Fighting to save a heritage

As a young man, Willie B. Heyward cringed when his college classmates in California became aware of his ties to the Gullah culture on Wadmalaw Island.

But these days, the 63-year-old attorney in North Charleston is proud of that heritage. Heyward is a legal representative for the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, created by federal law in 2006 with the goal of identifying and preserving tangible and intangible artifacts of the culture that grew from the merging of European and African cultures beginning in Colonial southeastern America.

The corridor stretches along the coast, 10 miles inland, from the Jacksonville area through Georgia and South Carolina and to the Wilmington area in North Carolina. A July 7 forum on Johns Island was one of about 20 held in the corridor but among the last scheduled before officials begin work on a corridor management plan.

A Burke High School grad who went on to earn college and law degrees in California, Heyward was among the speakers, some of whom came from as far away as Edisto, Colleton County and Beaufort, at the Johns Island forum.

Several speakers asked that the corridor provide legal protection to heirs' properties, and also include protection for the Angel Oak and the remains of the Progressive Club on Johns Island and McLeod Plantation on James Island. In the 1960s, locals organized an adult education program at the Progressive Club to help blacks earn voter registration cards, Abraham Jenkins said.

"The roof fell in and there are just brick walls there now," he told the forum.

Heyward said a real philosophical change has come about concerning the Gullah culture, which was once largely looked down upon by outsiders.

"Gullah was not something to be proud of," Heyward said, remembering how he was embarrassed about it as a youth. "But we didn't know what we had," he added, pointing out that the culture has now gained respect and is revered.

He said tourists come to the Lowcountry to soak up the culture and take home arts and crafts and sweetgrass baskets that owe their existence to it. Heyward and others noted that they have been in faraway states when strangers complimented them on their Gullah roots. But Heyward said the culture is in extreme danger.

"We have to preserve our heritage or it's going to get wiped away," he warned. He and others cited pressures from development, convenient forms of travel and proliferation of a national media as among the threats to the culture.

In the time of his youth, Heyward said Gullah "was a rich culture but very insular," and kept that way by a lack of infrastructure, such as roads and water and sewer services.

"Charleston is slowly but surely becoming cosmopolitan. I see young people on the islands with no connection to the culture, which has a very difficult time thriving in places like James Island and Mount Pleasant," he said.

Heyward said Gullah is a land-based culture, and that makes preserving the land where the culture was born, and in places it still thrives, important.

Heirs' properties are lands on which descendants of perhaps the original purchaser are living. Several generations sometimes occupy a large heir's property tracts, with no one having a clear title to the land. Developers sometimes chip away at the tracts, persuading individuals to sell off what they see as their portion.

Benjamin Dennis IV of West Ashley described how, more than 100 year ago, his great-grandfather paid 50 cents per acre for a 22-acre farm on Daniel Island. He said only half an acre is left, "and every other week someone offers $900,000 for it," he said. "I'm proud to be a 'Geechee boy' and told my grandfather I would never sell it," he insisted.

Heyward said the preservation of lands vital to the Sea Island culture often comes down to "heritage vs. money, and guess who is going to win," he added.

Michael Allen, National Park Service Gullah/Geechee coordinator, said coming up with a management plan will be a real challenge for the corridor coordinators. The plan will be tailored to residents' needs, and the amount and quality of input has been tremendous, he said.

Allen said corridor officials already have been contacting local and state officials regarding the many goals set by residents, and issues with heirs' properties certainly will be among matters discussed.

For more information, contact Allen at the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site, 881-5516, ext. 12, or visit www.nps.gov/guge.

Reach Edward C. Fennell at efennell@postandcourier.com or 937-5560.