# Collecting Survivals: Sapelo Island Georgia and the Search for Gullah Folk

Historian Melissa Cooper, associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Newark, who specializes in the study of African American cultural and intellectual history and the history of the African Diaspora, discusses her research on the emergence of “the Gullah” in scholarly and popular works beginning in the 1920s and the 1930s. Using Georgia as a case study, Cooper explores the forces that initially inspired interest in Black southerners’ African heritage and the legacies of early research and publications that made Sapelo Islanders famous, including historic fieldwork and documentation materials that are now part of the American Folklife Center Archive. The Botkin Lecture series is part of AFC’s ongoing public programming activities highlighting the fields of folklife, ethnomusicology, oral history and related disciplines, foregrounding its archival holdings, and fulfilling its Congressionally-mandated mission.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2024
- Runtime: 56 min
- By: Cooper, Melissa
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/video-9922/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/video-9922?play=1)