Alex Brown hunkered in his seat at the dining room table. A pamphlet about the Hilton Head tourism industry sat on one side of the table and a book celebrating the history of the island’s Gullah Geechee people on the other.
His computer screen showed the video portal for a Hilton Head Town Council committee meeting scheduled to start at any moment. It was a Thursday afternoon in March, and Brown, in a rare idle moment, waited for the work to begin.
He looked up from his laptop toward the home’s front window. It frames the view he’s contemplated for four decades: A grassy field intersected by U.S. 278. As many as 50,000 cars might drive by today, speeding past the land that Brown’s family has owned for seven generations.
His home sits near where his ancestors were once enslaved.
Brown lives with the island’s complicated history. Long before Hilton Head was a tourist hotspot, it was a haven for freed slaves. And their descendants became the Gullah Geechee, with a culture and language unlike anything else on the planet.
This way of life is being erased, bit by bit, with each new pricey hotel and luxury home, the destinations of those out-of-state cars on the highway.
And it’s all added up to this — deeply rooted Black families like the Browns have lost about 14 million acres in the lowlands of South Carolina and Georgia since the Civil War, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. On Hilton Head Island alone, the total acreage of Gullah Geechee-owned land has decreased by an estimated 70% since 1995.
Brown fights for every remaining square inch.
Brown is a first-term council member for this town of only 39,861 people. The number of cars that sped past his window on any given day likely eclipses the island’s total population.
And the highway probably will get even busier soon. A South Carolina Department of Transportation proposal calls for widening the road; it threatens to displace Black-owned businesses — to pave over property that has belonged to Black families for generations.
But on this afternoon, Brown quickly turned his attention from the cars in the window back to his computer screen. Brown organized his town council meeting notes, questions he’s written neatly on lined paper.
He was ready, and there is never a better time than now.
In 2021, Hilton Head Island is at a crossroads. In the last 30 years, the population has increased by about 70%. The number of visitors annually totals at least half the entire state’s population.
And the island, just five miles wide and 12 miles long, isn’t getting any bigger.
Brown, however, is in position to navigate its future. A native islander who is an executive in the tourist retail industry, he’s got one foot in the place’s past and another in the present.
Brown wants to make sure that when the island has to move and change, native islanders are not the only ones moving and changing. That’s been the case historically, and that burden has bred distrust and divide. A Gullah Geechee saying, “com ya can’t tell bin ya how to do,” means “the come here can’t tell the been here how to do.”
Brown’s goal is to bridge the gap between “the come heres” and “the been heres,” between the natives and the newcomers.
Hilton Head Island is also called “The Hamptons of the South” for a reason. About 80% of the island’s residential land is now dedicated to private communities. The tall gates and steep prices keep some people in and other people out.
Brown doesn’t have all the answers, not yet, about how Hilton Head can lower the gates, how it can preserve its character while growing responsibly. But he knows where he is going to start.
“We need to put people first,” Brown said. “It doesn’t matter what ethnic group you are, what gender you are. If we base our decisions here on Hilton Head on people, or people first, then we can’t go wrong.”
Hilton Head’s small size magnifies its complexities
Brown sees the smallness of Hilton Head Island, ultimately, as a positive. It’s small enough to change, he says. It’s small enough for one person, one conversation, to make a difference.
But he also knows the smallness of the island leaves little room for error. Every square mile is precious. And when differences and conflicts arise, they arise side by side. Brown sees them everywhere.
The site of the first self-governed freedman’s town in America, Mitchelville, is just a few miles from a gated community called Hilton Head Plantation.
Pristine bike paths line pricey beachfront neighborhoods while dirt roads wind through mobile home parks. Tombstones that have honored Brown’s ancestors for a century stand next to a Whole Foods parking lot.
For Brown, though, there is opportunity in the obvious. He can — and does — take anyone who asks on tours of his island. A Coca-Cola executive who retired here sat in the front seat of his truck earlier this year.
Brown showed him what this place really is, beyond what can be seen from the links or the beaches. Brown’s tour travels through affordable housing community parking lots, down bumpy dirt roads, past the wooded area that once hosted Mitchelville, where Brown’s great-great-grandfather stayed after serving in the Union Army.
He’ll point out the new developments. He’ll explain how property taxes will rise because of it, making it harder for the native islanders, who are often land rich and cash poor, to keep their ancestral lands.
He’ll stop by a Gullah-owned eatery on Gullah-owned land that isn’t open yet. When it does, it would make it the first new business of that kind since Hilton Head Island became an official town in 1983, he’ll explain.
