Jacksonville’s Gullah Geechee Heritage
The Jaxson is pleased to announce that one of our co-owners and editors is publishing a new book. Jacksonville’s Gullah Geechee Heritage, a collaboration between local urban planners and historians Ennis Davis and Adrienne Burke, will be released by Arcadia Publishing on April 28, 2026.
Jacksonville, Florida’s Gullah Geechee heritage is an integral part of the city’s story. Gullah Geechee people, descendants of West and Central African people forcibly brought to the Southeastern coast of the United States, have retained many of their indigenous African traditions through architecture, food, culture, religion, and occupations. This legacy, combined with Northeast Florida’s unique blend of Indigenous, French, Spanish, and English colonial history, has contributed to the African American journey in Jacksonville.
Today Jacksonville is the largest city in the federally designated Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, which stretches from Wilmington, NC to St. Augustine, FL. This book highlights the Gullah Geechee experience and its influence on life in the city’s development and culture. An introduction is provided by Saundra Morene with the Jacksonville Gullah/Geechee Nation Community Development Corporation.
What Are They Saying?
Gullah Geechee is a foundational culture for the United States influencing everything from our foodways and music to the way we speak. It has a descendant community that numbers in the hundreds of thousands internationally…