The Eagles Island Coalition works to preserve the 3,100-acre plot of land between the Brunswick and Cape Fear rivers, with a main goal of conserving as much of the island as possible.
Retired UNCW Professor John Haley has done extensive research about the Gullah Geechee culture, which he says is a lot like Eagles Island. He has told coalition members how North Carolina Gullah history is dependent on Eagles Island — and how they could shed light on it.
The coalition is also interested in putting a cultural resource center on the island, and they feel that the Gullah Geechee culture should be a large part of it.
“Almost everything that was important to the development of the Cape Fear region plays into Eagles Island,” Haley says. The development started when rice planters and their Gullah slaves came to the Cape Fear region from Goose Creek, S.C. Before they came, the area was known as no man’s land.
Once the Goose Creek planters and slaves settled here, Eagles Island became a key part of their rice growing operation. It was also a place to store the forestry products, like turpentine, tar and pitch, that were being sold in North Carolina.
But when the Civil War started, Gullah culture fell off the map. Since Gullah people weren’t willing to talk about what happened to them during or after the war, their society was pushed behind the scenes, and much of the land they’d helped develop was used for other purposes.
Eagles Island is one of the only Gullah land sites in North Carolina that hasn’t been turned into what Haley calls a “new plantation — golf courses, country clubs.”
Coalition plans to support a cultural center with a spotlight on Gullah history on the island.
While that center is still in the talking stages, several suggestions have been made as to what the group could put in the center, like how Gullah slaves maintained the land and what plants and animals live on the island today.
Most important is giving North Carolinian Gullah people a place to call home. Professor Haley wants the Gullah people to have aspects of their culture preserved and most notably that includes Eagles Island, because as he says, “Land is the basis of their culture.”
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