Gullah Geechee Descendants Want Land from Former Plantations

Marcus McDonald’s roots run deep on both his sides of his family in Charleston, South Carolina.

He’s a descendant of the Boone Hall Plantation, where his ancestors in his father’s family were once held captive. They come from a line of Gullah Geechee people, the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were enslaved on the sea islands of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

The site is now called Boone Hall Plantation & Gardens, a historical site popular among tourists and known for its role as a Hollywood backdrop, featured in the film The Notebook and the miniseries North and South. It’s also a place where they sell fresh produce, maintain gardens, and recently hosted Fright Nights during Halloween before its discontinuation this year.

In 2024, Charleston set a record by generating $14 billion in tourism and about 7.9 million visitors. It’s created a culture of gentrification, erasure, and disrespect, as the boom is forcing descendants out. As the city continues to grow, Black people in the area are still struggling to get basic necessities to live, McDonald, the lead organizer for Charleston Black Lives Matter, said.

“There’s different lands and people who are descendants from Boone Hall, specifically. They’re fighting to get water lines to their house – not a mile or 2 miles away from Boone Hall that makes millions of dollars a year,” McDonald told Capital B. “They would have nothing if it wasn’t for the people who are, again, fighting for sewage across the road. That’s unacceptable.”

With the recent rollback of voting rights, the erasure of Black history, and threats to democracy, McDonald is taking a proactive stance to urge the plantation owners to reckon with this reality and its history by offering reparations.

A coalition of groups, including the Charleston Reparations Task Force and the Gullah Geechee community, issued a 40-day ultimatum to the owners of three former plantations to immediately transfer 7,000 acres of land back into the stewardship of the community. The sites are Boone Hall, Middleton Place, and Magnolia Plantation. At least 135 business, organizations, and community members are in support of the effort. McDonald referenced the recent resolution by the United Nations that addressed “the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity” as hope for mediation.

“There’s nothing you could do to clean your hands off of this. They might have changed hands as far as the ownership, but y’all are still at the same location, and y’all are still using the name of when it was a plantation,” he added.

Reparations shouldn’t be “political”

In the city of 159,000 people, only 13% are Black. About 14% of the total population live below the poverty line, and Black residents face higher poverty rates than any other groups in Charleston County, one report noted. There’s also a racial wealth gap where white families have the highest median household income at $102,000 compared to Black families who have the lowest median income of $46,000, according to Neilsberg Research.

Since the 1990s, Efia Nwangaza, founder of the Malcolm X Center for Self Determination, has been working on the reparations movement in South Carolina. The demand for reparations goes back to the 18th century when Belinda Sutton petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for her unpaid pension from the estate of her former owner, Isaac Royall. The government granted her request.

In recent memory, Evanston, Illinois, became the first city in the U.S. in 2019 to implement a program that distributed $25,000 housing grants to Black people. Others have passed resolutions or launched studies.

The issue of reparative justice shouldn’t be political, but an affirmation of the dignity and humanity of African people’s personhood, Nwangaza said.

“We’re coming up on our 250-plus years of resistance, and we look forward to July 4, celebrating and reading Frederick Douglass’ speech to remind ourselves and to those who are the descendants who enslaved our ancestors, that there is a question to be answered and to be addressed — reparations being that response,” she said.

Capital B reached out to all three plantations. Magnolia Plantation did not respond. Middleton Place and Boone Hall said they are willing to work with the community.

Alana Long, communications manager for Middleton Place Foundation, said it is a nonprofit educational trust whose mission is to preserve a complete and honest interpretation of the history that centers the contributions and enduring legacies of the enslaved Africans and African Americans who lived and labored here.

“Middleton Place Foundation is committed to ongoing engagement and to ensuring that the full and complex history of this place is shared with honesty and respect,” she added.

Jim Westerhold, general manager for Boone Hall, which operates under a land conservatorship, said the institution is committed to ensuring the complex history of the land is shared with honesty and respect.

“We are aware of and respect the perspectives recently shared by members of the community, and we remain committed to engaging thoughtfully and responsibly, while continuing to advance our mission with care and integrity,” Westerhold wrote in a statement.

McDonald said he’s been in conversations with both Black and white descendants of the plantations who issued statements in support of the calls for reparations. His hope is that this action not only brings together people locally, but across the nation.

“If we really care about something to happen, we have to be willing to put in the sweat equity and the blood, sweat, and tears to make it happen,” he said. “There’s plantations all over the Southeast and even in the Caribbean. Make sure you mobilize and organize and educate your people around these issues.”

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Charleston set a tourism record in 2024.