Report for America
The Computer Weekly Developer Network team is headed to UiPath Forward VI, which is the sixth iteration of this event if you happen to struggle with Roman Numerals. Having been tracking all things Robotic Process Automation with UiPath since Forward III, now is an interesting time to get back to the show and see how the organisation’s platform has evolved.
As if a reminder were needed TechTarget, defines RPA as the use of software with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities to handle high-volume, repeatable tasks that previously required humans to perform.
Theming the event with the term ‘WORK’ front and centre, UiPath is clearly keen to talk about AI at work and the practical implementation of automation technology in modern cloud-centric (often now hybrid) workplaces, workflows and human-machine working realms.
The main conference is detailed as two and a half days of ‘insight, inspiration and education’ and UiPath says it wants to talk openly about the future of innovation with a lineup of sessions, speakers, use cases and networking opportunities.
Now with a specifically engineered TechEd day, the company is hosting a special section of specially curated content for the software engineers and the more technically minded, a group that includes CoE [Center of Excellence] champions and AI and automation pros.
Key speakers at the event itself will of course include Daniel Dines, co-founder & co-CEO at UiPath, Rob Enslin in his role as co-CEO at UiPath as well us UiPath chief product officer Graham Sheldon.
Guest speakers also include Walter Isaacson, an inspirational author and journalist who will tell stories touching on innovators from Leonardo da Vinci to Ben Franklin to Steve Jobs and Elon Musk as he looks at what the secrets are to being creative and innovative. Other speakers include the below names:
Isaacson tells the story of how [these innovators’] minds worked, what made them so creative and how their ability to collaborate and master the art of teamwork made them even more creative. For an era that seeks to foster innovation, creativity, and teamwork, Isaacson reveals to audiences how these renowned figures actually made it happen.
“You’ve been hearing a lot lately about AI – but at Forward VI we’ll also have a lot of human intelligence on hand. At Expertsville [the show floor public meeting and exhibition are], more than 300 AI, automation and process experts from UiPath and our partners will be available to meet 1:1 to answer questions, talk through challenges and recommend new approaches. You’ll get the insight of the engineers who design and build UiPath technologies. Plus, at the industry roundtables, attendees can join discussions on how automation is addressing specific challenges in your sector,” said Mary Tetlow, chief brand officer at UiPath.
Recent product updates from UiPath (that will likely be showcased at the conference) include Project Wingman, which enables customers to create powerful automations from simple natural language prompts.
Project Wingman is now available in private preview for select customers.
Project Wingman is designed to fundamentally enhance automation creation for developers by providing a user-friendly experience and leveraging generative AI to make the UiPath platform more accessible to those without programming experience.
“‘Project Wingman’ brings together our AI Computer Vision’s deep understanding of computer screens with Generative AI. Using simple natural language prompts, users can uncover endless possibilities by creating automations that combine specialised AI trained with proprietary data with the intelligence of Generative AI. At UiPath, our mission is to allow every employee to unlock new potential and automate all knowledge work,” said Dr. Edward Challis, head of AI strategy at UiPath.
RPA has evolved today to the extent that we are now witnessing a range of job titles specifically aligned to automation roles including RPA developers, RPA consultants and RPA project managers – in fact, South Africa has become the first country in EMEA to create a national RPA qualification, so there is much to learn here.
Our bags are packed and we’re ready to go – UiPath Forward VI is staged at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas from October 9-12, 2023.
Erik Verduzco / Associated Press
Elijah Smalls Jr., 80, speaks during an interview at his family’s property Thursday, July 27, 2023, in Phillips Community, an unincorporated area near Mount Pleasant, S.C.
Saturday, Aug. 12, 2023 | 10:28 a.m.
PHILLIPS COMMUNITY, S.C. — The Rev. Elijah Smalls Jr. once grew okra, butter beans and other vegetables in the neighborhood where his family has lived near the South Carolina coast since not long after the Civil War. That was before new half-a-million-dollar homes in a nearby subdivision overwhelmed the drainage system.
