Whenever Nikki Williams’ feet touch the soil on Sapelo Island, Georgia, memories of her youth flood back vividly.
Every fall, her grandfather had her work at the drink booth during Cultural Day, where hundreds gathered to celebrate “the heart and soul of Gullah Geechee culture” through arts and live entertainment. It’s a time to “touch the soil, hear the stories, and smell the food.”
She chuckled at the memory, remembering that last fall, her son and aunt worked that same booth together. But the excitement in her voice faltered when she thought about what occurred on Oct. 19, 2024. For a moment, silence and a bit of unease hung in the air during the call with Capital B.
What started as a day of fellowship tragically ended in heartbreak.
As people waited at a dock to catch a ferry, a gangway collapsed, resulting in the death of seven elders from Jacksonville, Florida, and Atlanta and Darien, Georgia. Isaiah Thomas, 79; Carlotta McIntosh, 93; Jacqueline Crews Carter, 75; Cynthia Alynn Gibbs, 74; Charles League Houston, 77; Queen Welch, 76; and William Lee Johnson Jr., 73, lost their lives that fateful day.
A dozen others were critically injured.
“It’s difficult to put into words the feeling of Oct. 19,” Williams told Capital B, still processing the news months later. “It’s just almost impossible to describe how you can feel.”
This annual gathering is a living testament to the centuries of resilience and strength of Gullah Geechee folk on Sapelo Island, the last intact Gullah Geechee community on the Georgia coast. But, the recent tragedy, coupled with continued threats of displacement and erasure, forces descendants back into a state of high alert. For years, they’ve endured government neglect, property tax hikes, and white developers eyeing the land, known for its beaches and climate, as a place to build luxury resorts and golf courses.
When they’ve expressed concerns with elected officials, residents say they’ve often felt dismissed. It’s why they’ve resorted to the courts, resulting in settlements to provide medical and emergency services, along with water and trash collection. They even sounded the alarm about the poor condition of the dock, which a judge demanded government agencies to fix. It’s no surprise that victims of the dock tragedy, along with families who lost loved ones, have retained legal help.
In December, about two months after the collapse, a contractor for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources installed two 91 feet long and 8 feet wide gangways. It can fit a maximum of 260 people, or 52,000 pounds, according to Trevor Santos, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Natural Resources, which operates the dock.
There are also two separate investigations into the incident that are ongoing. The state’s attorney general’s office has hired Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc., while the Department of Natural Resources and Georgia Bureau of Investigation handle a separate investigation.
“Additionally, we are in the process of inspecting gangways throughout the state,” Santos wrote Capital B.
The gangways may be repaired and investigations on what happened are still ongoing, but Sapelo Island’s residents and descendants won’t be deterred from protecting their culture, heritage, and land.
“They can try to erase us in schools and in public … but as long as we have Culture Day, and as long as we have the seed, not just the physical, but that seed inside of us, you can’t erase us,” Williams said. “We’re going to be here, and we’ve been fighting for centuries. We’re going to keep fighting.”
A tale of “a land that’s divided”
Growing up, the nearly two-hour ride from her home in Brunswick felt long, but Williams reveled in the 20-minute ferry ride to Sapelo island.
She and her sisters spent weekends with their paternal grandparents. On Sundays, they’d gather at St. Luke or First African Baptist churches for worship, followed by a meal and fellowship.
“It was a rejuvenating time,” the 42-year-old recalled. “It was like excitement that we got to spend the time on the island.”
Williams’ lineage to Sapelo Island dates back more than a century. She is a descendant of two of the 44 formerly enslaved families that settled here after the Civil War. There were several Black settlements, but the first Black-owned land purchased by freedmen was in 1871 at Raccoon Bluff, according to the Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society. However, by 1965, landowner Richard J. Reynolds consolidated the remaining Black settlements into one: Hogg Hammock.
