Southeast

Florida

Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor (FL, GA, NC, SC)

The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor serves to protect the culture of the region shaped by captive Africans brought to the United States. The corridor crosses the states of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

For a more in-depth view of Gullah Geechee collections at the American Folklife Center, see this research guide.

Alan Lomax, Zora Neale Hurston, and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle expedition collection
Call Number: AFC 1935/001
Collection of field recordings of African American, Bahamian, and Haitian songs, music, tales, and church services recorded on instantaneous discs by Alan Lomax, Zora Neale Hurston, and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle in 1935 for the Archive of American Folk Song. The collection includes interviews conducted on St. Simon's Island with speakers of Gullah.
Robert Winslow Gordon cylinder collection
Call Number: AFC 1928/002
Folk songs of America: include gospel singing, Gullah-Geechee songs, etc.

Georgia

Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor (FL, GA, NC, SC)

For a more in-depth view of Gullah Geechee collections at the American Folklife Center, see this research guide.

McIntosh County Shouters concert collection, 2010 December 2

Concert performed by the McIntosh County Shouters in the Coolidge Auditorium. The concert features a performance of Gullah Geechee ring shout and other dances and traditional songs and spirituals from Georgia, featuring fusion of movement, call-and-response singing, and percussion (hand-clapping and a stick beating a drum-like rhythm on a wooden floor).

Mary Jo Sanna collection, 1974-1989
Call Number: AFC 2023/014
Includes field recordings and interviews related to Bessie Jones, Georgia Sea Islands Festivals in the early 1980s, Gullah Geechee shouters, and audience members at the Georgia Sea Island Festivals.
Laura Boulton Collection, part 1: Negro folklore
Call Number: AFC 1973/028
Collection of field recordings of spirituals, hymns, and gospel music recorded by Walter Garwick between 1935-1937 from African Americans at various locations in Virginia, South Carolina, Geogria, Tennessee, and Alabama. In addition to sacred music, the recordings include Gullah prayers, sermons, tales, Br'er Rabbit stories and vendors' street cries in South Carolina; spells, remedies, and tales recorded in South Georgia; a dialect play and a folk play.

North Carolina

Blue Ridge National Heritage Area
Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor (FL, GA, NC, SC)

The Blue Ridge National Heritage Area is home to the rich cultural heritage of the Cherokee Indians, as well as some of the oldest mountains on the planet. The region is also known for its diversity of plant and animal life.

Funeral director Bruce Martin, Jr., discusses his and his family's history serving the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians on the Qualla Boundary in North Carolina, and the history of their business, Long House Funeral Home. This item forms part of the collection "Folklife of funeral services professionals in the Carolinas: Archie Green Fellows Project, 2016-2017"

Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project collection, 1977-1981
Call Number: AFC 1982/009
The Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project examined folklife in and around an area of the Blue Ridge Parkway at the Virginia and North Caroline border. The project documented old-time music, tales, hunting and hunting stories, farming, tobacco cultivation and auctions, vernacular architecture, quilting, foodways, relgious music and beliefs, as well as dance events featuring square dancing and flatfood dancing.
David Hoffman collection of documentary materials for films on Bascar Lamar Lunsford, 1964-1992
Call Number: AFC 2005/018
Collection of audio recordings, photographs, and 16mm film shot by David Hoffman for his 1964 documentary film for television on Bascom Lamar Lunsford, entitled "Music Makers of the Blue Ridge."
Frans M Olbrechts collection of Cherokee cylinder recordings
Call Number: AFC 1948/067
Collection of two hours of field recordings of Cherokee music and spoken word recorded in 1927 by Frans M. Olbrechts in Big Cove, North Carolina, under the sponsorship of the Bureau of American Ethnology. In addition to several narrative items including a folktale, numerals from one to twenty, a speech in the Cherokee Council, and a lecture from the Cherokee New Testament, the collection includes dance songs, hunting songs, a prayer song, medicine songs, and a war cry.
John D Gillespie and Artus Moser recordings of Cherokee music
Call Number: AFC 1950/016
Collection of field recordings of Cherokee music, including friendship dance, victory dance, snake dance, corn dance, and bear dance.

For a more in-depth view of Gullah Geechee collections at the American Folklife Center, see this research guide.

Folklife of funeral services professionals in the Carolinas: Archie Green Fellows Project, 2016-2017
Call Number: AFC 2016/037
Folklorist Sarah Bryan of Durham, NC documented the work of morticians and funeral directors in the Carolinas. She explored how, through their work, funeral workers engage with the funerary folklore and religious beliefs of diverse Carolina communities, including African American, Gullah, Scottish and Scots-Irish as well as more recently arrived immigrant groups.
Robert Winslow Gordon cylinder collection
Call Number: AFC 1928/002
Collection of field recordings representing a cross section of American folksong including Negro blues, spirituals, and ballads, Anglo-American ballads, gospel singing, Gullah-Geechee songs, sermons, sea chanties, recitations, and miscellaneous recordings such as the inauguration of President Coolidge.