Runoff meant for sewers now pools in the 80-year-old veteran's backyard, making gardening impossible.
Smalls and his relatives are among the many original families still living in historic settlement communities around Charleston. People who had been enslaved at Phillips Plantation bought patches of it to make their futures. Their descendants question whether the next generation can afford to stay.
“This is the only place I wanted to live and raise my family,” said Fred Smalls, standing outside the home where his two sons grew up.
All along the South Carolina coast, land owned by the descendants of enslaved people is being targeted by developers looking to make money on vacation getaways and new homes. From Myrtle Beach south to Hilton Head, Black landowners who inherited property have been embroiled in disputes with investors looking to capitalize on rising real estate values.
State reforms approved in 2017 provided what supporters described as “shark repellant” — a law that made it harder for developers to strike deals below market prices with distant heirs who had long since moved away.
But skyrocketing property taxes are creating a growing burden as assessments rise. Younger family members may not qualify for homestead exemptions and other tax breaks. Elders worry that their family legacies — established by formerly enslaved ancestors who acquired land despite entrenched racism across the defeated South — are slipping away.
Most of the hundreds who still live on the remaining 450 acres or so of Phillips Community trace their lineage to the founders. Residents enjoy the pace of the South Carolina Lowcountry in the settlement communities, where neighbors have long taken care of each other.
“If we don’t take steps to protect them, we’re going to lose them parcel by parcel," said Coastal Conservation League Executive Director Faith Rivers James.
——
Orange mesh fencing lines the dirt expanse of a new development site that encircles the ranch-style house where Josephine Wright has taken her stand. The 93-year-old woman is the matriarch of a family that has owned land on Hilton Head Island since Reconstruction.
“I’m being surrounded, really,” Wright said recently in the Brooklyn accent she picked up before returning to her late husband’s home 30 years ago in Jonesville Historic Gullah Neighborhood.
They wanted tranquility as his Parkinson’s disease progressed. But gone is the lush greenery that once grew on 29 acres previously owned by other relatives bordering Wright’s home. A Georgia-based developer, Bailey Point Investment, LLC, broke ground last summer on a 147-unit vacation rental complex there.
Managers of her family's trust failed to pay escalating tax bills. The land sold at a 2014 tax auction for just $35,000 — a fraction of its current worth.
Then the investment company sued Wright, who owns her one acre separately. The company alleged that a corner of her screened-in porch, a shed and a satellite dish encroach on the construction project. A lawyer for the company did not return a call from The Associated Press.
She suspects they want to run her off, but she's not intimidated. NBA superstar Kyrie Irving and filmmaker Tyler Perry have lent their support. Town officials don't intend to issue building permits until the case is closed. She says other residents have thanked her for holding out.
She expected to spend these days in peace. Her small home remains the gathering spot for an extended family that includes 40 grandchildren, generations who she hopes will also enjoy the land.
“I just want to be able to live here in this sanctuary with a free mind,” Wright said.
—-
The first self-governed town of formerly enslaved people in the United States was located on Hilton Head Island. Wright’s neighborhood gets its name from a Black Civil War veteran named Caesar Jones who had escaped enslavement and purchased more than 100 acres himself, finding refuge in marshland that had been dismissed by colonists as unsuitable for farming.
It’s hardly undesirable today. The advent of air conditioning helped make coastal land more appealing. New highways improved access to the coast, where population increases have made South Carolina the 10th fastest-growing state during the past decade.
Those searching for land found easy targets in the Gullah Geechee community, owned by descendants of West Africans who were forced into slavery on rice, indigo and cotton plantations along the Atlantic coast. They developed their unique culture on isolated islands, but their separation from the U.S. legal system left them vulnerable to exploitation.
Developers took advantage in many cases of what’s known as heirs’ property — land transferred from generation to generation without a will and shared equally by part-owners whose numbers balloon with each branch in the family tree. South Carolina developers could buy a single heir’s interest and wind up taking everything from outmatched families suddenly navigating an unwieldy system.
