Our Story

The Vermelle "Bunny" Smith Rodrigues (1938-2015) founded the Gullah Museum with her husband, Andrew Rodrigues, JD (1936-2023).  A native of Georgetown, Bunny was an artist, advocate, storyteller, historian, and Gullah Geechee elder, who traveled around the United States giving lectures, presentations, and hands-on learning experiences on Gullah Geechee history and culture. Although children of her generation were shamed for speaking Gullah or being Gullah Geechee, she was proud of both and instilled that in her children.

Bunny was living in Pennsylvania when she made her first Gullah O’oman Story Quilt. After Bunny moved back to Georgetown, she opened the Gullah O’oman Shop on Pawleys Island, where she sold quilts, sweetgrass baskets and dolls, Jacob’s Ladders, Black memorabilia, African artifacts, vintage Black magazines, and books on Gullah Geechee and AfriGcan-American history. Andrew gave presentations on rice culture, indigo, cattle ranching, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, South Carolina’s role in it, and why plantation owners wanted Africans from what was called the “Guinea Coast” — the area that is now Senegal, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, Togo, Benin, Southern Nigeria, Western Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea.

The Gullah O’oman Shop eventually become the Gullah Museum and moved to downtown Georgetown in 2014.

Bunny’s story quilts are prized and sought after by museums and private collectors.  Her Michelle Obama Story Quilt is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.   Her Gullah O’oman Story Quilt  records the history of the Gullah Geechee people, from a West African village to Emancipation from slavery in the Lowcountry. One of her Gullah O’oman Story Quilt was featured in U.S. Department of State Art in Embassies exhibit in Angola and another was on the title wall of an exhibit about the Gullah Geechee people in the Children's Museum of Houston.

Andrew, a historian, activist, and researcher, passed away in August 2023. He and Bunny’s children carry on the couple’s work, using the story quilts as a teaching tool in lectures at the Gullah Museum.