Da Gullah Geechee Pavilion was founded by Yolawnda Cohen-McKinney, a direct descendant of Caesar Jones and Celia Miller married to his grandson (John). Jonesville is a historic Gullah-Geechee community on HHI, established by Caesar Jones and still bearing his name. Caesar Jones purchased this very land as a legacy for generations to come. Celia Miller nurtured the property with love, ensuring the land would sustain generations.
Yolawnda brings their legacy forward with purpose, transforming this land into a space that celebrates culture, unity, and restoration. This is not your usual vacation rental — it sits on historical, ancestral land that nurtures and frees the soul.
“Gullah” and “Geechee” are often used interchangeably to refer to a single, unified culture. The term Geechee is deeply tied to the Ogeechee River near Savannah, where many Gullah Geechee people settled after being brought from West and Central Africa.
Hilton Head Island is part of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. The Gullah Geechee people are the descendants of West and Central Africans who were enslaved and brought to the lower Atlantic states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia to work on the coastal rice, Sea Island cotton, and indigo plantations. Because their enslavement was on isolated coastal plantations, sea and barrier islands, they were able to retain many of their indigenous African traditions. These traditions are reflected in their foodways, arts and crafts, and spiritual traditions. They also created a new language, Gullah, a creole language spoken nowhere else in the world.
The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor and the federal Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission, established to oversee it, were designated by an act of Congress on October 12, 2006, through the National Heritage Areas Act of 2006. The Corridor runs from Pender County, North Carolina, to St. John’s County, Florida.