Heirs’ property is under threat throughout the Black Belt. Roughly 5 million acres over 11 states worth almost $42 billion collectively remains trapped in cloudy titles, according to the most conservative estimates from a 2023 study led by rural sociologist Ryan Thomson at Auburn University. It’s a strain acutely felt by Black landowners given the Deep South’s legacy of enslavement.
Some remaining owners are more determined than ever to stay.
Julia Campbell, 60, has spent two decades establishing a family tree to identify every heir with even the slimmest stake in the 25-acre John's Island land her family has held since the 19th century. The former member of a Charleston group established to protect Black cemeteries emphasized that the ground itself bears witness to history.
It's important for her to document — especially at a time when she said “some people want to close the book on us.”
“These people who could barely read or write were able to hold onto the property,” she said. “We should be able to hold onto it.”
—-
South Carolina's 2017 reforms stymied some predatory behavior, according to Josh Walden of the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation. The Charleston-based non-profit has helped clear titles for over 3,000 tracts worth some $17.5 million since 2009, but his most modest estimates suggest about 40,000 tracts remain held in heirs’ property across six coastal counties alone.
Risk persists for those facing heightened assessments that come with exurban gentrification.
“Obviously, people are still looking for land," Walden said. "They're still approaching heirs' property owners asking if they'll sell their interests."
The clamor for these lands is so feverish that even people with clear titles remain vulnerable. James calls it “the next frontier in preserving African American property.”
South Carolina tax law evaluates residential land at its highest usage — a boon to sellers but a burden for those who want to stay.
“They’re not planning to take the money and run,” Phillips Community Association President Richard Habersham said of his neighbors. “They’re planning to pass it down.”
James has proposed that state lawmakers ease growing pains by passing a new “cultural property preservation” tax exemption to provide incentives to support historic communities, just like existing credits help preserve historic buildings.
A statewide measure could resemble local efforts. One ordinance blocked a golf course on Gullah Geechee land on St. Helena Island. Last month, the Beaufort County Council rejected a developer’s request to remove a 502-acre plot from a zoning district that bans gated communities and resorts in locations considered culturally significant. Other officials are soliciting feedback from Gullah Geechee and African American communities to identify historical sites in the Charleston area for preservation.
“Property is not just a commodity,” James said. “Property has a sentimental value that the law should recognize.”
—-
That value became more elusive for Queen Mary Davis when a housing development next door restricted her access to a family cemetery by requiring her to gain admission from security guards.
A formerly enslaved ancestor named Dennis Allen purchased the first patches of what is now the family's 31-acre property back in 1897. It's nestled in a Hilton Head neighborhood that is home to some of the largest Gullah extended families.
But Davis, 70, could soon lose nearly a third of it. The land is stuck in a cumbersome legal dispute with other heirs dating back to 2009. A judge has ordered that 11 acres be placed on the market for $7 million. A previous deal fell apart after a North Carolina firm rescinded its $7.5 million offer.
The situation is an egregious example of sagas that attorney Willie Heyward has seen all too often during a 37-year career largely focused on heirs' property. He's represented members on both sides of Davis' contentious case at various points, and says many families get mired in costly, yearslong court battles that ultimately diminish the returns for everyone.
This generation of heirs' property owners will be the last with numbers Heyward considers manageable — about 250 relatives is the most he's seen.
As family trees number thousands of people, any outcome other than land loss can become impractical — a “crushing” prospect for his elderly clients clinging to the last vestiges of their ancestry.
Relatives interested in selling have a legal right to pursue that option, and defending land becomes especially difficult when families aren't united. Heyward and James both want legislators to expand opportunities for mediation so resource-limited families don’t rack up legal fees trying to protect their interests.
What was once a vehicle for maintaining ownership has become an engine of its demise.
“I see a very dark future on the horizon if something is not done,” Heyward said.
