Preserving recipes Gullah Geechee culture is the heart of this story, which follows students in Charleston using zine-making, archival research, and food memories to document and protect Gullah Geechee traditions. The piece shows how recipes can carry history, identity, and cultural survival across generations.
March 26, 2026Students, educators, and presenters gather outside the historic Avery building after the day of learning. Credit: Courtesy photo
At an archives in Charleston, South Carolina, one day last month, a group of high school students sat around a table, newspaper clippings scattered before them. The articles, some decades old, described what a legendary community of formerly enslaved Black people and their descendants ate — and how they cooked it.
As Erin Polite, one of the students from the nearby Charleston County School of the Arts, scanned the clippings for her project, one caught her eye: a photo of bags filled with lima beans.
The image reminded her of time spent with her parents, soaking the beans before cooking them in a crockpot. But it also brought to mind what her ancestors might have eaten — pig tails and turkey necks that the white people who owned them tossed aside.
“I just thought, ‘I don’t know anyone else who makes lima beans other than people down here,’” she says.
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How Can Zines Protect the Gullah Geechee History?
The “down here” Polite referred to is South Carolina’s famed Lowcountry, the oceanfront home of the Gullah Geechee people. And her project, funded by a grant from an organization that supports English and language arts, is to use modern storytelling techniques — zines, do-it-yourself collages, and artwork — to document Gullah food and recipes before time steals them away and the loss of their ancestral homes.
#GullahGeechee #CulturalPreservation #FoodHistory
