NAVASSA — Efforts by multiple organizations continue to work toward preserving southeastern North Carolina’s Gullah Geechee heritage.
Almost 100 attendants gathered at Reaves Chapel in Navassa on Saturday to celebrate their ancestors and the development of a 30-mile heritage trail across Brunswick County to commemorate Gullah Geechee culture and history.
Nearly 500,000 African Americans settled in the coastal counties of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida from the 1500s to the 1800s, brought over on slave ships to work rice plantations. The Orton Plantation, Pleasant Oaks Plantation, York Plantation, and Kendall Plantation were some of the major rice cultivators in the area.
After being freed, many of the Gullah Geechee people continued to reside in the areas. Historian Jim McKay told Port City Daily the Gullah Geechee lived and worked in this area, a major rice-producing region.
On October 12, 2006, Congress passed the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Act to establish national recognition of the Gullah Geechee corridor along the Southeast Atlantic coast.
“[We] are in the process of renovating Reaves Chapel as a cornerstone of the Gullah Geechee Corridor,“ Alfonso Beatty said at Saturday’s ceremony.
Reaves Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church was built by former slaves of Cedar Hill Plantation after the Civil War. Through a donation from the Orton Foundation, the Coastal Land Trust began rehabilitation of the historical site in 2019. Beatty told Port City Daily it is expected to finish by the first quarter of 2024 and will be open to the public as a historic site.
Beatty is the president of the Cedar Hill/West Bank Heritage Foundation, which seeks to enhance the cultural education of citizens along the Cedar Hill and West Bank corridor. In collaboration with North Carolina Gullah Geechee Greenway Blueway Heritage Trail, the foundation wants to create a 30-mile trail, anticipated to begin in Navassa from the intersection of Cedar Hill and Mount Misery roads in Phoenix Park. It will travel down to Southport.
The Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization and North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Integrated Mobility Division are currently conducting a 14-mile feasibility study, which she said was the limits within their planning boundary, for the portion of the trail from Phoenix Park to Brunswick County Nature Park on NC-133.
WMPO senior transportation planner Vanessa Lacer told Port City Daily the study is being funded by an NCDOT IMB grant and has cost between $80,000 and $120,000. The study is expected to be completed by June 2024.
She said the study is considering different options for creating the trail, environmental impacts, and cost-effectiveness. After the study provides recommendations, Brunswick municipalities can make decisions on preferred methods of the trail’s implementation.
Mayor Willis spoke to Port City Daily Sunday about Navassa’s deep historical ties to the Gullah Geechee. They worked at plantations, such as the Belville and Orton plantations.
“Ten of those plantations are now the town of Navassa,” Mayor Willis said.
Willis pressed upon Gullah Geechee’s contribution to the antebellum Cape Fear economy. The Cape Fear River’s west bank and Eagles Island was ideal for rice cultivation because of its marshy soil.
“Back in the antebellum days, the biggest city was the town of Wilmington because Wilmington could do all these imports-exports,” Mayor Willis said. “Well, the rich people in Wilmington figured out that they could grow this rice over here on this island.”
The area has been threatened in the last few years by development and even has New Hanover County commissioners developing a zoning plan for what they want to see across from downtown Wilmington, on the western banks of the Cape Fear River.
As PCD previously reported, Eagles Island is subject of conflict regarding efforts by Bobby Ginn of Ginn Corp. In recent months, he inquired about annexing part of the territory into Wilmington city limits to create a mixed-use development including 912 condos, a 410-room hotel, and 127,000 square feet of convention space for retail and storage. Even without annexation, Ginn can develop the property by-right based on New Hanover County zoning.
The Eagles Island Task Force seeks to safeguard as much of the approximately 2,100-acre island as possible for preservation of the area’s cultural heritage and environment; the vast majority of the property is wetlands.
“Almost everything that was important to the development of the Cape Fear region plays into Eagles Island,” retired UNCW professor John Haley stated as part of a lecture he gave to the Eagles Island Coalition in 2012. He said it was one of the only original Gullah sites that hasn’t been turned into what he described as “a new plantation — golf course, country clubs.”
Chairman Willis emphasized four forms of Gullah Geechee cultural contributions that have influenced American culture:
- Music, which evolved out of the conditions of slavery and has impacted many genres including gospel, ragtime, rhythm and blues, soul, jazz, and hip hop
- Art, which includes elaborate basket-weaving and textiles
- A unique form of Creole language
- Cuisine, a fusion of seafood, livestock, fruits, vegetables and items imported from Africa and Europe, as well as foods introduced by Native Americans, such as corn, squash, and berries
“All of these important ‘historical pearls’ — I like to call them that — to show what the contribution of the Gullah Geechee has been all across our area,” the chairman said.
Much of those cultural impacts were the impetus to start the trail — “string them together if you will, add it together into a trail system,” chairman Willis said.
Chairman Willis said his effort to create the trail began during Black History Month in February, 2020. Two years later, the Greenway Blueway Heritage project formalized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Lacer told Port City Daily the first steering committee for the study took place in September 2023; public outreach sessions followed in the first and second weeks of October this year.
In addition to Reaves Chapel, Navassa plans on creating a Gullah Geechee heritage center at the Kerr Mcgee Superfund Site once it completes cleaning.
Other Brunswick County municipalities have initiated involvement in the trail; Leland passed a resolution in December 2022 supporting the feasibility study and has adopted other initiatives that will support it, including its 2045 plan, 2020 master plan, and 2016 pedestrian plan. The 2022 resolution cited physical health and economic growth as benefits of increased pedestrian and bike path connectivity. It also notes the trail as an economic driver.
Belville is working on multi-use paths to integrate into the project; Southport already has an African American heritage trail which chairman Willis said is expected to connect to the final Gullah Geechee route.
Chairman Willis said he hoped the project would emphasize the positive aspects of African American history rather than oppression and exploitation.
“I think the issues of African Americans and their history has taken a very positive turn for the country,” he said. “Where we learn more about the African Americans’ contribution to our society.”
Tips or comments? Email journalist Peter Castagno at peter@localdailymedia.com.
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