Homecoming: Robinson Family Home
For the best experience, click the fullscreen icon in the bottom right corner*
Homecoming: Robinson Family Home
For the best experience, click the fullscreen icon in the bottom right corner*
Robinson Family Home
This 1930s home on Daufuskie Island belongs to the Robinson family and is maintained by Ms. Sallie Ann Robinson—a sixth-generation native, author, and cultural historian. Three generations of her family were born here. It remains one of the few intact Gullah homes on the island, representing a vanishing but vital cultural legacy rooted in community, memory, and place.
Now in urgent need of restoration, this home is part of The Gullah Geechee Memory Project, a digital preservation initiative using immersive tools to protect cultural heritage at risk from displacement and climate change. This 3D scan was captured and processed in partnership with Dr. Kwesi Daniels, Department Head and Assistant Professor at Tuskegee University’s Taylor School of Architecture and Construction Science.
Support this effort to preserve cultural heritage, intergenerational memory, and spatial justice through immersive storytelling.
Robinson Family Home: Intergenerational Memory and the Architecture of Belonging
As one of the last intact vernacular homes on Daufuskie Island still owned and maintained by a Black family, the Robinson Family Home represents both cultural survival and spatial vulnerability. Built in the 1930s for Ms. Sallie Mae Robinson—grandmother of author and historian Ms. Sallie Ann Robinson—the house remains a vital anchor of memory, place, and kinship. Three generations of Robinsons were born and raised here, making it a rare example of sustained Black landownership and domestic continuity in the Gullah South.
The home was recognized in the 1982 National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Daufuskie Island Historic District.1 Originally designed with a gable-front roof and rear shed addition, the property also included a smokehouse and barn—features typical of Sea Island domestic compounds.2 While the outbuildings have not survived, the main structure remains intact and deeply evocative of the land-based life sustained here for nearly a century.
In a region shaped by heirs property disputes, speculative development, and climate-driven displacement, the Robinson home offers a different kind of narrative—one of embodied care, everyday stewardship, and cultural resilience. It has not endured because of institutional preservation systems, but because of the commitment of descendants like Ms. Robinson.
This site was scanned using LiDAR and photogrammetry in collaboration with Tuskegee University’s Taylor School of Architecture and Construction Science. The resulting model captures not just the geometry of the structure but also the spatial imprint of intergenerational life. Restoration is urgently needed, and its preservation is not just technical—it is reparative.
In the words of Christina Sharpe, this is wake work: a refusal to let Black memory and land-based inheritance be erased.3 Ms. Sallie Ann Robinson is not just a caretaker—she is a cultural guardian. She runs the island’s only Gullah-owned heritage tour, leads oral history and cemetery restoration efforts, and continues to fight for the future of Black cultural infrastructure. Her leadership has been nationally recognized, including support from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.
In this context, the Robinson Family Home is both memory site and call to action. Its digital preservation is one form of intervention—but the physical restoration, cultural recognition, and support for Black spatial sovereignty are just as vital.
As one of the last intact vernacular homes on Daufuskie Island still owned and maintained by a Black family, the Robinson Family Home represents both cultural survival and spatial vulnerability. Built in the 1930s for Ms. Sallie Mae Robinson—grandmother of author and historian Ms. Sallie Ann Robinson—the house remains a vital anchor of memory, place, and kinship. Three generations of Robinsons were born and raised here, making it a rare example of sustained Black landownership and domestic continuity in the Gullah South.
The home was recognized in the 1982 National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Daufuskie Island Historic District.1 Originally designed with a gable-front roof and rear shed addition, the property also included a smokehouse and barn—features typical of Sea Island domestic compounds.2 While the outbuildings have not survived, the main structure remains intact and deeply evocative of the land-based life sustained here for nearly a century.
In a region shaped by heirs property disputes, speculative development, and climate-driven displacement, the Robinson home offers a different kind of narrative—one of embodied care, everyday stewardship, and cultural resilience. It has not endured because of institutional preservation systems, but because of the commitment of descendants like Ms. Robinson.
This site was scanned using LiDAR and photogrammetry in collaboration with Tuskegee University’s Taylor School of Architecture and Construction Science. The resulting model captures not just the geometry of the structure but also the spatial imprint of intergenerational life. Restoration is urgently needed, and its preservation is not just technical—it is reparative.
In the words of Christina Sharpe, this is wake work: a refusal to let Black memory and land-based inheritance be erased.3 Ms. Sallie Ann Robinson is not just a caretaker—she is a cultural guardian. She runs the island’s only Gullah-owned heritage tour, leads oral history and cemetery restoration efforts, and continues to fight for the future of Black cultural infrastructure. Her leadership has been nationally recognized, including support from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.
In this context, the Robinson Family Home is both memory site and call to action. Its digital preservation is one form of intervention—but the physical restoration, cultural recognition, and support for Black spatial sovereignty are just as vital.
References
- National Register of Historic Places, “Daufuskie Island Historic District,” South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1982.
- Field notes, Daufuskie Island, Day 2 (April 18, 2025); site documentation in partnership with Tuskegee University.
- Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016).