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ATLANTA — Georgia State University has received a $500,000 grant to develop archival, historical and cultural research to preserve and protect the heritage and sacred land of Gullah/Geechee communities in Georgia and South Carolina.
The grant will help establish the Gullah/Geechee Sacred Land Project (GGSLP) dedicated to maintaining African American burial grounds by recovering communities' spiritual, genealogical and spatial lineages and safeguarding the places where those communities interred their ancestors. With the Mellon Foundation’s support, GGSLP will create undergraduate and graduate humanities curricula and foster research, heritage preservation and community engagement to create new knowledge about the history and significance of Black sacred land traditions and protect ancestral burial grounds.
“The Mellon Foundation continues to be a generous partner of Georgia State University, and we’re grateful for their belief in the significance of our mission and commitment to providing students with valuable research and academic opportunities that prepare them for careers as they uplift underserved and underrepresented communities,” said Georgia State President M. Brian Blake. “This partnership with the Mellon Foundation will enable students to conduct and access groundbreaking research and meaningfully connect with the people and histories that make up one of the most innovative learning environments in the country.”
Led by the efforts of Georgia State professors and historians Ras Michael Brown and Tiffany A. Player, GGSLP will provide a rich and unique research area for undergraduate and graduate students interested in studying Gullah/Geechee culture and traditions. The project will include four new courses on oral tradition and folklore, immersive service-learning experiences, the establishment of an interdisciplinary Gullah/Geechee Sacred Land Project Lab and the creation of a Cultural Resource Management certificate for graduate students under the direction of project Co-Investigator Chad Keller. The Mellon Foundation gift will advance the Georgia State Department of History's leadership in preservational and historical research and promote the protection of sacred land for future generations.
“The Mellon Foundation’s funding allows us to strengthen our relationships with Gullah/Geechee communities and support their ongoing efforts to honor their ancestors and the legacies they left for descendants,” said Brown, an associate professor of history in the College of Arts & Sciences at Georgia State University. “This kind of community engagement should be fundamental to university-based historical research and preservation activities, and we’re grateful to the Mellon Foundation and our community partners for this opportunity to fortify connections between the past and the present in preparation for challenges and possibilities ahead.”
With Gullah/Geechee lands being appropriated and compromised by recent decades of persistent industrial, resort and exurban development, sacred land reserved for ancestral cultural practices and burials have been left especially vulnerable. The Gullah/Geechee Sacred Land Project seeks to protect the distinct traditions of the Gullah/Geechee communities — formed during the early eras of slavery in North America — and their enduring significance as “Black memory spaces” for both local communities and non-Gullah/Geechee African Americans who may not know how and where they are connected historically to their African ancestors. In addition to providing students the resources to extensively document, curate and preserve knowledge about these communities and their cultures, the GGSLP will advance Georgia State’s mission by allowing students from diverse backgrounds to closely explore their own identities and histories through archival research and historical scholarship.
A longtime supporter of Georgia State and its mission, the Mellon Foundation has awarded the university multiple grants over the last 20 years, including two grants totaling more than $2.75 million in 2022.
Explore some of the many ways Georgia State’s philanthropic partners and individual donors are helping students succeed at giving.gsu.edu.