Georgia university receives $500,000 grant to preserve Gullah Geechee heritage

The Baptist church on Sapelo Island in Georgia, in 2022. Photograph: Rita Harper/The Guardian

A new $500,000 Mellon grant will allow Georgia State University to develop archival, historical and cultural research to protect Gullah Geechee heritage and communities in Georgia and South Carolina.

Using the grant, GSU will establish the Gullah Geechee Sacred Land Project (GGSLP), which will be “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”, according to a statement by the college.