Sapelo Island residents fight to keep Georgia’s last Gullah Geechee community
When Hurricane Helene rampaged up the Atlantic coast last month, it was no surprise for the residents of Sapelo Island that their community lost power in its wake.
“We had a six-day power outage,” Reginald Hall, a native of the island who left for several years before returning in 1994, texted after power was restored. “Getting back in the swing on the grid.”
While waiting last month for one of the three, 30-minute (each way) ferry rides that carry people to the island each day (there is no bridge to and from the mainland), Hall pointed out the single power line feeding the island as a weak link.
“We lose power whenever there’s a big rain,” said Hall, 59, who lives in the Hogg Hummock community on Sapelo Island, where he, like generations of the Gullah Geechee community before him, was raised. “We’ve paid taxes for years, but never got any of the infrastructure we were due.”
Hogg Hummock, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is the last intact Gullah Geechee community in the Sea Islands of Georgia. After surviving for centuries on the island without adequate government services, the descendants of formerly enslaved West Africans who were settled and resettled here are now facing a dire threat to their way of life, and it is not from nature but is manmade.
A new development code for McIntosh County, passed without meaningful input from the island’s residents, has raised the maximum square footage allowed for residential construction. New development under the code, on a larger scale and, most likely, aimed toward high-dollar investors who want to create luxury hideaways on the oceanfront property, would raise property values, taxes and eventually erase the culture of the island’s remaining inhabitants by displacing them.
The new code also passed against the community feedback received during the few opportunities for input. Those opportunities saw overwhelming opposition to the loosening of restrictions on development. A few developer voices were the exception.
Southern Poverty Law Center attorneys, along with co-counsel from the Atlanta-based law firm of Bondurant, Mixson and Elmore, are representing Hogg Hummock residents in their legal fight to strike down the ordinance.
“[The new ordinance] more than doubles the maximum square footage for buildings constructed in Hogg Hummock,” said Crystal McElrath, a senior supervising attorney for the SPLC’s economic justice litigation team. “Additionally, the maximum height for a building was amended from 1.5 stories to 37 feet. This new ordinance replaces an existing ordinance intended to protect the island’s indigenous population, and will increase the intensity of development in this historic district and threaten the traditional lifestyle of the Gullah Geechee community.”
Years of neglect
Seeking to preserve the historic community and ensure that it was provided the government services it needs, Hall began years ago to document why the few dozen residents who make up the last of the Gullah Geechee enclaves on the barrier islands off the Carolina and Georgia coasts had been neglected. Over the years, he has secured through his research and public records requests hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that he and other residents have used to begin holding government’s feet to the fire.
Since Hall began his effort, a new $14 million ferry landing was secured, but it is still in need of adequate parking. Overgrown rights of way were cleared to help cut down on power outages across the island. Additionally, the McIntosh County government paid $2 million to residents in a 2022 federal judgment for years of neglect, ranging from a lack of trash collection to nonexistent fire and emergency medical services that were paid for through taxation but never provided to members of the Gullah Geechee community on Sapelo.
Still, the county government has failed to follow through on a negotiated settlement in federal court to construct a helipad on the island and surface the dirt roads.
Reginald Hall, who was raised on Sapelo Island and returned in 1994 after his military service, has for years documented the neglect of the island’s residents who make up the last of the Gullah Geechee enclaves.
(Credit: Dwayne Fatherree)
“When I was young, we had 150 people on the island,” says Sapelo Island resident J.R. Grovner. “Now, we’re down to 28 full-time residents.”
(Credit: Dwayne Fatherree)
Yvonne Grovner is among the plaintiffs the SPLC is representing in a suit to strike down a new development ordinance on Sapelo Island.
(Credit: Dwayne Fatherree)
The meeting hall of the Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society in Hogg Hummock.
(Credit: Dwayne Fatherree)
Signs promoting the Geechee community and an election to recall an amendment passed last year to the McIntosh County zoning and development ordinance. The recall was scheduled for an Oct. 1 vote but was put on hold after more than 800 votes were cast.
