I always feel my ancestors out in this field with me I still can hear songs like stay in the field stay in the field stay in the field until the war is ended on a quiet chain of islands off the South Carolina and Georgia coast is an almost forgotten Community called the gulla or gei [Music] [Music] people more than anywhere else in America they've held on to Traditions their ancestors brought from [Music] Africa they've stayed on the isolated former Plantation land where those ancestors were once enslaved and developed culture and language known as [Music] gulla it seems pretty isolated back here oh see now that's what we call insulated so we feel like we're insulated and kind of kept warmed and keep our culture alive away from the mainland culture so sure if you went just across a couple Bridges and you ended up on the mainland you'll hear people speaking like this and then you come across onto these hone Yeti people that cracking teeth like a they show all like that and they say huh Marquetta goodwine also known as Queen quet still lives on the land where her great great grandfather was enslaved five generations ago we have okra we plant peanuts cantaloupe watermelon the same things that my great great grandfather planted here and he was the person that actually obtained this land in 1862 so my family has continuously owned it legally since then but he was actually enslaved here hundreds of plantations ran down to South Carolina and Georgia coast in an area known as the sea Islands after the Civil War broke out the islands were abandoned by the plantation owners and thousands of people were eventually able to buy the land they were once enslaved on but today the landscape is changing folks come in with bulldozers and the first thing we see is they want to dig up what we've already had for all these generations and then they want to build something that's antithetical to our culture golf courses Resorts and condos have replaced gulla communities Hilton Head Island was the first to be developed once home to about 300 gulla families the 42 squ m island is now home to 26 golf courses brings in 2 million tourists a year and is considered one of the top vacation destinations in the United States gulla burial grounds dating back to the days of slavery are now the backyards of million-dollar condos in opulent gated communities that new locals fondly call plantations that development boom is slowly spreading to other areas nearby you can to hear right now Construction in the distance something else being built yep one of the things that you'll notice that you'll never see outside of gichi homes usually are signs like that no trespassing well that's part of the interesting thing is that the land that the gichi own it's all communally owned absolutely yeah most people live on what is in the law called airs property and that's because our ancestors during the US Civil War now bought property and so gagi became the first group of people of African descent in North America to own own land in Mass gulla land owners sought to own the Land Community among their extended family over Generations this community owned land was passed down to hundreds of heirs often without legal documents like Wills or clear titles an informal shared ownership system developed which came to be known as Air's property until recently Air's property Arrangements kept Family Properties from being sold because families depended on the land and each other but today developers are using legal loopholes to acquire A's property sometimes for pennies on the dollar whether the people living there want to sell or [Music] not we visited Willie Hayward a local attorney who helps skulla families protect their property when the ancestors acquired it this was not uh a very desirable place to live because of the lack of air conditioning uh mosquitoes alligators uh and lack of uh access lack of bridges and so on and so forth and roads but now that has changed so that progress lack of a better word uh has brought in uh folks who now uh want to divest gagi people of that land uh for uh development purposes what's the extent of the threat right now to the actual land I mean how much land are we talking about having been lost in the past few years areas that I see that in my opinion that were 90% above gichi folks that are now less than 10 uh at that one of the interesting things that we picked up on is that you know just one owner who owns one small part of it can kind of force the entire thing to be sold how does that even work the law allows that allow just simply all you have to do is allege uh that you have an interest that interest may be 100th of a percent Air's properties are divided into shares with each family member holding a certain portion of ownership the law allows anyone owning part of an Air's property to force the other owners to sell the entire property by going to a judge and asking for their dollar value of their share technically other airs who want to keep the land could buy out their share but in reality few have the means to purchase that share on the open market it's just too expensive and because there are so many owners the land often can't be subdivided the only practical solution is to sell the land at a court auction or just go along with development what's unique about the gichi people we have more ears outside of South Carolina in many cases these ears have lost contact with South Carolina never been to South Carolina don't know anything about South Carolina but uh legally they have an interest in that property in the end gulla people are forced off the land they own to make way for Resort communities they can't afford to live in Adolf Brown is a real estate broker on Hilton Head Island here's um a piece right now as you see there's a for sale sign this is all Air you can almost tell it by um the mobile homes like you'll see you know a bunch of mobile homes you know together that's a good indication that