Once Williams arrived at her grandparents’ trailer, they’d unload groceries. Then, they’d meet cousins at Aunt Jo and Uncle Earl’s house — they were cousins, too, but they called them “Aunt” and “Uncle” because they were much older. While Earl fired up the grill outside, the delicious aroma of traditional Gullah food lingered in the air, drifting from the kitchen. Jo, short for Josephine, served red rice, hoppin’ john, or collard greens, along with a three-layered cake in a domed glass stand.
They’d run barefoot along dirt roads or jump on the trampoline until after dark in Hog Hammock. Sometimes, they’d head to the beach while the men cast a net to catch fish.
When Williams moved away to Atlanta, she never stopped visiting her second home, Sapelo Island.
Despite her fond memories, as an adult, she no longer could ignore the changes — many of which elders had warned her about when she was a child. New homes had been built. Trees that once lined certain areas had vanished. With limited job opportunities, many of the folks she grew up with had left, as she did, in search of a better life.
Today, there’s fewer than 30 original descendants who live on the island.
As an adult, she now understands the struggles.
“I would hear the elders talking about preserving the land and people moving in, but when you’re young, you’re not thinking about that,” she said. “But when I saw it, that’s when I was like, ‘The things that they have been talking about are happening, and I’m looking at this with adult eyes, and I see it now.”
Both the state of Georgia and McIntosh County have failed to provide basic services to residents, according to a lawsuit filed by 54 property owners of Gullah descent. They alleged state officials discriminated against them in funding for programs and activities, and engaged in conduct that favored the interests of white developers. They also claimed that the state-run ferry was not accessible to people with disabilities and operated on a schedule that made it nearly impossible for residents to live on the island while maintaining jobs or attending school.
In a court filing, the county claimed it did not discriminate in the provision of water services or in regard to the maintenance of roads in the Hogg Hammock community because they do not own the roads, as such were not responsible for upkeep.
In another lawsuit, McIntosh County paid $2 million to cover plaintiffs’ damages and legal fees. As part of the settlement, they were required to provide better fire equipment, emergency medical services, in addition to maintenance of roads and 30% reduction in garbage fees to residents.
While reaching settlements in the two cases in 2020 and 2022, respectively, that required agencies to make improvements to the ferry, dock, and boarding facilities, residents say inadequate public services has made it difficult for other Black people who worked on Sapelo to make it their home.
Evonne Blythers, 64, moved to Sapelo in 2018 to enjoy her retirement. Since 2006, she has brought college students from Atlanta to the island for tours. The city life, she said, didn’t prepare her for the travel constraints and limited resources. The ferry is the only public access to and from the island, so she, like others, had to plan her day around the ferry schedule. She even attended community town halls with county officials, but there was never any follow-up or changes made by them, she said.
“For four years, I tried, but it was a no-go,” she said. “I ended up moving back to Atlanta because I had my own health issues and getting back and forth to the doctor was a chore. I had to drive at least an hour to the doctor and back, and it became too much.” Blythers moved from the island in 2022.
Jill Cartwright, who volunteers on the island and helps to cultivate, plant and process sugar cane and red peas with and for the Black descendant community, says a history of displacement by the state of Georgia and University of Georgia, which owns much of the island, has contributed to the current conditions.
It’s like a “land that’s divided,” said Cartwright, 28 — one where high-rise vacation homes with foreign cars “are protected from flooding” and “have access to clean water, generators, and consistent electricity,” whereas descendants must find ways to be resilient and survive post-Jim Crow.
“For them, this is paradise,” Cartwright said. “On the other side you have community members who actually understand how to cultivate and live off this land, descendants … who were brought to this island against their will … survive all of the displacement and gentrification that’s been thrown at them and still manage to celebrate their unique culture. It’s been undervalued.”
Gullah communities are fighting back across the South
Other Gullah communities, which stretch from North Carolina to Florida, are battling land loss in the name of economic development.
In South Carolina on St. Helena Island, a developer proposed building a golf course and a gated community on Pine Island in 2022, a 500-acre area protected by a cultural overlay since the 1990s. Community members, in opposition of the project, gained over 20,000 petition signatures and gave testimony at county meetings for more than a year. The Beaufort County officials rejected the developer’s plans, despite legal challenges questioning the validity of the protection. The lawsuit filed by the developer against the county is still pending.
