In May of 2015, with her mind still on freedom and transforming the soil that her enslaved ancestors were forced to work, Mrs. Cornelia Walker Bailey, a well-known Saltwater Geechee activist, writer and storyteller brought together her son Maurice, and a Professor from the University of Georgia named Nik, to help her grow numerous varieties of Gullah Geechee heritage crops; she did so in an effort to mobilize a vision for preserving her community. By summer of 2017, she, Maurice and Nik started to see her vision begin to manifest through the clearing of land, erecting of fences, installing of irrigation, planting of crops and pulling of weeds; lots of weeds. But then in September 2017, Hurricane Irma engulfed the Hogg Hummock community in a violent storm surge; one of the largest/most intact remaining Gullah Geechee communities left in the country was under six feet of water including the initial crop of Purple Ribbon sugarcane they had grown together. As the storm waters receded and the crops dried out, a month later, Mrs. Cornelia suddenly passed away. Nik, who had promised Mrs. Cornelia that he would do all he could to help Maurice make her vision a reality the last time they spoke, two weeks before her passing amidst the havoc wreaked by Irma, realized that promise took on life-changing meaning in her death; it felt like a mandate that could never be renegotiated. This epistolary talk will chronicle the travails, tribulations and little triumphs the Hogg Hummock community has experienced since Mrs. Cornelia’s passing. The talk will also chronicle Maurice and Nik’s work together to make her vision a reality since her death, through letters written to her.

Nik Heynen is a Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Georgia and a Visiting Scholar in Food Studies at Spelman College. His research interests sit at the intersection of economic, environmental and racial justice. For just over a decade he has been working with members of the Saltwater Geechee in the Hogg Hummock community on Sapelo Island on the restoration of traditional agricultural practices and flood mitigation made necessary as a result of descendants losing their land to development pressure and increasing sea-level rise. Through this work he co-directs UGA’s Cornelia Walker Bailey Program on Land, Sea and Agriculture with Maurice Bailey. He is also the Director of Education and a board member for the Athens-based oyster shell recycling non-profit organization Shell to Shore.