Cornelia bailey biography of williams
Home / General Biography Information / Cornelia bailey biography of williams
Using childhood stories and family legends passed down over generations, Bailey depicts a way of life that has become threatened by the industrial development that creeps closer and closer to Sapelo.
Bailey traced her lineage back to an African Muslim named Bul-Allah (or Bilali), who worked as the head manager of enslaved people for the island’s owner and enslaver, cotton planter Thomas Spalding.
However, most who knew him would say that he was inspired by the unwavering love and support of his beloved wife, whose strength and intelligence were punctuated by her abounding elegance.
As their success grew, so too did their commitment to the communities they loved. Inspired by her thoughtful and insightful input, the trustees appointed by Cornelia are tasked with continuing her legacy and fulfilling her wish that the arts, in all its forms and splendors, be accessible and present in the lives of others.
.
Over time, the different cultures living on Sapelo Island have blended together and become what Bailey calls the Geechee culture.Before marrying the love of her life in 1952, Cornelia earned a degree in art history from Wellesley College, the third generation in her family to do so.
Glenn Bailey served in the U.S. Navy during World War II before going on the graduate University of Wisconsin School of Engineering and Harvard Business School. Kelia began to follow in her mother’s footsteps at a young age developing what would become a lifetime appreciation for classical music, literature, nature, and the arts.
Glenn’s business sense, entrepreneurial spirit, and passion for improving companies as Chairman of Bairnco Corporation led the Baileys around the world. Theirs was a quiet form of philanthropy centered on education, outreach for our veterans, medical research, and most significantly, the arts. These and other indefatigable efforts on behalf of Sea Island heritage earned her a Governor’s Award in the Humanities in 2004.
Constance Walker Bailey’s publications include:
With Christena Bledsoe. God, Dr.
Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks About Life on Sapelo Island, Georgia(2000)
Ray Crook, Cornelia Bailey, Norma Harris and Karen Smith. Sapelo Voices: Historical Anthropology and the Oral Traditions of Gullah-Geechee Communities on Sapelo Island, Georgia(2003)
Cornelia Bailey
As a member of the last generation of African Americans born and educated on Sapelo Island, Cornelia Bailey became one of Georgia’s most vocal defenders of her homeland and its African American heritage.
Sapelo Island, a barrier island off the southern coast of Georgia, has protected the state’s interior for thousands of years.
Gradually, Cornelia found her way back into the arts community and, knowing life would never be the same, enjoyed the familiar feeling of comfort and peace in the presence of art. As a community-based folklore scholar, she learned and recorded oral histories, traditional medicine, as well as agricultural practices, foodways, vernacular architecture, crafts, and other vital lifeways of Sapelo.
Bailey was eloquent in both the English taught on the mainland and in the language of her Geechee forebears.
Born to Hicks Walker and Hettie Bryant in 1945, Bailey is recognized as a griot as well as a pioneer in the development of community directed agency in cultural tourism.
Bailey traced her lineage and that of her community back to West Africa, where her ancestor, Bilali Muhammad, a Fulbe Muslim, was born and later seized into slavery, ending up on the Thomas Spalding plantation in Sapelo in 1803.
To this end, Cornelia supported many youth programs and various grassroots organizations that helped to bring art and artists into local public-school classrooms. She both practiced and fought to sustain these traditions as the island underwent numerous threats ranging from environmental neglect, economic devastation, to ever present and causative systemic racism.
Her military upbringing sparked in her a deep love of country and a thirst to witness beauty within its borders. In 1989, her research took her to Sierra Leone where she studied connections between Sea Island cultural practices that she practiced and their ancestral correlates on the African continent.
Bailey was a fierce advocate for the revitalization of the heritage of her island’s African descendants, and by extension, for African American history and cultural agency.
The state of Georgia currently owns about 95 percent of Sapelo Island, leaving residents confined to a small, private portion of the island known as Hog Hammock. Bailey worked to raise awareness of Sapelo’s plight by educating those who visit Sapelo Island through public speaking and writing. Although the island has withstood countless hurricanes and the arrival of colonial settlers, a new threat has come to the people of Sapelo—the threat of industrial development.
A self-proclaimed “Saltwater Geechee,” Cornelia Walker Bailey was born on Sapelo on June 12, 1945, to Hettie Bryant and Hicks Walker.
After losing Glenn, Kelia looked to her own art as a source of enjoyment and healing.