Hilton Head’s Gullah neighborhoods have a new figure spearheading redevelopment, future growth
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Hilton Head Island and Tulsa, Oklahoma have little in common on the surface, but the plains state and coastal community claim at least one shared priority — investing in historically significant Black communities that have been neglected by local government.
To that end, Hilton Head has named Tulsa native Thomas Boxley the executive director for the town’s Gullah Geechee Historic Neighborhoods Community Development Corporation. It’s a job Boxley’s hometown history may have uniquely prepared him for.
In Tulsa, Boxley has held several positions related to community and business development prior to his newest title. He was a trustee at the Tulsa Authority for Economic Opportunity, commissioner for the Tulsa Development Authority, a founding member of the Greater Tulsa Area African American Affairs Commission.
In many of those posts, Boxley championed the reinvigoration of Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District, a neighborhood nicknamed Black Wall Street as it was once one of the most affluent Black neighborhoods in the country. Greenwood was razed by a white mob in 1921’s Tulsa Race Massacre. Boxley also served on a committee overseeing Tulsa officials’ recent excavations of mass graves related to the killings.
Similarly to Black Tulsans losing significant economic and cultural roots after the massacre, Gullah Geechee islanders have seen land ownership and economic prospects dwindle in the decades since Hilton Head began welcoming resorts and tourism.
The new community development corporation will, officials hope, help reverse that trend. It’s aimed to facilitate small-businesses startups in historic neighborhoods, preserve Gullah Geechee culture on the island, introduce greater economic opportunity for Gullah islanders and improve overall quality of life in the island’s oldest communities.
It will also broadly work to “mitigate potential negative impacts on neighborhoods,” town officials say, like the looming impacts that the U.S. 278 corridor construction project could have on Hilton Head’s Big Stoney community, which sits in the path of a proposed six-lane bridge onto the island, part of the larger 278 corridor project.
“I am excited to work with the Gullah Geechee descendants, residents, and the Town in the preservation and sustainable development of the historic neighborhoods that make up the broader Gullah Geechee community,” Boxley said in a town press release. “I look forward to what we will accomplish together.”
