Sighs of pleasure - Georgia's Golden Isles - Special Supplement: Georgia's African American Heritage

American Visions, August-Sept, 1994 by Henry Chase

You've always known how to define serenity, but Georgia's Golen Isles - St. Simons Island, Jekyll Island, Sea island and Little St. Simons Island - allow you to experience it. They introduce you to a realm of beaches, ocean waves, palm trees, wisteria, golf courses, tennis courts and miles of bike trails.

Make that long-dreamed-of chip shot on the back nine; smash your brother-in-law's serve back over the net (Yes!) j-u-s-t out of his stretching reach; bicycle with the family along trails that tempt you to stop and view close up the profusion of flowers with riotous colors and sundry fragrances. Sun on the beaches or sit in the shade of the trees of Neptune Park and listen to the gentle slap-slap-slap of the waves striking shore. Watch your kids' eyes grow wide when they discover the eggs of loggerhead turtles, witness a school of dolphins playfully leaping for a moment above the water's surface or catch a glimpse of right whales wintering off the islands' shores with their newborn calves. Enjoy being away from the hustle of off-island life - and the welcome from the local people, who cheerfully share the calming pleasures of the Golden Isles.

Enjoy, too, the surprising depth of the Georgia coast's black heritage - and the welcome from the local people, who respect your exploration of that treasure.

An ideal starting point for uncovering the past's buried treasure - particularly the unique Gullah culture that was forged in the isolation of the rice and Sea Island cotton plantations of coastal Georgia - will found on the mainland at Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation. Hofwyl once boasted 7,000 acres of rice fields, worked by more than 350 slaves. Today, guided tours of one of America's few extent antebellum rice plantations last 45 minutes to an hour and a half. (There is also a self-guided one-mile loop trail, but its interpretive focus lacks a strong African-American accent.)

The most important thing to remember at Hofwyl is that you should state your interpretive interest and have your tour structured to suit your taste. If you're interested in the "other half" - the world of the African diaspora and the African-American culture created in the cauldron of dispossession and bondage - alert your guide. Better still, request Jackie Edwards, a 21-year veteran of Georgia's park service and a 14-year veteran of Hofwyl.

Although the remnants of the house servants' quarters and the dairy barn are the sole Hofwyl sites with an African-American accent and only offer exterior viewing, Edwards is deeply knowledgeable about the nexus of rice production and its attendant African-American culture.

Whether dressed as a living-history interpreter or in her park service clothes, whether pounding mortar and pestle in the old rice fields and chanting, "Peas and rice, peas and rice, peas and rice; done, done, done," or explaining the post-Emancipation ties maintained between both sides of slavery's divide, she has enlightening tales to tell. (Be sure to ask her about liverpool Hazzard and Jane and the social distinctions maintained well into the 1930s by freed folk of Butler Island and St. Catherines Island.)

Be sure, as well, to stop in Hofwyl's museum, which offers artifacts, photographs, memorabilia and outstanding video presentations, all of which interpret the material and social culture forged in the rice fields. Look particularly for late-19th-century photographs of African-American laborers - which are not always on display, as exhibits rotate.

Although Hofwyl is the area's outstanding interpretation of the black experience on Georgia's coast, there are several sites on the Sea Islands that will claim your attention. Your starting point for this exploration of the islands is the excellent African-American Heritage Highlights' brochure prepared by the Brunswick & Golden Isles Visitors Bureau.

St. Simons Island offers glimpses of the full range of the African-American story, from resistance (Ebo Landing) to adaptation (Neptune Park), from Northern immigration (Robert S. Abbott) to generations of extended settlement the Sea Island Festival). And your exploration of this story is the more enjoyable because it takes you all around the island, from quiet churches with tree-shaded green lawns to marshes graced by herons, to the ocean's edge.

In May of 1803, a band of Igbo born African freedom and destined for slavery on St. Simons and Sapelo islands' plantations rebelled as the landing boat bearing them drew up along Dunbar Creek. Determined to return to their homeland and confident of the protection of their god, Chukwu, to whom they offered a hymn, the Igbo resolutely marched into the creek, back toward Africa, whence they had come. The water soon rose above their heads, drowning most of the band. The few survivors, who were taken to Cannon's Point Plantation on St. Simons and to Sapelo, passed on to succeeding generations the story of their response to their abduction to America, allowing their descendants and others to locate the general area of what is now known as Ebo Landing.