A Return to Sapelo’s Shores:
Building a Movement through Black Land, Freedom, and Memory
By: Desiree Evans, Project South Senior Narrative Strategist, October 2025
In October 2025, Project South organizers and participants in our Building A Movement (BAM) Institute traveled to Sapelo Island, Georgia as part of our Southern Organizing Initiative, deepening our partnership with the Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society (SICARS), a long-standing mutual partner aid site.
Project South’s Southern Organizing Initiative partners with communities like Sapelo to coordinate land-based, movement-led and mutual aid infrastructure that supports survival, protection, and defense. We are working to build a regional network rooted in Black and Indigenous land stewardship and political power.
Walking on Sacred Land
Sapelo Island is home to Hogg Hammock, the last intact Gullah-Geechee community in Georgia, where descendants of enslaved Africans have maintained their ancestral land for more than two centuries. It’s a small barrier island, twelve miles long, framed by marsh and tide, where Black land, memory, and resistance remain deeply intertwined.
Our connection to Sapelo Island stretches back many years through mutual aid, disaster recovery, and grassroots governance work, and continues to embody the values at the heart of our regional mission: land, self-determination, and collective survival.
Project South works closely with SICARS, which was founded in 1993. The group leads local preservation and revitalization efforts, with members working to ensure that Sapelo’s culture and history continue to thrive. SICARS’ work to preserve the historic Gullah-Geechee settlement demonstrates how land protection, cultural defense, and generational sustainability are forms of political power.
On Sapelo Island, residents continue to organize for local voice and power, defending their land, culture, and way of life against displacement. Taking their struggle all the way to the Georgia Supreme Court, they recently achieved a landmark victory: the Court affirmed their right to use a referendum process to challenge county zoning decisions that favor developers.
Beyond the courtroom, Sapelo’s story is one of cultural preservation under siege. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1996, Hogg Hammock remains a rare enclave where Gullah-Geechee language, crafts, and traditions still thrive, from cast-net fishing to basket weaving. Yet residents face mounting threats: rising seas and the accelerating climate crisis, failing infrastructure, and relentless pressure from developers.
The fight for Sapelo Island sits at the intersection of racial justice, land rights, cultural preservation, and climate resilience, a convergence that mirrors the broader struggles of Black and Indigenous coastal communities across the U.S. South and Global South.
Grieving, Remembering, and Rebuilding After Tragedy
This year’s BAM Institute delegation to Sapelo carried a profound weight. One year ago, on October 19, 2024, during the island’s annual Fall Cultural Day celebration, tragedy struck when the ferry gangway at Marsh Landing Dock collapsed—killing seven people and injuring many others.
Members of our Project South team were on the island that day, supporting SICARS with event setup and logistics for the festival. While our team returned home safely, like so many others, we grieved deeply for the victims, their families, and all who witnessed the event.
This year SICARS organized two Commemoration Ceremonies to honor the seven lives lost, the survivors, and the first responders. The event drew hundreds of residents and allies, gathering for prayer vigils and tributes on both sides of the water that transformed grief into collective healing.
Invited by SICARS board member and Project South educator, Ayinde Summers, Project South’s BAM Institute cohort—18 organizers from Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and North Carolina—returned to the island to support the ceremony and to stand in solidarity with the community’s ongoing pursuit of justice.
Our grief and healing justice protocols remind us that healing is a collective act, and in times of loss, our movements must make space for mourning as much as for action.
Building Capacity for Crisis and Care
Earlier in 2025, our BAM participants completed an intensive nine-day Wilderness First Responder (WFR) training, earning certification in CPR, stop-the-bleed, trauma response, and crisis management. Cohort members were on hand at the Katrina 20 People’s Movement Assembly in August and again at the Sapelo Island Commemoration in October.
Crises like COVID-19, the Sapelo ferry gangway collapse, the massive flooding across the U.S. South, and other emergencies in our communities have shown us just how vital first responders are, and how essential it is to include this kind of training as part of our broader movement infrastructure work. Our communities can skillfully show up for one another through disaster, displacement, and the ongoing neglect of unjust systems.
Moving Forward Together
Our partnership with SICARS and with mutual-aid centers across the South is about sharing strategy and skills. Together, we are working to defend Black land, strengthen local governance, and preserve sacred cultural ground for future generations. The struggle for Sapelo’s survival sits at the intersection of land rights, political power, and ancestral healing. We are proud to stand with Sapelo in the ongoing work of remembrance, restoration, and resistance.
Lessons from the Island
Afterward, the BAM cohort reflected on the experience and developed a list of “Practices We Learned” from our work exchange on the island. We asked ourselves: What does it mean to truly be in service and solidarity?
We share these reflections now in the hope that they might inspire and strengthen your own work.
1 – Time as Service
To be on time with our community is to serve well. Showing up when needed and staying consistent prevents things from falling through the cracks.
2 – Learning the History of a Place
Take a deep dive into a community’s story and learn directly from the people who know it best. The history of a place matters and understanding it deepens our shared strength and power.
3 – Reclaiming and Defending Our Places
Be ready to fight for the land and spaces that sustain us. We are losing so many vital places, and we must prepare ourselves to ride the waves of struggle and still win.
4 – Making Support a Ritual
Every act of solidarity, whether after storms or in moments of crisis, is a sacred act. When we show up for places like Sapelo, Puerto Rico, or New Orleans, we are honoring the people, histories, and futures rooted there.
5 – Consistency, Persistence, and Preservation
Commitment builds longevity. To sustain movements, we must put aside ego, work together, and think generationally: What legacy will I leave so that my children can be free?
6 – Preparedness and Planning
Build beyond the moment. A movement grows when dozens become hundreds, and everyone has a role. Preparedness is collective discipline in action.
7 – Presence as Mutual Aid
Being present is itself a form of aid. Presence is both a gift and a responsibility, requiring humility, listening, and care.
8 – Stewarding the Practice of Care
Care must be whole: emotional, physical, and communal. We are called to move like water, finding one another and flowing together even in the storms. As one of our members reflected, this work asks us to meet each other with “humanity in a deep time of savagery.”
9 – Providing Service in Times of Grief
Integrate grief protocols into your organizing work. Let listening and solidarity guide your service. In moments of loss, presence itself is a form of care and resistance.
10 – Evolving Our Organizing
We must pivot toward the people. Go where the people are and where the need is. Always stay flexible and stay rooted in truth. Organizing means building deep, long-term relationships grounded in mutual commitment.
11 – Creating Intentional Space for Children
Treat children’s participation as integral to movement work and youth leadership development, expanding our understanding of what childcare can be. Through parallel facilitation and shared curriculum, we create intergenerational spaces where young people learn alongside adults and actively shape our collective future.