South Carolina

Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor (FL, GA, NC, SC)
South Carolina National Heritage Corridor

For a more in-depth view of Gullah Geechee collections at the American Folklife Center, see this research guide.

A.H. Stoddard collection of Gullah recordings
Call Number: AFC 1950/019
Collection of sound recordings of Gullah dialect tales spoken by A.H. Stoddard, originally of Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, recorded for the Archive of Folk Song.
"You can't possibly known where you're going until you understand where you've been": the preservation of Gullah musical traditions at the Heritage Days Festival on St. Helena Island, South Carolina
Call Number: AFC 2011/044
Preservation of Gullah musical traditions at the Heritage Days Festival on St. Helena Island, South Carolina.
Park R. Dougherty collection of Society for the Preservation of Spirituals recordings, 1936-2004
Call Number: AFC 1982/015
Collection of disc recordings of spirituals, sermons, and prayers recorded in black churches in Cromwell Alley, Charleston, South Carolina; and on Johns Island, in McClellanville, Collins Creek, and other locations in South Carolina, 1937-1938. The Collection includes African-American spirituals in the Gullah dialect.
Harold Reeves and Russell Wood collection of Gullah recordings
Call Number: AFC 1959/006
Stories and anecdotes performed in Gullah dialect by Harold S. (Dick) Reeves, raconteur, member of the American Dialect Society and South Carolina Dialect Society and the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals.
Harold Reeves collection of Gullah tales
Call Number: AFC 1958/016
Radio program with questions about Social Security, followed by tales in standard English and in Gullah, with background music by the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals, narrated by Harold S. (Dick) Reeves and his daughter Martha.

The South Carolina National Heritage Corridor (SCNHC) promotes and preserves South Carolina's diverse natural, historic and cultural resources. Stretching across 17 counties, the heritage corridor includes the Cherokee Foothills, the Savannah and Ashley Rivers, plantation houses, and Edisto Island. Some of the collections relevant to the SCNHC also necessarily intersect with collections relating to the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor.

Laura Boulton Collection, part 1: Negro folklore
Call Number: AFC 1978/028
Collection of field recordings of spirituals, hymns, and gospel music recorded between 1935-1937 from African Americans at various locations in Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. In addition to sacred music, the recordings include Gullah prayers, sermons, tales, Br'er Rabbit stories, spelles, remedies and tales. Among the locations recorded are Edisto Island and Johns Island in the South Carolina National Heritage Corridor
Annual Azalea Festival (Charleston, S.C.) recordings
Call Number: AFC 1965/017
Collection of 4 transcription discs recorded by WEAF radio of the annual Azalea Festival, Charleston, South Carolina, 1936 April 14, featuring performances by the Society for the Preservation of the Negro Spiritual (now The Society for the Preservation of Spirituals) of Charleston, South Carolina, who specialized in singing spirituals in the Gullah language.
John A Lomax Southern States collection, 1937
Call Number: AFC 1937/007
Collection of field recordings of African American and Anglo-American religious songs, hymns, spirituals, play-party songs, etc from Alabama, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Texas. Includes recordings of a folk play sung and spoken by a group from Wadmalaw Island, performed in Hibernian Hall, Charleston, S.C.

U.S. Virgin Islands

St. Croix

One of the islands that makes up the U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Croix was recognized for its significant contributions to the America's historic, cultural and natural history. The music, foodways, dance, and folklore of St. Croix reflect the rich heritage of the Indigenous, African, West African, South American and European communities that have called the island home over the years.

Soule Archive: Traditions of St. Croix and St. Thomas
Call Number: AFC 2014/013
Collection of field recordings of music, stories, and interviews recorded by MaryJane Soule from 1978 to 1985 on St. Croix and St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands. This collection includes a detailed guide to the recordings, the "Guidebook to the Soule Archive: Traditions of St. Croix and St. Thomas." Approximately half of the audio recordings are oral history interviews with elders who remember working on sugar plantations and the sugar workers' strike of 1915.
An Abridged compilation of American Virgin Island children's songs, chants, circle games, and elimination games
Call Number: AFC 1984/054
Field recordings of seventy children's folk songs of the American Virgin Islands compiled by Karen S. Ellis in 1979. Recorded from elementary school children in St. Croix from about 1976-1978.

National Heritage Areas: Resources in the American Folklife Center

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U.S. Virgin Islands