(Credit: Dwayne Fatherree)
A new ferry dock was built after a federal lawsuit was settled.
(Credit: Dwayne Fatherree)Silencing the people
In a newly refiled lawsuit against McIntosh County, brought by the SPLC, residents detail how county officials blocked them from having any inkling that zoning changes were coming, then made it difficult for them to attend public hearings about the changes, and finally passed the ordinance despite vocal and widespread opposition from the community.
Meetings held through the summer and early fall of 2023 were scheduled at times that prevented residents from attending due to the limited ferry service to the island. Hundreds of letters in support of the Hogg Hummock community went unread during the public sessions. Aside from the first introductory meeting, public comments – including the letters – were not allowed, even though about 150 people showed up at every hearing, work session or meeting dealing with the ordinance.
“What it is, you know we had a building code in place and that actually protects people,” said J.R. Grovner, a Sapelo Island resident. “The county is letting developers from outside come over here to build big houses and then taxing people into the ground.”
Some changes were made to the ordinance before it finally passed. The unlimited dwelling size was eliminated. But the limit on building height – previously set at a story and a half, then proposed as unlimited before coming down to 37 feet (about three stories) – is a dramatic increase. Instead of the 1,400-square-foot limit that had been in place under the previous restrictions, the new ordinance allows construction of homes up to 3,000 square feet, and that’s when the regulations are enforced at all.
That allowance, along with the higher property taxes, increased encroachment from developers and commercial growth that come with it, could seal the fate of Hogg Hummock. Even though it is a coastal island, it has not been turned into a resort like Hilton Head Island, another barrier island to its north off the South Carolina coast. There, another Gullah Geechee community is fighting to stave off development. Unlike Hilton Head, large swaths of Sapelo are undeveloped, with large federal and state reserves making up the bulk of the island’s acreage.
Aside from the Hogg Hummock community and a University of Georgia estuarine research center, the bulk of the island is pristine. The gentrification of the available private acreage would raise property values, and consequently property taxes, across the whole of the island. This could force residents who cannot afford the increased costs to sell their property.
In the first few months after the new ordinance went into effect, three larger homes – two, two-story houses and another one over 2,100 square feet – had already been permitted for the island.
Hall cited another example, a 3,008-square-foot home on the north end of the island in the Raccoon Bluff area, that was built in violation of the existing codes but was never cited.
Not only was the new home not cited for violating both the previous and newly adopted ordinances, the homeowner managed to get the road renamed after himself.
“We have a developer here on this island that has just somehow … done whatever with the county and changed our historical road name,” Hall said.
Suppressing the vote
While the lawsuit over the constitutionality of the county’s zoning ordinance is working its way through the courts, McIntosh County voters took another tack in trying to undo the regulations for Sapelo Island. More than 2,300 registered voters signed a petition to get a recall of the ordinance put on a ballot, which was scheduled for an Oct. 1 election.
“To mount the fight that we’ve fought takes significant amounts of work,” said Josiah “Jazz” Watts, who serves on the board of the Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society (SICARS). Hogg Hummock resident and nonresident descendants founded the organization in 1993 to enhance the future of the community and educate all visitors to the island about the Gullah Geechee history.
“To get over 2,300 signatures on petitions takes a lot of work,” Watts said. “This isn’t something that you can take lightly. Not only did people in the community sign on, but the leaders of different organizations across the county were involved.”
The McIntosh County administration, however, had other ideas. The county filed a lawsuit to throw out the referendum and stop the election, saying that the county’s amendments to the zoning ordinance supersede the county’s charter and, therefore, are not subject to a recall.
The polling almost made it through the early voting phase when a state court judge ordered the polling places closed and the election shut down after more than 800 early votes had been received.
“This decision underscores the challenges we face in protecting our cultural and ancestral lands from encroaching development and displacement,” Watts said in a statement from the SICARS board. “Our fight is far from over. We will continue to explore all avenues, including appeals, to ensure that our Gullah Geechee descendant community’s voice is heard along with the thousands of McIntosh County residents who signed petitions and the over 800 voters that have already gone to the polls.”