—-
Longtime residents report that Phillips Community sounds different nowadays. Traffic thrums along a busy road. The scuttle of fiddler crabs no longer accompanies walks to a nearby creek. Woods once filled with the calls of raccoon hunts have been replaced by a quiet subdivision.
And still more development looms. A private Charleston-based company has plans for several dozen houses in the center of the neighborhood, spreading closer to the 35 acres bought by the Smalls’ great grandfather and largely kept within the bloodline since 1875. The Rev. Elijah Smalls Jr. said he's heard rumblings about new commercial enterprises entering the frenzy.
“If that comes in, that would definitely be the death of the community,” he said.
Some of Smalls’ neighbors may have left, but the pastor says he's not going anywhere. He built the brick house that sits right off Elijah Smalls Road. He can’t start over at his age, and nearby homes cost too much anyway.
Fred Smalls isn't moving either. Wearing a black baseball cap with “ARMY” emblazoned in gold, he notes that many original members fought for their own freedom in the 128th Regiment of the U.S. Colored Infantry. Paintings of 19th century African American soldiers hang on his walls.
His Army service took him to Germany, Turkey, Alaska and Oklahoma. But he always knew he'd return.
—
James Pollard is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
PHILLIPS COMMUNITY, S.C. — The Rev. Elijah Smalls Jr. once grew okra, butter beans and other vegetables in the neighborhood where his family has lived near the South Carolina coast since survivors of slavery bought patches of their plantation after the Civil War.
Then came half-a-million-dollar homes in a nearby subdivision, overwhelming the drainage system. Runoff meant for sewers now pools in the 80-year-old veteran’s backyard, making gardening impossible.
Smalls and his relatives in Phillips Community are among the many Black families still living in historic settlement communities around Charleston. Like others on the South Carolina coast, their land is being targeted by developers.
As real estate prices rise from Myrtle Beach to Hilton Head, Black property owners find themselves embroiled in disputes with investors and their own relatives.
State reforms approved in 2017 provided what supporters described as “shark repellant” — a law that made it harder for developers to strike deals below market prices with distant heirs who had long since moved away.
But skyrocketing property taxes create a growing burden. Elders worry that their family legacies — established by formerly enslaved ancestors who acquired land despite entrenched racism across the defeated South — are slipping away.
“If we don’t take steps to protect them, we’re going to lose them parcel by parcel,” said Coastal Conservation League Executive Director Faith Rivers James.
Orange mesh fences the raw dirt of a new development that now encircles the ranch-style house where Josephine Wright has taken her stand. The 93-year-old woman is the matriarch of a family that has owned land on Hilton Head Island since Reconstruction.
“I’m being surrounded, really,” said Wright, who with her late husband returned 30 years ago to the home in Jonesville Historic Gullah Neighborhood, where the 2020 census estimated about 440 people still live.
They wanted tranquility as his Parkinson’s disease progressed. Gone is the lush greenery that once grew on 29 acres their relatives previously owned around Wright’s home. A Georgia-based developer, Bailey Point Investment LLC, broke ground last summer on a 147-unit vacation rental complex there.
Josephine Wright stands July 18 between her home and an orange safety fence that borders a construction site in Hilton Head Island, S.C.
Managers of her family’s trust failed to pay escalating tax bills. The land sold at a 2014 tax auction for just $35,000 — a fraction of its current worth.
Then the investment company sued Wright, who owns her one acre separately, alleging that a corner of her screened-in porch, a shed and a satellite dish encroach on the construction project. A lawyer for the company did not return a call from The Associated Press.
She suspects they want to run her off, but she’s not intimidated. NBA superstar Kyrie Irving and filmmaker Tyler Perry have lent their support. Town officials don’t intend to issue building permits until the case is closed. She says other residents thanked her for holding out.
The first self-governed town of formerly enslaved people in the United States was on Hilton Head Island. Wright’s neighborhood gets its name from a Black Civil War veteran named Caesar Jones, who escaped enslavement and purchased more than 100 acres, finding refuge in marshland dismissed by colonists as unsuitable.
