Rachel Afusa Ansong, 2020 Graduate Research Grant Winner

Akans in the Gullah Geechee is a hybrid poetry and art project that explores Adinkra symbols in South Carolina and Georgia.  The regions in North America spanning from North Carolina to Florida currently, known as the Gullah Geechee was previously settled by enslaved Africans from West Africa.  

Although scholars have extensive research on Adinkra symbols from West Africa, they have not yet accounted for ways in which the symbols were initially transferred to the United States. In exploring Savannah and Charleston, Ansong is seeking to discover traces of Akan, West African customs, like Adinkra symbols that enslaved Africans brought to the United States and continued to practice as a way of survival and connection with home.

The Gullah Geechee regions present solid evidence that Adinkra symbols and their beliefs were used by enslaved people as a way of remembering the past.