The plaintiffs in the referendum lawsuit plan to appeal the judge’s order.
“What can I do? They can push our taxes up,” said Yvonne Grovner, one of the plaintiffs the SPLC is representing.
‘We’ve already been displaced’
At the embarkation point for the Sapelo Island Ferry in Meridian, Georgia, the state operates a visitor center dedicated to the island and its history. Like most such tourist attractions, it houses several exhibits and explainers about the island along with a healthy selection of T-shirts, refrigerator magnets and other trinkets.
In reading the text that accompanies the exhibit, however, you’d be hard pressed to get any sort of history of the Gullah Geechee people. The history of the island is told as the history of R.J. Reynolds Jr., the tobacco magnate whose purchase of a mansion and other property on the island at the height of the Great Depression is still under scrutiny. Hogg Hummock is mentioned, but nowhere does the copy touch on Chocolate Plantation, Raccoon Bluff or any of the dozen Black communities that were stripped, swindled or coerced from their Black owners when they were forced onto property in Hogg Hummock. The exhibit neither addresses how Reynolds acquired the land nor what tactics he used.
“You had dozens of communities here,” Hall said. “Thirteen plantations and everything else and this is where they ended up moving us. R.J. Reynolds Jr. stole our land through many nefarious means, then drove us into Hogg Hummock. We’ve already been displaced. The only place left is off the board. We were displaced through sheer brutality.”
Throughout the residents’ lawsuit seeking to have the development-friendly zoning amendments withdrawn, attorneys in the previously resolved federal lawsuit cited instances of deeds being forged, signatures falsified and residents threatened to turn their coastal property over to the Reynolds family. Hall said that in his research he has identified thousands of acres along Raccoon Bluff that is rightfully the property of the heirs to the West Africans who initially purchased the land from the previous owners, before the Reynolds family’s arrival.
“See, everybody thinks that the developers are building these houses for themselves,” Hall said. “No, they’re waiting. They thought they could get this Raccoon Bluff land and build the real big boy houses.”
Hall said that the state has dragged its feet on finding a resolution to the unclear title for some 4,000 acres of Raccoon Bluff property which he conservatively estimates is worth more than $2 billion. He said he hopes his research, including correspondence from top state officials dating back to the 1970s, will form the groundwork for another legal action – one charging the state with a decades-long conspiracy to deprive the Hogg Hummock citizens of their land.
An uncertain future
Even as the Gullah Geechee of Hogg Hummock prepare for the legal equivalent of trench warfare, the concern for the community’s next generation is real. The challenges of island life and its limitations – no bridge to the mainland and limited ferry access for people working off the island, the lack of emergency services and reliable utilities, the effects of climate change on coastal islands – have forced more and more of the residents to seek their fortunes elsewhere.
“I mean, we got people who are forced to sell,” said J.R. Grovner, who is the son of Yvonne Grovner. “People always say that all y’all selling a property or this and that. They were forced to sell it because they can’t afford to have the property here. They live in Atlanta or Savannah and paying the property taxes here, and that is sort of forcing their hand to sell.”
As one of the younger adult residents, J.R. Grovner, 45, said he personally enjoyed his childhood on Sapelo. He works as a tugboat captain now, spending his work time off the island.
“They kind of left us without a choice,” he said. “The thing is we got the University of Georgia over here (on the island), which nobody from the community works with the University of Georgia. We got the state of Georgia over here. Nobody, no younger person, works with the state of Georgia. So, people here are forced to leave even for jobs. They can’t even get jobs on the island.”
The challenges, no matter how hopeful J.R. Grovner may be, make the future a daunting proposition for the Gullah Geechee unless changes occur to help the community thrive.
“I don’t know what the future generation looks like,” he said. “You know, when I was young, we had 150 people on the island. Now, we’re down to 28 full-time residents. No telling what it looks like 20 years from now.”
Picture at top: Josiah “Jazz” Watts serves on the board of the Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society, which is looking to strike down a new development code that threatens to erase the culture of the island’s remaining inhabitants. (Credit: Dwayne Fatherree)
