Descendants of Slaves Struggle to Pay Taxes, Keep Land : Development Shoves Aside S.C.’s Sea Island Residents

Belying his 85 years, Joe Hayward is sound of mind and body. But he is heartsick over changes he has witnessed in his beloved South Carolina Sea Islands.

Hayward, a lifelong fisherman and farmer, lives on tiny Warsaw Island with his wife, Rosa. Like thousands of residents in these beautiful, once remote islands between Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga., they are descendants of plantation slaves freed in the Civil War.

“My mother was born here, where my house is,” the white-haired man said. “This was a cotton plantation before we got the land. The big plantation house was back there behind where my house is now; it was a big, old place, at least 100 feet long.”

Hayward’s forebears were among thousands of freed slaves who acquired land in the Sea Islands after plantation owners fled the advancing Union Army. For decades, many of the islanders, uniformly poor, often illiterate people who spoke Gullah, a lilting dialect rooted in Africa and filtered through the West Indies, lived simply among the mossy live oaks on the marshy, mosquito-plagued islands. They eked out an existence by shrimping and crabbing in the tidal creeks, raising chickens and pigs and growing a few vegetables.

Speculators Move In

But in the last 20 years, speculators and developers have grabbed thousands of acres, often picking up land that was in default for back taxes, laying out exclusive golf-course enclaves and posting “No Trespassing” signs.

As the Haywards watched, friends and relatives lost their property, and entire islands were taken over by corporations and newcomers from the North, some of whom erected guard gates and condominiums where kingfishers and herons once had competed for marsh morsels.

Now the herons are in retreat and the islanders themselves have come to feel like unwanted outsiders, welcome only as servants and caretakers in the private communities around them.

“It’s hard to believe things could be like this. Why, I can remember a time, back before the bridges were built, when you never saw a white around here unless it was a policy man coming in a boat to collect the insurance premium,” Hayward recalled in his musical accent.

“Back then, there was no cars or electricity on the islands. We just got piped water 10 years ago.”

‘A Struggle’

Joe McDomick, a municipal judge and community organizer, said that is not all the Haywards got 10 years ago. They also got the shaft, he said.

“A speculator came very close to getting their nine acres because of unpaid taxes,” he said. “We helped them get their land back, but it was a struggle.”

McDomick, who directs land-saving efforts at Penn Community Services Inc., has helped hundreds of islanders stave off speculators and developers over the last two decades.

“Many of these folks, especially the older residents, had little or no education and even less money,” he said. “They seldom kept up with their taxes, and we found many of them had just tucked away their deeds in the bottom of an old trunk without ever bothering to file them at the courthouse in Beaufort.”

The Penn Center, as it is known locally, was started in 1862 by Pennsylvania missionaries as a school for freed slaves at Frogmore, on St. Helena Island seven miles east of Beaufort. The school was closed in 1951, and the focus shifted toward community organizing and support activities.

Peace Corps Training

Emory Campbell, a native of Hilton Head Island, 40 miles south, now heads the center, a nonprofit organization financed mainly by private grants. In addition to the land-retention program, the center staff trains Peace Corps volunteers under a federal contract and operates day-care and Head Start programs. It also teaches modern farming techniques to islanders.

But the land program is particularly vital, Campbell said, because the area’s character would be forever lost if the islanders were pushed out.

“It’s happening all along the coast, not just here,” he said. “Hilton Head is a good example. Hilton Head was a farming island when I was growing up. Now it’s almost all retirement homes and exclusive luxury resorts.”

Peter Pillow, director of the Beaufort Chamber of Commerce, said the development generally had benefited the basically rural economy of Beaufort County, which includes the coastal islands. He said the resorts bring in new residents and provide construction jobs for local people, including blacks.

Higher Prices, Taxes

Campbell agreed but noted that, after the resorts are built, the blacks leave, returning only as low-paid gardeners and garbage haulers. Also, he said, land prices have risen dramatically, increasing property taxes.

“This is a real problem for folks who don’t have much money,” he said. “The local blacks are desperate for decent jobs. Many of them get up at 4 a.m. and drive 20 or 30 miles to work in the crab factory at minimum wages.”

He spoke while on his way to Lady’s Island to visit a widow whose land was scheduled to go on the auction block the next week. The 58-year-old woman, Wilhemina Washington, welcomed Campbell into her tidy brick bungalow.

“I have a problem getting the $300 I owe on my taxes,” said Washington, who brings home $260 every two weeks from her job as a cook in a Head Start program at Lobeco, 20 miles away.

Campbell said the Penn Center would lend her the money, at 5% interest, from a $2,500 grant provided by the Atlanta-based Fund for Southern Communities.

‘Try to Educate People’

“We make loans to some of the more desperate cases but our resources are limited,” he said later. “Mostly we try to educate people about the need to file their deeds, clear up heirship land titles, pay their taxes on time and see that their land is properly assessed.”

McDomick said he had seen the center’s efforts produce significant change from the days when island blacks, like mosquitoes, were viewed mainly as nuisances.