you're on a track of land that's airpr he showed us a piece of A's property he's planning to develop some distant relatives who live out of state recently decided they wanted to work with adol to develop the land forcing the sale of the entire property and displacing relatives who live there some of the people don't want to sell obvious because they they've lived here their whole lives you could see there's a lot of mobile homes so they're 19 in total that you know there's going to be an issue with and so you know what do we do what do they what do they do their only option would be to buy those relatives out but they don't have the means to do so waterfront property here can go for $800,000 an acre Adolf moved to Hilton Head from New York 10 years ago when he discovered he owned shares of an Air's property some of the work you've done it's kind of got you a bad rep on the island right now yeah yeah yeah it has it has the island a lot of the Islanders think I'm the I'm the bad guy I'm the the the city slicker bamboozler dude you know what I mean people here feel like their their entire culture is being sold along with this property that the gull culture is is basically fading away as more developers buy up these these lands through through A's property right I mean do you do you understand that anger I understand the anger and I understand the gull of culture my grandmother was a midwife on Hilton Head so almost every African-American of uh that was born from in the' 60s 50s 40s she brought them into the world the problem comes in when the world changes my family doesn't barter with food they go to regular jobs and have N9 to fives and have gone to college and they work 4 500 companies now so it's kind of I mean you can see the division like I'm sure there are people who think of this as like like a boon just like they won the lottery almost and there's others who think of it as I'm losing my way of life I'm losing my home right I'm and trying to rectify those two situations I mean what solution can you come up with the only solution I've ever seen is to develop it and I give people this analogy of the American Indians that were you know downtown Wall Street they had the TPS there they had the little communities could you imagine today they're being 20 acres that's uh Indian reserve in Wall Street yeah but that it can't happen that was hundreds of years ago what I'm saying is either you have to be Progressive or it will you you will get run over taxed out moved out eventually it will happen up the coast the once quiet community of Mount Pleasant recently became the ninth fastest growing city in the country the Phillips Community settled by former slaves of the Philips Plantation is one of two gulla communities left there so we're in Phillips Community right now which is a a gulla Community uh right outside Charleston and this kind of used to be a really isolated area but now basically what you have is all these developments that have sprung up around it so it's kind of like a donut hole so it's only really a question of Time how much longer the people here here can hold out before they're either priced out or their homes are bought out from underneath them Lawrence Palmer has spent his whole life here when I was growing up was a close-nit community someone got a house to be built everybody joined in and help that person build that house don't have to pay a dime and time to come around to you or the community get together and do the same thing to you and now it seems like a lot of people are trying to get this property right here oh yeah they are moving in very swiftly and are people trying to actively get your land right now are they trying to buy your lands oh yeah they try to buy my property several time and I told him no it's not for sale when I should die I hope that some of the family member would step up and uh try to keep it for the future generation this community was one big family but now the community is far divided everybody is more like an individual number one looking out for number one heck was the [Music] rest as the push to cell keeps on building the gulla are running out of options if we look at the situation on FY Allen right now a lot of the native people are gone the fewu pockets of of gagi on St Simon is drying up like the water of California today it's all but non-existent how can we stop this we don't really have a community on I I guess we have maybe a few neighborhoods but not a real community and I think we need to develop them and that's one way to stop people from encroaching on your land we need to meet with each other we don't we want to meet right after the funeral when the emotions are out of control there's a serious erosion of trust too within the black community without trust we can't we definitely can't be unified I mean in my family we lost a lot of land but but the thing of it is is like I started something new I started buying land and I wanted because I know the importance of land and I want to keep it in the family I want to keep it going this is something that we all need to take with us and to explore ways in which we can do that and one of the ways that we may have to do this is the African spirit and let see whether or not the African Spirit can come and bring some knowledge or wisdom into this problem that we are having as a culture and as a as a people than in addition to these Community meetings the gulla turn to Traditions rooted in those their ancestors brought here more than 200 years ago with the name of God most gracious most merciful we give thanks and praises to God Almighty Lord of all the world master of the day of judgment the do we worship and thy Aid we deceit show we the great way the way of those in to go astray I mean in some respects it's a genderation story one group pushed out by a wealthier one but given the land and people involved a piece of American history is being lost and when it's gone it's gone [Music] [Music]