Emily Meggett
*Emily Meggett was born on this date in 1932. She was a Black Geechee-Gullah community leader, chef, and author.
Emily Meggett was born in Edisto Island, South Carolina. She grew up with Gullah culture, a set of food, rituals, and language that took root when West and Central Africans were brought to the Southern United States and enslaved. The culture survives in coastal enclaves in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. Meggett grew up in a large family. Her parents, Laura V. Hutchinson and Isaiah Fludd, were sharecroppers. She had four siblings and more than a dozen aunts and uncles. When she was young, her family grew vegetables, beans, and fruit, and had a rice pond. The family also raised livestock. As a teenager, Meggett babysat for local families, but because the pay was bad, her mother suggested finding a higher-paying job or working in the fields.
Meggett began cooking and offering home help to wealthy white families, including the Dodge family, who regularly visited Edisto Island from Maine and employed Meggett intermittently for 45 years. She was also a secretary at a community center for 28 years, quitting only after the office received computers. Emily Meggett's husband, Jessie, who predeceased her, was of the Gullah culture. He grew up in a two-room cabin that slaves had previously occupied. In 2017, his childhood home was moved to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Meggett had ten children. She attended New First Missionary Baptist Church.
On April 26, 2022, Meggett released Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes from the Matriarch of Edisto Island, a collection of recipes and stories co-written with American food journalist Kayla Stewart. She had initially intended to self-publish the book, which she and one of her former employers, Becky Smith, had worked on together since 1994. The book features 123 recipes central to Gullah culture, such as okra soup, deviled crabs, and chicken perloo, most of which have African antecedents. A featured recipe is for benne wafers, sweet cookies made from benne seeds, which slaves brought from Africa and kept in hidden gardens. Her meals feature ingredients like salt pork, rice, and local vegetables.
In 2022, Rep. Jim Clyburn presented her with the President's Volunteer Service Award. In an accompanying note, President Joe Biden wrote, "We are living in a moment that calls for your hope and your light." Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg declared July 22 "Emily Meggett Day." Emily Meggett died on April 21, 2023, at age 90.
