National TV show features Gullah land loss on Hilton Head. Where do we go from here?
A television show featured Hilton Head Island on Wednesday, but it didn’t try to sell you a beachfront vacation or talk about the island’s seafood restaurants.
Instead, Soledad O’Brien’s show “Disrupt and Dismantle” showcased the way Gullah Geechee land is being sold, lost and traded away on Hilton Head. The episode premiered Wednesday night on BET.
For many on Hilton Head (especially those who read the newspaper), learning of Gullah land loss may not be surprising.
But O’Brien’s show, which reaches a national audience, outlined the ways heirs’ property limits the owners’ ability to develop their land, how the Town of Hilton Head Island has acquired historic land for a small percentage of what it’s worth, and why rising taxes force native properties to be sold at the annual delinquent tax sale.
“This is our home. We are important to the fabric of Hilton Head Island,” Hilton Head native Mary Allen said.
Heirs property on Hilton Head
Heirs property is land passed down without a written will.
On Hilton Head, the land is often traced back to formerly enslaved Gullah Geechee people. As the land is passed down, it’s divided among heirs, some who live on the property and others who have never even visited.
Since they don’t have clear title, heirs property owners can’t get mortgages or qualify for disaster recovery funds for home repairs.
The show featured the Allen family, which owns the largest plot of heirs property on the island — off Marshland Road. Allen discussed having to call in a gate pass for Indigo Run so she could see her family’s burial plot in a cemetery in the gated community.
“I think that’s the goal, to move black people off of Hilton Head as if we never existed,” Mary Allen said of the constant threat of development of her family’s waterfront land.
In “Disrupt and Dismantle,” O’Brien also met with Shani Green, whose family has lost 20 acres of waterfront land in the Stoney community at the base of the bridge. The Town of Hilton Head bought nine acres of their land for just $5 million, she said in the show.
“We accept what has happened, but this is a new Hilton Head,” Green said.
The remaining 11 acres were sold to a developer who is now creating the Old Stoney Village in her family’s backyard. Green and her family, who have lived in the Stoney community for generations, say the name is insensitive.
Green’s family was featured in an Aug. 16 article in The Island Packet, in which Green said, “I don’t like the fact that when they come to the Gullah families, it’s always with fair market value. We all know that market value isn’t fair to anyone when you’re dealing with heirs’ property.”
Land loss at tax sale
O’Brien also met with James Irby, a pastor living on just over five acres on the waterfront on St. Helena Island. In 2003, his property taxes were $2,000 per year. Now the taxes are over $11,000. Unable to pay the new rate, the Irby family has nearly lost the land twice to the delinquent tax sale.
“Why should people who got here early lose their land because everything else around them has gotten more valuable?” O’Brien asked.
Last year, the redemption period for properties auctioned at the tax sale was extended due to the pandemic, giving local families more time to pay to get their land back, according to previous reporting from The Island Packet.
Theresa White, who runs the Pan-African Family Empowerment Network that helps raise money to save Gullah properties from auction, met with O’Brien on Broad Creek in the show. Looking at the waterfront on Hilton Head, she said, “You look at all the giant waterfront mansions — all this property used to be owned by Black people. Once it is lost, it can’t be replaced.”
Other local leaders point to a national problem and say land loss by Black people is simply a side effect.
Mitch Mitchell, a Beaufort City Council member, told O’Brien, “What America should do is come clean, understand why Black Americans have one-tenth of the wealth of white Americans. It’s a history of systemic racism.”
Further reading from The Island Packet
“Disrupt and Dismantle” touched on land loss issues that will continue to affect our community.
To learn more, follow the links below to read The Island Packet’s reporting:
U.S. 278
Delinquent tax sale
Gullah culture
Town owned property