Read More: A Year After Attempted Land Grab, Hilton Head Elder’s Case Is Settled
Back on Sapelo Island, a group of residents sued McIntosh County over a 2023 zoning amendment that would double the maximum size of Hogg Hammock homes, and encourage more development that would increase property taxes. They alleged the zoning amendment violates the due process and equal protection of the communities. The case is ongoing.
In an attempt to reverse the ordinance, residents gathered 1,800 signatures, and McIntosh County Probate Judge Harold Webster approved the petition in July, setting a special election for last fall to allow voters to decide on the repeal of the zoning. However, the McIntosh County Board of Commissioners contested the validity of the election. In November, a superior court judge issued an injunction to delay the zoning.
“Obviously this has been happening to communities for a very, very long time, but it’s just the speed at which these attacks are happening is more and more, and it’s happening in communities all over the country,” said Miriam Gutman, senior attorney for the Economic Justice Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, who represents the plaintiffs in the zoning cases.
A call for “revolutionary work”
After the passing of her grandfather in 2013, Williams moved back to Sapelo Island, and made it her mission to preserve her home through the local cultural and revitalization society. She’s also working to find a way to bring descendants back. But, one of the most important things is preventing displacement and usurping of the culture by comyas, the Gullah Geechee term for people who “came here,” meaning visitors or outsiders. Beenya means “been here” referring to descendants.
“People got to understand this is not a television series or a book. We’re not a hobby. We are a people that just want to pass down what we have, our knowledge onto our children. But the main thing is knowing that our knowledge, our culture, is tied directly to this island, directly to the water, directly to the land,” Williams said. “People say ‘Oh, it’s just a beautiful place. I can throw a house up and I can Airbnb it, and they don’t think about how it affects the descendants down the road that can’t afford a half-a-million-dollar house.”
This causes native islanders to be wary of speaking to visitors or sharing their stories for documentation. Ayinde Summers, a non-executive board member of the cultural society and 20-year volunteer, pointed to how some elders are reckoning with embracing parts of their culture. For example, the word Gullah Geechee was deemed an insult.
“The idea that there are these festivals associated with being Gullah Geechee, even the using the word Gullah Geechee, some of them [the elders], even today, still look at you kind of funny when you bragging about that. … I think that that plays a part in how and if people share the stories and the reality and the ethos of the island itself, the culture itself.”
In a fractured society where laws eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion and ban the teaching of Black history, the “ancestral work” of preservation and resiliency is paramount, said Erica Xavier-Beauvoir, resilience manager for the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. The organization is focused on getting resources to communities while amplifying their work and voices. She encourages folks to transmute the energy of fear and anxiety to do revolutionary work.
“When we start to move [to] a space of fear, we are then invoking something that our ancestors don’t want us to invoke. They are in our blood, they are in our eyes. They are in the way that we walk, how we talk, so we owe them our revolution,” Xavier-Beauvoir said.
“We owe them our liberation. … We owe them that deep, visceral knowing that we’re just going to continue to do the work. This administration, and the energy around it, we are transmuting that energy at the corridor to fuel us to do a better job for the community.”
She’s not alone.
Others have stepped up to do more.
A professor at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, launched a multiyear effort to preserve African American heritage sites on St. Simons Island, Georgia, about 43 miles from Sapelo Island. In Jacksonville, Florida, the state legislature allocated $500,000 to dedicate a new park to the historic Cosmo, a neighborhood built by formerly enslaved people, and honor the Gullah Geechee people.
More than anything, Williams and other descendants want to create generational wealth, and pass down the traditions to ensure the legacies live on.
“The island is resilient. The people are resilient. We’ve been through a lot. Our ancestors have been through a lot, and we’re still here,” Williams said. “What we’re really trying to focus on is how do we create a legacy so that our children can stay, and their children can stay and still survive.”
Staff writer Adam Mahoney contributed to this report.
The post The Battle for Land, Identity, and Survival of Gullah Geechee Communities appeared first on Capital B News.