My mother was Vermel Bunny Smith Rodriguez.

She would tell you to call her bunny

because she never knew anybody who wasn't a friend.

Bunny Rodriguez was many things throughout her life.

She was a school teacher.

She was a business woman.

I like to tell people my mother was Martha Stewart

before Martha Stewart was Martha Stewart.

She could do everything.

Bunny Rodriguez lived throughout the Eastern Coast

of the United States,

but her home was always Georgetown, South Carolina.

And what she loved to do most

was share the history of her people.

The descendants of enslaved people

brought from the Rice Coast region of Africa

to the Southern United States.

They're known as the Gullah Gigi.

So my mother was there for African-American people

and she was there specifically for Gullah Gigi people.

GEM

My name is Voter lair and this is Atlas Obscura,

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