Qualla: Hog Hammock, Georgia

Hog Hammock, Georgia: Introduction

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bubba73 (Jud McCranie), CC BY-SA 4.0. Forty-seven people. That was the count in 2009 -- the full-time Gullah-Geechee population of Hog Hammock, a community on Sapelo Island off the Georgia coast. Forty-seven people carrying forward a cultural lineage that stretches unbroken from West Africa through centuries of enslavement, emancipation, isolation, and now a modern threat their ancestors never imagined: property tax hikes and zoning changes designed to make room for vacation homes. Hog Hammock is the last known Gullah-Geechee community in the United States, a place where the descendants of enslaved people brought from Senegal and Sierra Leone in the 1700s and 1800s still live on the land where their forebears labored. The island has no bridge. Children take a ferry to the mainland and then a bus to school. Supplies come by boat or from the single small store. The isolation that once protected this community's language, traditions, and way of life now makes it vulnerable in ways that require a different kind of resistance.

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Image: Bubba73 (Jud McCranie) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hog Hammock, Georgia: Saltwater Roots

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bubba73 (Jud McCranie), CC BY-SA 4.0. The Gullah-Geechee people of Hog Hammock are sometimes called Saltwater Geechees, a distinction that marks their direct descent from West Africans brought across the Atlantic to work the Sea Island plantations. The barrier islands of Georgia's coast -- remote, marshy, and difficu...

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Image: Bubba73 (Jud McCranie) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hog Hammock, Georgia: A Library in a Schoolhouse

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bubba73 (Jud McCranie), CC BY-SA 4.0. The island school closed in 1978, and since then every child in Hog Hammock has made a daily journey that most American students would find extraordinary: a ferry ride across the sound, then a bus to the mainland schools. The old two-room schoolhouse found new purpose in 2002 whe...

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Image: Bubba73 (Jud McCranie) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hog Hammock, Georgia: The Tax Fight

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. The trouble arrived in increments. In the 1990s, mainlanders began purchasing parcels from Gullah-Geechee families and building vacation homes. Then in 2012, McIntosh County property tax appraisers sent notices that stunned the remaining residents: one homeowner's annual bill lea...

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Image: Jonathunder | Public domain

Hog Hammock, Georgia: Holding the Line

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bubba73 (Jud McCranie), CC BY-SA 4.0. But the settlement did not end the pressure. In September 2023, McIntosh County commissioners voted three to two to weaken zoning restrictions in Hog Hammock, more than doubling the maximum permissible home size from 1,400 to 3,200 square feet. The move opened the door for larger...

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Image: Bubba73 (Jud McCranie) | CC BY-SA 4.0