St. Augustine’s Gullah Geechee Heritage Exhibit and Speaker Series

SAVE-THE-DATE for a public talk in St. Augustine on a very particular Gullah Geechee landscape featuring a public fireside chat at the historic Don Joseph Tovar House in St. Augustine. Led by Heather Hodges the discussion will highlight the rich, untold story of local Gullah Geechee history and culture as it intersects with the agricultural enterprises, natural history, systems of slavery, periods of colonial contestation and cultural heritage landscapes of colonial La Florida/Florida — with special reference to indigo and rice.

The talk will be in conjunction with the opening of a new exhibition November 5, 2021 at Tovar House @ The Oldest House Museum from artist Laura Mongiovi that uses textiles and other material objects to explore this Northeast Florida history through tourism.

It is a nice intersection with archival work I have been doing all summer to find images that allow me to tell Gullah visual histories — an important project when visual misrepresentations of Florida Indigenous and Gullah/Geechee people are frustratingly pervasive. And often fail to provide an adequate Diaspora context for envisioning Gullah Geechee people in conversation with other pre-20th century African + Diasporan communities in the Caribbean and Lat Am. For example, the cultivation of indigo is a through-line that connects West African societies to the Gullah + larger Black experience in several British colonies including South Carolina, Florida, Jamaica + Antigua — including the use of the dye to adorn.