On Hilton Head, a rally and call for change: Stop calling neighborhoods ‘plantations’
A rally on Hilton Head Island Sunday evening against police brutality and racism was a master class in compassion and tolerance — and a hard look at Hilton Head’s past.
Heat radiated but the rain held off as about 1,000 people sat on lawn chairs in Chaplin Park and listened.
“This might be the first time you’ve experienced something like this,” Savannah Littlejohn, 19, a May River High School graduate and Wake Forest University student told the crowd. “This is not a moment for people who look like me. This is my life. ... And if all you get out of this is that you don’t like the way someone protests, you’ve missed it.”
The “rally for justice and change” was organized by the MLK Jr. Celebration Planning Committee and Galen Miller, and lasted well into the evening. The rally concluded with an 8-minute, 46 second-long moment of silence, commemorating the amount of time a Minneapolis police officer held his knee on George Floyd’s neck before Floyd died.
Local musician and leader Lavon Stevens played solemn music as the crowd fell silent.
People remained socially distanced throughout the park, but generations and races and faiths mixed, with older folks from gated communities sitting next to church groups, mixed-race families and young people of color, as more than a dozen speakers addressed the crowd. After the program, they walked down U.S. 278 holding homemade signs.
“My overall takeaway as a black woman is I had no idea how many white people felt the same way, because of the silence,” Hilton Head resident Michelle Howard said. “So I’m very hopeful, you know? I’m optimistic about this.”
Elected officials, including S.C. Reps. Michael Rivers and Jeff Bradley, Hilton Head Mayor John McCann, Hilton Head Town Manager Steve Riley, Hilton Head Town Council member Marc Grant and Bluffton Town Council member Bridgette Frazier attended the rally. Grant and Frazier spoke about getting more black people elected to local office.
Jessica Bonilla Garcia, of the Lowcountry Immigration Coalition, addressed the crowd in Spanish and called for non-black people of color to support the Black Lives Matter movement.
“We need to understand that black lives are important. All lives are important, but black lives are under attack by police,” she said. “We have a responsibility to fight white supremacy. ... Your fight is my fight.”
Voting, acknowledged many in the crowd, is the next step.
“I came out because it’s not just police brutality. It starts with our commissioners, our governors, our mayors, our sheriff, our coroner, and I want my nieces to know we’re mixed,” Ridgeland resident Natasha Gretton said as she marched with her nieces. “It’s all about equality. Justice should be for everybody.”
Ending ‘plantations’ on Hilton Head
Dr. Amir Jamal Touré, faculty in the Africana Studies Program at Savannah State University, encouraged those in gated communities to bring the message back to their property owners’ associations that their communities have excluded black people for decades.
He singled out gated communities such as Hilton Head Plantation and Port Royal Plantation.
“If you live on plantations on Hilton Head Island, that is disrespectful,” he said. “It is shameful and hypocritical for you to say you believe in black lives mattering. The lives of my ancestors matter right here. You are here on Hilton Head Island because of my ancestors.”
His comments echoed a change.org petition started around 3 p.m. Sunday titled “Beaufort County’s gated communities should not be called ‘Plantations,’” which 830 people have signed as of Monday morning.
“Calling our neighborhoods plantations only further promotes racial exclusivity of who ‘belongs’ within them,” wrote Emily Blackshire, who signed the petition. “The term ‘plantation’ erases the history of the Gullah people on Hilton Head who have been living here since long before white settlers turned their home into a series of resorts.”
This story was originally published June 8, 2020 at 9:34 AM.
