RESIDENTS COME together to celebrate the 129th anniversary of St Luke Baptist Church on Sapelo Island, off the coast of the American state of Georgia.
The islanders are direct descendants of the West Africans who were brought to the island as slaves in the 1800s to work on plantations. Today they are known as the Geechee, or Gullah, people.
About 47 residents live on Sapelo, and having been largely cut off from the mainland and outside influences, they have passed down their cultural heritage and traditions like no other African American community.
The islanders have criticised a recent tax increase saying that, along with sparse job opportunities and encroaching development, it will threaten the Geechee way of life in communities from North Carolina to Florida.
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