and local legend have it that many walked on the waves, and returned on foot or in flight to their African roots. Either way, they commended their fate to the hands of their god, and died free men.

Some sources stipulate that several were “saved” by nearby overseers, and sent to Sapelo, a tiny barrier island an hour south of Savannah. A community of Gullah Geechee still lives there. 

The Gullah Geechee are direct descendants of West African slaves, living in diaspora across the country and around the world. But they’re most concentrated along the southeastern coast, from north Florida to North Carolina. One of their last remaining intact settlements can be found on Sapelo Island. 

We arrived yesterday after lunch in Savannah. Sapelo is accessible only by plane or boat. A lone barge periodically carries large-scale items across Doboy Sound. We opted for the ferry that connects the mainland to the island several times a day. This vessel also serves as an aquatic school bus for the handful of children who live on Sapelo. 

The island’s only school closed 45 years ago, partly to assimilate its kids into contemporary culture…but primarily to prevent them imbibing their historic one. Children now rise early, hustle to the dock, and take a twenty minute ferry ride at 7:00 each morning. They then run a couple hundred yards up the road, hop on a bus, and go to class at the mainland school. 

They reverse the route every afternoon. Yesterday, we joined them for the ride. When we reached the dock on the Sapelo shore, MB welcomed us onto his bus.

MB is founder and president of Save Our Legacy Ourself (SOLO), an organization dedicated to cultural preservation thru agricultural revival. It’s a tall task. Nature…and human nature…press against and around him. And the vise is tightening.

Fewer than forty Gullah Geechee comprise the Sapelo community of Hog Hammock. The only store is a tiny convenience mart that seems to open only when management sees customers approach. MB runs the store, so it was unlocked for us. Pickings are slim, but it’s the only market at the community’s fingertips.

They otherwise must take the ferry to load up on the mainland, and haul groceries back to the island. The last ferry is at 3p, so whatever is overlooked must wait till the next day. 

If groceries are scarce, dining out isn’t a very viable option. Lula’s Restaurant is run by a woman who, as MB put it, “cooks when she feels like it. If she doesn’t, she won’t. And ain’t nobody gonna make her.”

“How often does she feel like it?”, we asked. 

“About every couple months”, he replied.

“Oh.”

In addition to driving our bus and running the store, MB helps locals till the land, acquires equipment to maintain the community, and fights daily battles with the whims of God and the graft of government. He is veritable mayor, magistrate, merchant, mechanic, and magician of this tiny village on an isolated island. 

It’s a battle fought uphill, both ways. He’s always pressing upstream and against the wind. Yet MB persists, with a perpetual smile plastered on his face.

At one point after a couple hours driving us around while blending pleasant humor with sincere perspective, MB told us the bus was dying. We thought he was joking. He assured us he wasn’t. We chuckled again. Then the bus sputtered, and stopped…and the engine fell silent.

Gazing up the empty road on this remote island, we began to think he was taking this gag a little too far. The last ferry had already left. We were staying the night in houses that Geechee residents had kindly made available to us. But we had no idea how far they were, or if we could walk to them while lugging our luggage. 

MB left the broken-down bus and started walking up the empty road. He periodically held his phone aloft, trying to catch a stray signal. Like hooking a wayward fish from a distant school, he finally reeled one in. After a brief conversation, he threw it back, and returned to the bus.

“I told you I wasn’t kidding”, he laughed. “But it’s OK. We’ll take care of you.” We applied a charitable interpretation to that assurance.

A few minutes later, it paid off. A van arrived, and brought us to our house.

More to come…

JD