A High-Summer Feast to Forge Connections in the Deep South

Matthew Raiford swore he’d never return to his family farm in coastal Georgia. But in breaking that vow, he found a sense of community worth celebrating with a lavish spread.

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — It’s not a stretch to say there may have never been a party for a cookbook like the one Matthew Raiford threw on his family farm a few weeks ago. The book’s title is “Bress ‘n’ Nyam” — “bless and eat” in the English-based Creole spoken by the Gullah Geechee people who live along the coasts of the Carolinas, Georgia and northern Florida. Their ancestors were captured in West Africa and enslaved. Nowhere else in America has the cultural line from Africa been better preserved. (Mr. Raiford’s people call themselves freshwater Geechee, which means they are from the mainland of coastal Georgia. Saltwater Geechees are from the barrier islands.) Mr. Raiford’s farm is on land that his great-great-great grandfather Jupiter Gilliard began buying after he was emancipated. Mr. Gillard eventually amassed 450 acres, land that Mr. Raiford believes had probably belonged to white plantation owners who either abandoned it or sold it cheap, fearing what would happen when they lost their power during Reconstruction. Over the years, the property was passed down, divided and sold. Only 42 acres remain, called Gilliard Farms.