These tours are when Brown does most of his talking. Otherwise, he abides by an old Gullah saying to talk slow and listen fast. “I’m a much better listener because that’s what I have been taught,” he said.
But it is easy for him to talk about his home because he’s proud that he has been blessed, as he says, to grow up, live and work here. It’s hard to do that, where the median value of homes is almost three times the rest of the state. In 2021, the median sale price of a home on the island is $772,500.
It hasn’t always been that way. Hilton Head Island’s prestigious reputation as a ritzy resort town is a recent phenomenon.
Electricity didn’t even come to the island until 1951. About a thousand people called Hilton Head home then. The vast majority were descendants of West and Central Africans who were enslaved and brought here to cultivate cotton, indigo, sugar cane and rice.
During the Civil War, slave owners and plantation overseers fled. Thousands of formerly enslaved people stayed, and this community developed into a rich society known as Gullah Geechee. By 1880, some 2,500 people remained on the island, and the population was 98% Black.
They bought acres of land, parcel by parcel. In isolation, they maintained many of their African traditions and developed a self-sustaining economy, based on barter and the spoils of the land and the sea, as well as a unique language with roots in a couple of dozen African languages. Alex’s name in Gullah is Alec.
Gullah Geechee is also traditionally an elder-focused culture with an inheritance system executed verbally. That means that for generations, land was often passed down without a recorded title or court-approved will.
The land also often went to numerous descendants, sometimes to dozens of family members. Each individual does not own a particular part of the land, but rather a fractional interest similar to a shareholder in a corporation.
In the decades following the Civil War, the largest landowners were a procession of Northern captains of industry. These tycoons used thousands of acres for profits and play, as cotton fields, hunting grounds, private retreats. They bought land from each other. They bought land once owned by Gullah Geechee families.
The land grabs pushed the native islanders to the northern end of the island. In these communities, families were still able to buy a few dozen acres at a time. Generations lived together in compounds, sharing the responsibilities and the rewards.
In 1949, the Gullah Geechee owned 3,200 acres of Hilton Head. By 1951, the all-white Hilton Head Company purchased more than 8,000 acres from the Wall Street magnates who had owned most of the island for the previous two decades.
One of those timber company executives sold his son his interests, and that man, Charles Fraser, began the work of changing the island forever. He founded the first planned resort community in the country, Sea Pines Plantation, in 1956. The bridge connected the island to the mainland that same year, and more developers followed.
Some exploited the legal complications entangling Gullah Geechee property — the lack of clear title, how one individual could sell without the approval of the whole family — and often purchased the Black-owned land for a fraction of its value.
These threats persist.
The lack of a deed continues to create legal vulnerabilities that require a lot of time and money to fix. These days, descendants often live across the country, making it even harder to manage the property. Some owners may have never even stepped foot on the island. More families are selling their lands, determining the money offered by developers to be a lucrative solution.
And this year, the proposal for the expanded highway could not only encroach on more Gullah Geechee land: It could bring more newcomers to the island who might never want to leave. In 2021, Gullah Geechee families own about 1,000 acres or about 8% of the island’s total residential acreage.
Many of Brown’s family members have left for opportunities or occupations elsewhere, including his children.
The Black population, the majority before the bridge, is now about 6%.
When he was a child, Brown remembers tagging along with his father, Alex Brown Sr., and he would know just about every person they’d run into.
“But that has gone away, that connected hometown, everybody in this together,” Brown said.
Change is constant in Black landowners’ long history on Hilton Head
Alex Brown has been renovating his house this year. He’s doing it room-by-room. He’s not changing the core of anything, though.
There is fresh paint on the walls. New plants on the windowsill.
In late March, only one wooden picture frame hung on his wall. It holds a copy of written testimony his great-great-grandmother, Mary Brown, gave in 1901 to claim the military pension of her late husband, Prince Brown Sr. She shares that her husband fell dead plowing their fields that once grew outside of Brown’s windows.
A set of plastic toy golf clubs leaned against the doorway near the framed letter inside Brown’s home. They belong to Alex’s grandson, still out from his last visit. His name is Prince.
The first Prince Brown was born a slave in 1825. In 1860, he was one of 32,530 enslaved people in Beaufort County. It was the second-highest number for any county in the United States then, behind only nearby Charleston.
Just months after the first shot of the Civil War in Charleston, Union troops defeated Confederate forces on the South Carolina sea islands. Hilton Head Island became Army headquarters, and the islanders were essentially free, one year before the Emancipation Proclamation.
