May 23, 2025
The Gullah Geechee people are descendants of enslaved West and Central Africans who live along the southeastern coast of the U.S.
The Gullah Geechee Chamber of Commerce and the William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government have partnered to create an economic recovery and development program for the Gullah Geechee community.
Through collaborative sessions, community leaders, scholars, and supporters co-created a program rooted in economic stability and cultural preservation.
“We didn’t come to be included. We came to integrate what we’ve already built,” Marilyn Hemingway, President of the Gullah Geechee Chamber, said.
The group proposed a five-year sustainability budget to support operations. The council will ensure that all initiatives align with the Gullah Geechee community’s cultural values, land protection efforts, and economic growth. This initiative aims to connect Gullah Geechee people with business leaders and global diasporic partners to develop and enhance the economy through technology, cultural education, and tourism. The program seeks to demonstrate how historically marginalized communities can lead their economic recovery efforts.
“The Gullah Geechee corridor is rich in culture, cuisine, and unrealized capital. Throughout its existence, it has fed the world with rice, resources, freedom, and the fruit of business and entrepreneurship,” Cornell William Brooks, director of the William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice at Harvard Kennedy School, said in a statement.
“In the 1700s, the corridor was one of the wealthiest places in America. There is no greater time, no more propitious a moment than now to achieve an unprecedented level of economic development,” Brooks noted.
The team will enter Phase II of the program, which will include developing funding initiatives, implementing strategies, and prioritizing Gullah Geechee leadership and community.
Harvard has a history of supporting the preservation of Gullah Geechee culture. In 2017, the university became the first Ivy League institution to offer a Gullah language course—a creole dialect blending English with West African languages. Linguist Sunn M’Cheaux, a native Gullah speaker from Charleston, S.C., teaches the course.
RELATED CONTENT: The Enduring Fire: Revisiting Malcolm X’s Vision For Black Liberation On What Would Have Been His 100th Birthday
