A way of life nurtured for hundreds of years in the U.S. Southeast guard coastlines from climate change
Once you are across the bridge onto Saint Helena Island, S.C., trinket shops and strip malls give way to fishing shacks and saltwater marshes. Secluded from the bustling tourist traffic just a bridge away, the island remains largely untouched. It preserves traditions fostered even before some of its residents’ ancestors were forced to traverse the more than 4,000 miles of ocean that separates the Saint Helena salt marshes from Africa.
Occupying 64 square miles, Saint Helena is one of the centers of Gullah Geechee culture. It’s a vast swath of pristine coastal land dotted with maritime forests and salt marshes. Gullah Geechee people on Saint Helena still own their land because their ancestors put up cash to obtain deeds in the 19th century. On other sea islands along the South Carolina coast, formerly enslaved people were given the lands initially and then were pushed off them after Reconstruction.
The Gullah Geechee have retained over the centuries an acute awareness of the fragile coastal ecosystem where they live. “Our people don’t traditionally build their homes into the coastline but rather into the center of their acreage,” so it’s less susceptible to hurricanes, Goodwine says. Smaller and lighter homes don’t require as much cement or packed soil to sustain the weight of a structure in the sandy soil.
Three hours south from Saint Helena, along the Georgia coast, Gullah strongholds such as Sapelo Island, Ga., have also had some recent victories. In 2020 residents of Hogg Hummock community on Sapelo Island, a Gullah community on a remote island that is only reachable by ferry, won a federal lawsuit that found that they were being discriminated against and excluded basic services on the basis of race. The county seat of McIntosh County also agreed to freeze residential property taxes until 2025.
As sea level rises, salt marshes that once drained at low tide continually flood. Sea level around Charleston has risen as much as 10 inches in the past 73 years. As a result, marsh plants, which thrive in brackish waters, germinate farther inland in what is called marsh migration. This natural adaptation only works if the salt marsh has a place to go, says Lora Clarke, a Charleston-based coastal ecologist at the Pew Charitable Trusts.
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