Prince Brown fought for his freedom. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1863 and served until he was hospitalized with smallpox. Prince Brown was treated by doctors in Mitchelville. And in 1876, he used the wages and pension he earned through military service to buy property.
What remains of Mitchelville is called Mitchelville Freedom Park. There are some exhibits and signs, including one directing visitors from the highway, and a plan from a nonprofit organization to build a visitor’s center in the coming years.
Brown lives about a 10-minute drive away. He always has.
“Having that attachment to the land is why I fight so hard, not just for my family, but for other families that have a connection to their land here on Hilton Head,” he said, “so that it’s not lost through tax sales, to gentrification, and those sort of things, but that it’s actually preserved in a way that we can be sustainable for all time.”
His parents still live in his childhood home that is steps away from his house. In his early years, the family still grew okra. Brown worked the fields with his late grandfather after school. They’d quit when the sun did.
The crops are gone.
His aunt lives on the family compound, too. His extended family once owned all the property from the marsh behind their homes to the beach on the other side of the highway. It was sold off and developed, piece-by-piece, eventually becoming soccer fields and a crowded residential street.
He used to take his now-grown children on tours through that neighborhood. He took them back through time. He told them how the pavement used to be dirt. The homes used to be tall pines.
He’s not against change, though. He knows change is as certain as the sunrise.
“Things are going to continue to evolve, and we just have to evolve with them, but not lose what we were built on,” he said.
He told his children the land that was his would one day be theirs. And Brown didn’t say they couldn’t develop the property or make money off of its use in some way.
Brown just wants them to understand the value of what they have and to hold on tightly to the ownership of the land, a key component of generating wealth. And in America, the mean and median net worth of Black families is less than 15 percent that of white families.
When Brown finished his speech to his children years ago, his family could cut through the woods to get back to their property.
In 2021, a private residence gate blocks that shortcut.
Brown’s only option these days is to take the long way home.
For Brown, part-time job is a full-time calling
It used to be so quiet in the Brown family compound. Young Alex would go on the back porch, shout an invitation to play basketball across the marsh, and a reply would ring out from somewhere on the horizon.
The constant roar of cars drowns out Brown’s voice today. The sound screams along the jagged, interrupted sidewalk on Brown’s side of U.S. 278. “It’s a highway that kids don’t cross empty-handed,” he said.
The road is also a border. It is the beginning of his district, Ward 1, the most diverse in the town. The area follows the path of U.S. 278 and includes the island’s historic Gullah Geechee communities.
There is no safe crosswalk to get from the Brown family compound to the other side of the highway, where there is a bike lane, a park and public beach access. Brown asked for ages that the town improve pedestrian access near his home. The response wasn’t coming fast enough. It’s one of the reasons he decided to try to become a decision-maker.
“I never intended to run for town council,” he said. “I’m not a politician. During the pandemic, I had to sit down and not really do anything. I was really reflecting on it.”
He thought about all his involvement. He was already on town committees. A trustee and youth leader at his church. An assistant high school basketball coach.
“And I said, ‘Well, the Lord didn’t give me all of this knowledge for nothing, all this experience in the town for nothing, you need to do something with it so I decided to do it.'”
He campaigned on the promise to preserve the Gullah Geechee presence on the island, to enhance the reputation of the island’s unique character and to protect what’s really important to the whole island.
His slogan: “It’s time.”
At 47, he is the youngest on the council. He was also the only person of color elected to a seat.
It’s supposed to be a part-time job, but Brown can’t even count the hours he spends working for the town each week. He doesn’t make it easier for himself, either. Brown believes his role requires him to communicate and listen to all segments of his community and that it is on him to meet folks where they are at.
“Well, my dad always said, as we were coming up,” Brown said, “that you’ve got to have an understanding or you don’t have nothing. And it’s very difficult to have an understanding without having a dialogue and communication.”
That’s why he started the last Friday in March at 8 a.m. at a park with an open invitation to meet with anyone from the Hilton Head Plantation community who had questions about the U.S. 278 project. The entrance into their neighborhood is on the highway, and bulldozers shouldn’t announce the arrival of construction, he told them.
Brown’s next stop was the Stewart family compound, just a few minutes down the road.
He organized a meeting about the highway expansion project with the extended family, himself, the mayor and the town manager. They had to do it this morning because relatives were in town for the homegoing of their late matriarch. And many of them, heirs, held rights to portions of the property.
Brown’s truck passed pink flags in the Stewart front yard on his way into the packed driveway. Workers with the DOT placed them there to show where the proposed highway expansion would stop.
