Haint blue

A ceiling in Savannah

In Savannah, Telfair Museums runs the Owens–Thomas House, begun in 1816 and finished in 1819. During a renovation of its carriage house in the 1990s, one of the oldest and best-preserved urban slave quarters in the American South was uncovered there, and the ceiling of the quarters is painted haint blue. We could not find when the blue was first put on.

To verify: Telfair Museums’ own account of the blue ceiling, in its Collection Highlights (2005), which we know only as cited in an encyclopedia article; When the blue was first painted

Spirits that cannot cross water

Haint is another spelling of haunt, long used in African American speech for a ghost. The Gullah painted haint blue to keep haints away from the home: the colour was meant to look like water, which ghosts could not cross, or like the sky, to trick a ghost into passing on. They painted not only the porch but doors, window frames and shutters. The pigment was made from crushed indigo plants. Not all Gullah people share the belief.

To verify: A museum or scholarly source for the Gullah belief itself; the encyclopedia article we used cites press and magazine pieces for it

From the Lowcountry to every porch

As Gullah culture was forced into contact with white Southern culture, the custom spread, and haint blue is now a familiar porch-ceiling colour across the South, often chosen simply because it looks like the sky. Some Gullah Geechee artists and teachers have taken up indigo dyeing again, to strengthen ties with their ancestors’ African culture. We tell this as Gullah Geechee history, and make no promise that a colour keeps anything out.