#1 Incredible Gullah Geechee Tour in Charleston, South Carolina

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From the moment I crossed into the city lines, Charleston felt…eerie to me. I wish I could adequately describe the feeling. It was like being in haunted house that was disguised as Disneyland. Other tourists shuffled around me, giddily taking family selfies, shop owners beamed at visitors, and the colorful streets bustled with excited energy. All the while, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I couldn’t pinpoint why until I took a Gullah Geechee Tour.

Let me preface this post by saying not everyone will feel this way. For many travelers and residents alike, Charleston, SC is a gem. And I love that for them. Some people have familial or ancestral ties to the city or land, and may even feel a pull towards Charleston.

I’m not sure if I have some kind of tie to Charleston, SC in my family tree, but if I do they were telling me to get OUT.

I spent three days in Charleston walking around feeling like something was off, at least for me. Then I signed up to take a Gullah Geechee Tour of the city, to learn more about Charleston’s Black history, and then all of the uncanny feelings I had during my stay started to make sense.

But let me start from the beginning.

Who Are Gullah Geechee?

The roots of Gullah-Geechee culture stems from forced migration – through America’s role in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The ancestors of the Gullah Geechee people were enslaved from Sierra Leone, Angola, and other West African nations and taken to the Southeast shore of what would become the USA.

Charleston, South Carolina operated as the largest (and most profitable) slave port. It was usually the first site many enslaved folks had of their new environment, and the LAST place most of them saw of their friends, families, and the tether that held the memories of their former home.

Some were bought to work on the Sea Island plantations (located along the coast of Georgia and South Carolina) to cultivate crops such as indigo, cotton, and rice. However, since it was so unbearably hot in these islands, most of the plantation owners in the Sea Islands chose to live on the mainland. So, for the large majority of the time, those enslaved on the islands lived in relative isolation from their white slave owners. With these conditions, they were allowed to develop and cultivate their own unique culture specific to them.

Gullah-Geechee.

I actually didn’t know any of this until AFTER I left Charleston and continued on my 2-month Southern roadtrip to Savannah, Georgia. There, I visited the Pin Point Heritage Museum that gave a lot of context and history of the community. So hopefully my small recap helped give you some insight, but I also recommend visiting the museum if you have the opportunity!

Where to a Find Gullah Geechee Tour

It was actually pretty easy to find a Gullah Geechee tour in Charleston, I just googled Black history tour and they popped up haha. But at the same time, I noticed Gullah Geechee tours are not advertised in mainstream Charleston tourism or even by other travel bloggers.

I’m…guessing they don’t google Black history tours as often? But I thought at least the city would help highlight the perspective that these tours offer, especially as the whole nation was racing to prove how systemically un-racist they were by painting BLM on crosswalks.

But I digress.

There are two Gullah Geechee tours offered in Charleston. The first, and the one I took, is called “Gullah Geechee Tours” and the second is called “Gullah Tours.” So both are extremely aptly named haha.

Both tours are great with charismatic insightful guides and they cover a lot of the same heritage sites, so you really can’t go wrong with either. The main distinguishing feature is the duration of the tour. The “Gullah Geechee Tour” options are shorter and average about an hour. The “Gullah Tours” are two hours long.

Comparing the two, if you are traveling with children or younger kids, the shorter tour would probably be more comfortable for them. However if you’d like to go more in-depth, then opt for the longer one. Or do both honestly!

Since I was on a slightly tighter schedule, I went with the shorter “Gullah Geechee Tour,” specifically their “Tour with Godfrey” option that involves a ride through Charleston in an airconditioned van that stops at various sites throughout the city.

My Experience

We arrived at the meet-up spot about ten minutes early, a first for me. However, it is the bus station where MOST of the Charleston tours depart from, so it took me those full ten minutes to find the right tour van.

I probably could’ve asked and gotten there faster, but, yanno. Social anxiety. Anyways, I’d recommend planning on arriving at least ten minutes early to allow yourself some time to calmly find your van and get settled in.

Before we set off, our tour guide, Godfrey, introduced himself and his connection to Charleston as a member of the Gullah Geechee community. We got a quick overview of Gullah Geechee history and then we set off. We started off the tour with just one of what would be MANY eye-opening facts about the city. Although Charleston has over a hundred tour operators, there are one two guides who are Black.

And yes, those are the two Gullah Geechee tour companies (that they founded themselves).

So already, there is a discrepancy in how mainstream tourism in Charleston is represented, and which (or whose) truths are allowed to be shared to a wider audience. The Gullah Geechee tour briefly covered the history of Charleston from before colonization, but our first stop was a site of one of the old slave tradition stations. That’s when everything I felt about Charleston started to make sense.

I won’t spoil the contents of the tour, but between the blue painted roofs, the flowers in front of the basement, the random blocks of cement placed on the sidewalk, the 1/2 house numbers, ALL OF THE CHURCHES…yeah…Charleston has some dark energy brewing that it refuses to acknowledge publicly. Probably because a lot of it is ongoing.

The tour was smooth and I enjoyed the personal accounts from our guide. He really wove a story throughout the sites we visited, and everything that we were learning felt cohesive. Because of that, the story and impact of the tour was even more powerful. There was very little walking, but the tour never felt boring or stifling.

Conclusion: Gullah Geechee Tour

Overall, I highly recommend adding a Gullah Geechee tour onto your Charleston itinerary. To date, it’s still one of the most powerful city tours I have done throughout the USA, along with the Black Wall Street tour in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

However, if you can’t make it over to Charleston, South Carolina but would still like to learn more about Gullah Geechee history, or perhaps want to follow your own Gullah heritage walking tour, you can pick up a Charleston guide book written by Alphonso Brown of Gullah Tours!

Have you ever been to Charleston – and did you take a tour? Let me know if your guide touched on any of Charleston’s Black history or the Gullah Geechee community!

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