The highway expansion could uproot the family’s longtime commercial building. Through the years, the Stewarts sold the fish they netted in the nearby marsh there. It was a juke-joint, too, at one point. It’s rented by a psychic now.
On the other side, the widened road would reach within steps of another Stewart doorway.
Brown joined them at a table set up in the garage. He listened to their questions, concerns and ideas for alternate plans. He joined in their prayers for guidance, the wisdom to preserve the legacy of their family.
He promised them this was the beginning. Brown, like the Stewarts, was not going anywhere. And next time he came by, he’d have some answers about what’s next.
Vocation, service consume more of Brown’s time as island grows
Brown’s employer understands the importance of the work he does for the town, he said, so he can divide up his day as he needs to. His boss also knows Brown will get his job done. He has worked for Resort Retail Associates for 30 years.
He started in high school. He had been suspended from school for a fight, but his father, a carpenter, wasn’t going to let him enjoy a day off. He brought his namesake to work on a build for a new Camp Hilton Head shop. Brown’s worked for the company ever since.
He first made deliveries after school to the different locations. Today, Brown is the vice president of operations, the role of the man who hired him at that job site.
After leaving the Stewart family meeting, Brown drove to his company’s five storefronts on the island and nearby Beaufort, picking up money to deposit for the bank.
His office is on the highway, within the confines of his Ford F-150. He connects his phone to his truck’s Bluetooth and fields the calls as they come. The phone numbers belong to folks in his ward needing permits for a new mobile home, an employee returning to work, his pastor needing volunteers for a food giveaway.
The only phone call he sent to voicemail was the automated inspirational message from his church, sent daily at noon. He will listen to it later, he said.
Brown’s phone and computer have been his main connection to folks during the pandemic. During the campaign, he was able to set up socially distanced community conversations outside.
On the last Friday in March, he brought back the concept for the first time since the campaign with a session on the town’s visionary plan. He invited some staffers to explain the highlights of the goals.
They met under a shelter at a marsh-front community park. In the 1960s and 70s, the area was home to a Gullah Geechee-run fishing cooperative. Brown was just a boy when it closed.
A member of the Stewart family took a seat at the shelter that evening. Residents from Hilton Head Plantation, whom Brown had also met with hours before, joined. One of the authors of the Gullah Geechee history book on Brown’s dining room table was among the first to arrive. Brown’s cousin, in from Atlanta, showed up, too.
“I’m always pleased to see a crowd of people that are expecting me to do my job,” he told them. “That’s great. We need more of that.”
After the meeting, Brown joined a group of campaign volunteers, friends and advisers at the native islander-owned Hilton Head Brewery.
The group sat outside, the sound of airplanes overhead punctuating the crosstalk. The Hilton Head Island Airport recently extended the runway, added a new terminal and fulfilled a promise of bringing in bigger and more planes. St. James Baptist Church, a congregation that is the only remaining institution from historic Mitchelville, is now too close to the busy runway. It has to move, after more than a century.
At the brewery, Brown stood up around the table and traveled easily between the different chats.
He was one of the first to leave.
He knew he would have another busy day tomorrow. There would be more calls, more questions about what comes next and more time to try to do something about all of it.
Brown got back in his truck. The lights along the highway showed him the way home.
This story is based on an interview with Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation’s Chief Operating Officer Josh Walden, as well as the United States Department of Agriculture 2019 report, “Heirs’ Property and Land Fractionation: Fostering Stable Ownership to Prevent Land Loss and Abandonment” and a 1995 report published by The American Institute of Architects. We also used Lincoln Mullen’s “The Spread of U.S. Slavery, 1790–1860” interactive map and data from the South Carolina Realtors.
We reviewed the 1868 South Carolina Agricultural Census, the 1880 United States Census and the 1868 voter registration records from the Heritage Library Foundation. The organization also provided a copy of Mary Brown’s 1901 written testimony sent to the Bureau of Pensions. The original record is in the National Archives.
This story also includes information from “Gullah Days: Hilton Head Islanders Before the Bridge 1861-1956” by Thomas C. Barnwell Jr., Emory Shaw Campbell and Carolyn Grant. This was also the book that was on Alex Brown’s dining room table in March.
We also obtained documents from the Town of Hilton Head Island for information on historic Gullah Geechee neighborhoods, Gullah Geechee-owned land, census tracts and Town Council ward boundaries.
This story also includes information based on interviews with South Carolina Department of Transportation personnel and a review of the U.S. 278 Corridor Improvements Phase 1 Traffic Report.
The U.S. 278 project is still in the developmental stages. A community hearing is planned for July 22.
