Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders... with Melissa L. Cooper

Melissa L. Cooper is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Rutgers University-Newark.

Cooper’s ground breaking book, Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race and the American Imagination, published by the University of North Carolina Press, is a fascinating history.  Using Sapelo Island as a case study, Cooper unearths the intellectual and cultural trends that inspired, and continues to inspire, fascination with low country blacks and the African roots of their unique culture. Examining the history of Islanders in published works, Making Gullah tells a larger story about race and the American imagination.  Drawing inspiration from her own family’s connection to Sapelo, Cooper explores how the Islanders’ multi-generational struggle for land and racial equality have been overshadowed by the race fantasies that pervaded the stories that researchers and writers told about their exotic folk culture.  From the 1920s and 1930s to the present day, Cooper follows evolving theories about Gullah people's heritage through the rise of the social sciences; the Harlem Renaissance; the Great Migration; the voodoo craze; Jim Crow; and the Black Studies Movement. As new fears about the vanishing Gullah grip the nation, Making Gullah offers readers an opportunity to discover the complexity of an identity famous for its simplicity and timelessness.