Emily Meggett

Emily Meggett (November 19, 1932 – April 21, 2023) was an American Geechee-Gullah community leader, chef, and author who co-wrote Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes from the Matriarch of Edisto Island in 2022. She lived on Edisto Island, near Charleston, South Carolina.

Early life Meggett was born on November 19, 1932, in Edisto Island, South Carolina, and grew up with Gullah culture, a set of food, rituals, and language that took roots 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 such as hogs and chickens. A featured recipe is for benne wafers, sweet cookies made from benne seeds which slaves brought from Africa and kept in hidden gardens.

Meggett died on April 21, 2023, at age 90.