Inside a controversial auction of Gullah-Geechee homes: ‘This land needs to be protected’

Tax-burdened property owned by the descendants of formerly enslaved people in South Carolina is being sold to hedge funds and developers

On 2 October, in a gymnasium in Beaufort, South Carolina, an auctioneer announced real estate properties that were up for bid. At different points throughout the proceedings, several people rose from their seats and yelled: Heirs' property!" The auctioneer would then clarify for the hundreds of others in attendance - those who had come hoping to buy land - that the property up for bid belonged to descendants of enslaved people, a group known as the Gullah-Geechee. The owners had failed to pay taxes; therefore, their homes and land had been seized by Beaufort county and were up for public sale.

The custom at these delinquent tax sales in Beaufort is to abstain from bidding on Gullah land, the aforementioned heirs' property". Across the low country, land once owned by formerly enslaved people and their descendants is being lost rapidly to development. With that land loss comes the degradation of Gullah culture, which once flourished in places like Beaufort, Hilton Head and other islands off the eastern coast of the US. As a means to help preserve Gullah land from this tide of coastal development, officials in Beaufort county allow heirs, as the descendants are called, to claim their land when it comes up for bid at auction. The hope, in explaining to attendees that the county's practice is deference to the owners, is that would-be bidders will respect the custom and not make offers on the historic land.