Hilton Head community removes ‘plantation’ from sign, heeds calls for racial justice
Hilton Head Island’s Wexford Plantation is a “plantation” no more.
The community’s board of directors has approved removing the word from its signage and marketing materials, according to general manager Susan Fishel. The neighborhood will now be known only as Wexford.
On Monday, a Wexford employee made the change most noticeable: He painted over the golden letters on the community’s landscaped sign on U.S. 278.
Fishel did not say whether the legal name of community has been changed. The public-facing change comes after pressure from residents, including one who called the name “antiquated, outmoded and socially unacceptable.”
“We moved here because my parents have lived here for 25 years and we know and love Wexford and the people who live and work here,” resident Kim Anderson wrote on the community’s public Facebook page last week. “Having said that I find it difficult to explain to friends and family members why I live in a place that is called a ‘plantation.’”
The move was welcomed by activists who at a June 7 rally who called for the removal of the word from Hilton Head gated communities.
Reporting from The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette found that most of the island’s gated communities, three of which use the word “plantation,” are built on ground once worked by enslaved people on Sea Island Cotton and vegetable plantations prior to the Civil War. While few took the name of the original plantations, the word was widely used as a marketing tool to bring out-of-state visitors to the idyllic island.
Now, protesters and residents are questioning why “plantations” were so idyllic in the first place.
“Another plantation that in no way resembled a plantation on this island... gone,” resident Nancy Contel wrote to The Island Packet. She called removing the word “joining 2020.”
Black residents who live in gated communities have expressed disgust with the word, as well as commitment to changing their neighborhood names.
Hilton Head Plantation resident Bill Patterson refers to his neighborhood as “HHP.” He tells people he lives on the north end of Hilton Head if they’re from out of town, and uses the word “plantation” only if he’s giving someone directions or it’s absolutely necessary.
“I can’t pinpoint the exact moment that I remember, but it dawned upon me that this place is called Hilton Head Plantation, and I felt really uncomfortable with that name,” he told The Island Packet. “I grew up in South Carolina recognizing the history that was here and recognizing the struggle that Black people have had. All of these things were uncomfortable, and they were things we did not like, but we had history here and my family was here.”
Their voices echo native island leaders, who descended from people enslaved on Hilton Head plantations.
“It denotes the old labor system: Labor camps where people lived in plantations in comfort and others worked in discomfort,” historian Emory Campbell said of the word “plantation.”
“Today’s use of that word … it really brings to mind that period in history,” he added.
Committees to advocate for the name change have promised up to $100,000 to help defray the costs in one community.
“We know the hurt and disrespect that word places on people,” Hilton Head Plantation resident and committee member Judy Dunning said. “We feel complicit in the insult.”
Hilton Head Plantation and Palmetto Hall Plantation still use the word on their signs. Efforts are underway in both communities to change that. Palmetto Hall property owners are voting on the name change, which leadership says will cost about $15,000 and can be absorbed in the operating budget.
In Hilton Head Plantation, some residents have formed a committee to push for a vote on the issue. They are presenting their case to the board of directors this month and will push for a community-wide vote later this summer.
Other communities, such as Port Royal and Sea Pines, have taken “plantation” off their signage and marketing materials.
This story was originally published July 7, 2020 at 9:52 AM.
