Daufuskie Island: 25th Anniversary Edition

This is an engrossing documentary of an African American sea island culture as it once existed.Through the photos of Moutoussamy-Ashe and words of Haley, "Daufuskie Island", first published in 1982, vividly captures life on a South Carolina sea island before the arrival of resort culture. Located between Hilton Head and Savannah, Daufuskie has since become a plush resort destination. These images document what life was like for the last inhabitants to occupy the land prior to the onset of tourist developments. When Moutoussamy-Ashe first came to Daufuskie in 1977, about eighty permanent African American residents lived on the island in fewer than fifty homes. Many of the people still spoke their native Gullah dialect. They had only one store, a two-room school, a nursery, and one church.This represented all that remained of a once-thriving antebellum black society which developed after the original plantation owners left the island. After the boll weevil caused cotton crop failures and pollution ruined oyster beds, forcing more and more residents to sell their land to commercial developers, it became obvious that Daufuskie would be transformed into a coastal resort like neighboring Hilton Head. These photos of family gatherings, ox-carts, crabbing, children at play, church services, and the toils of everyday existence independent from many conveniences of modernity form a vibrant mosaic of life as rewarding as it was rough-hewn and serve as a visual record of an African American subculture that no longer exists.Redesigned from cover to cover, this 25th anniversary edition includes more than fifty previously unpublished photographs, a new preface by Deborah Willis and new epilogue by Moutoussamy-Ashe.