A chunk of a ferry dock collapsed on Georgia's Sapelo Island, where members of the Gullah Geechee community had gathered to celebrate fall. At least seven were left dead and eight were rushed to the hospital. The Gullah Geechee community comprises the descendants of enslaved Black people.
According to CNN, all of those who met their demise were above the age of 70. Per the outlet, Georgia Department of Natural Resources Capt. Chris Hodge revealed in a conference on Saturday that the platform collapsed just before 4 p.m. on the visitor ferry dock, sending at least 20 people nosediving into the water.
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The history of the Gullah Geechee
The Gullah Geechee are descendants of African American ethnicity, who predominantly reside in states like South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Mainly referred to as the Gullah people, their language is called Geechee, thought to be derived from the name of the Ogeechee River near Savannah, Georgia.
In Georgia, these communities are further divided into two: the "Freshwater Geechee" and "Saltwater Geechee." These are based on where the communities live, on the mainland or the Sea Islands. Modern-day Gullah people speak an English-based Creole language, which draws on their African heritage and languages.
According to The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection, published by Joseph A. Opala, it was the local people's knowledge of cultivating rice that led to their colonization and subsequent capture and slavery.
Given that the colonizers did not possess such knowledge, and upon discovering that African rice was able to grow on Carolinian and Georgian soil, they sought to enslave these men and women. These people, according to the Port of Charleston records, can be traced back to regions like Angola, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Senegambia, and the Windward Coast.
According to the paper, the Gullah Geechee people speak a language not unlike Sierra Leone Krio. To date, they use the names of their African forefathers and pass down the same African folktales. Their handicrafts, including their baskets and walking sticks, feature distinct African-culture influences, and their diet remains primarily based on rice.
In speaking about the collapse on the dock, Commissioner Walter Rabon said, per The Guardian:
"It is a structural failure. There should be very, very little maintenance to an aluminum gangway like that, but we’ll see what the investigation unfolds. There was no collision, the thing just collapsed. We don’t know why.”
He dubbed the incident a “catastrophic failure.” Notably, none of the seven who died were island residents and were simply visiting. As many as 40 people were standing on the gangway at the time, which was completed back in November 2021.
According to CNN, the gangway was inspected just last December by the McIntosh County-based Crescent Equipment Company.
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