JOHNS ISLAND, S.C. — A park ranger has been named executive director of South Carolina's Gullah Geechee Heritage Corridor Commission.
Victoria Smalls grew up in the Gullah Geechee community on St. Helena Island, South Carolina. She's a National Park Service ranger at the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park in Beaufort.
The Gullah Geechee Heritage Corridor Commission says Smalls will take over director duties from its chairwoman, Dionne Hoskins-Brown of Savannah, Georgia.
The commission oversees the federally designated heritage area of Black Americans known as Gullah or Geechee. These slave descendants retained much of their African heritage thanks to ancestors who grew up isolated on coastal islands of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida.
