Journalist DeNeen L Brown travels to the Sea Islands in the US and meets the Gullah Geechee people – direct descendants of enslaved Africans who picked the distinctive Sea Island cotton prized by traders in Manchester. The Sea Islands lie off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina.
She begins her journey in Savannah, a coastal city in the state of Georgia, where she meets local storytellers and activists Patt Gunn and Rozz Rouse. They tell her about the Weeping Time, the largest auction of enslaved people in US history.
DeNeen then travels to one of the islands, Sapelo, and meets Maurice Bailey who has a long family history on that land. Once there were more than 400 enslaved Africans living there, who mostly grew cotton, rice, indigo and sugar cane. Maurice tells DeNeen about life on the island then and now. She also meets Gullah Geechee elder Dr Emory Shaw Campbell, who discusses the ways in which the Gullah Geechee culture is under threat.
On Hilton Head, a neighbouring island, DeNeen tries to find the location of a former plantation called Spanish Wells. Dr Cassandra Gooptar, who has been leading the research into the Guardian’s links to transatlantic slavery, had found an invoice book that linked the Guardian to an enslaver called Baynard. He had owned a number of plantations including Spanish Wells and supplied cotton to the company of John Edward Taylor, the Guardian’s founding editor.
Cotton Capital is a six-part podcast series looking at the Guardian’s links to transatlantic slavery and the legacies of that history. It takes listeners from Manchester to Jamaica, the US, Nigeria and Brazil and back to the UK.
To subscribe to the series, search for Cotton Capital wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes will launch every Monday.
Host: DeNeen L Brown
Guests: Patt Gunn, Rozz Rouse, Maurice Bailey, Dr Emory Shaw Campbell, Dr Cassandra Gooptar
Sarah Parker Remond script: written by Sirpa Salenius and read by Rachel Handshaw
Series producer: Courtney Yusuf
Producer: Silas Gray
Consultant executive producer: Colin Stone
Historical consultant: Lance Parker
Original music: Melo-Zed
Sound design: Max Sanderson
Development series producer: Tej Adeleye
Development producers: Weyland McKenzie-Witter and Fatuma Khaireh
Commissioning editors: Nicole Jackson and Maya Wolfe-Robinson
With thanks to: Reverend Griffin Lotson, Dr. Cassie Sade Turnipseed, Donellia Chives, Willie Heyward
Illustration: Mark Harris/The Guardian
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