The first self-governed town of formerly enslaved people in the United States was located on Hilton Head Island. Wright’s neighborhood gets its name from a Black Civil War veteran named Caesar Jones who had escaped enslavement and purchased more than 100 acres himself, finding refuge in marshland that had been dismissed by colonists as unsuitable for farming.
It’s hardly undesirable today. The advent of air conditioning helped make coastal land more appealing. New highways improved access to the coast, where population increases have made South Carolina the 10th fastest-growing state during the past decade.
Those searching for land found easy targets in the Gullah Geechee community, owned by descendants of West Africans who were forced into slavery on rice, indigo and cotton plantations along the Atlantic coast. They developed their unique culture on isolated islands, but their separation from the U.S. legal system left them vulnerable to exploitation.
Developers took advantage in many cases of what’s known as heirs’ property — land transferred from generation to generation without a will and shared equally by part-owners whose numbers balloon with each branch in the family tree. South Carolina developers could buy a single heir’s interest and wind up taking everything from outmatched families suddenly navigating an unwieldy system.
Heirs’ property is under threat throughout the Black Belt. Roughly 5 million acres over 11 states worth almost $42 billion collectively remains trapped in cloudy titles, according to the most conservative estimates from a 2023 study led by rural sociologist Ryan Thomson at Auburn University. It’s a strain acutely felt by Black landowners given the Deep South’s legacy of enslavement.
Some remaining owners are more determined than ever to stay.
Julia Campbell, 60, has spent two decades establishing a family tree to identify every heir with even the slimmest stake in the 25-acre John’s Island land her family has held since the 19th century. The former member of a Charleston group established to protect Black cemeteries emphasized that the ground itself bears witness to history.
It’s important for her to document — especially at a time when she said “some people want to close the book on us.”
“These people who could barely read or write were able to hold onto the property,” she said. “We should be able to hold onto it."
South Carolina’s 2017 reforms stymied some predatory behavior, according to Josh Walden of the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation. The Charleston-based non-profit has helped clear titles for over 3,000 tracts worth some $17.5 million since 2009, but his most modest estimates suggest about 40,000 tracts remain held in heirs’ property across six coastal counties alone.
Risk persists for those facing heightened assessments that come with exurban gentrification.
“Obviously, people are still looking for land,” Walden said. “They’re still approaching heirs’ property owners asking if they’ll sell their interests.”
The clamor for these lands is so feverish that even people with clear titles remain vulnerable. James calls it “the next frontier in preserving African American property.”