Newcomers helped make South Carolina the 10th fastest-growing state during the past decade. Those searching for land found easy targets in the Gullah Geechee community, owned by descendants of West Africans who were forced into slavery on rice, indigo and cotton plantations. Their separation from the U.S. legal system left them vulnerable to exploitation.
Developers took advantage in many cases of what’s known as heirs’ property — land transferred from generation to generation without a will and shared equally by part-owners whose numbers grow with the family tree. Investors could buy a single heir’s interest and wind up taking everything from outmatched families.
Queen Davis sits on the truck of a live oak tree overlooking a marsh July 18, 2023, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. She faces the prospect of losing about 11 acres after a June judicial order that would place a portion on the market for $7 million.
Heirs’ property, a legacy of slavery’s aftermath across the Deep South, is under threat throughout the Black Belt. Roughly 5 million acres over 11 states worth almost $42 billion collectively is estimated trapped in cloudy titles, according to a research team led by rural sociologist Ryan Thomson at Auburn University.
South Carolina’s 2017 reforms stymied some predatory behavior, according to Josh Walden of the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation. The Charleston-based nonprofit helped clear titles for over 3,000 tracts worth some $17.5 million since 2009. Walden estimates about 40,000 tracts remain held in heirs’ property across six coastal counties alone.
The clamor for these lands is so feverish, even people with clear titles are vulnerable. James calls it “the next frontier in preserving African American property.”
She’s proposed that state lawmakers pass a new “cultural property preservation” tax exemption to provide incentives to support historic communities, just like existing credits help preserve historic buildings.
Longtime residents report that Phillips Community sounds different nowadays. Traffic thrums along a busy road. The scuttle of fiddler crabs no longer accompanies walks to a nearby creek. Woods once filled with the calls of raccoon hunts have been replaced by a quiet subdivision.
And still more development looms. A private Charleston-based company plans dozens of houses in the center of Phillips Community, spreading closer to the 35 acres bought by the Smalls’ great-grandfather in 1875. Elijah Smalls heard rumblings about new commercial enterprises entering the frenzy.
“If that comes in, that would definitely be the death of the community,” he said.
His brother Fred Smalls isn’t moving. Wearing a black “ARMY” baseball cap, he noted many original members fought for their own freedom with the U.S. Colored Infantry. He served in Germany, Turkey, Alaska and Oklahoma, but always knew he’d return.
They're entertainers, media moguls, elite athletes, music artists, tech tycoons, and investors.
Stacker compiled a list of the 10 richest Black Americans using data from Forbes. Individuals were ranked by their overall wealth ranking, with the richest person taking the #1 spot.
America's Black billionaires represent an array of industries and business ventures; however, over half of those on this list made the bulk of their wealth in the sports or entertainment industries. The people on this list are worth $27 billion combined, which is a lot of money—but that's just one-eighth of the net worth of the world's richest person, Elon Musk, at an estimated $218 billion.
The United States is home to the most billionaires of any country represented on Forbes' list of 2,640 billionaires in 2023. And yet, of the 1,000 wealthiest people in the world, only two are Black Americans. This wealth gap results from long-standing practices in the United States that denied Black Americans the ability to accumulate wealth while their labor often contributed to the wealth of white Americans. This dates back to slavery and continued with discriminatory practices in the housing and labor markets that have never been fully redressed.
Despite these barriers, America's Black billionaires have risen to the top tiers of financial success.
- Net worth: $1 billion
- Global wealth rank: 2,593
- Age: 53
- Source of wealth: Movies, television
Tyler Perry is a director, actor, producer, and writer who built his empire from movies and television. He owns 100% of his content, including the popular "Madea" franchise. Perry lives in Atlanta, where his 330-acre, 12-stage Tyler Perry Studios is located.
- Net worth: $1 billion
- Global wealth rank: 2,537
- Age: 38
- Source of wealth: Basketball
Considered one of the all-time greatest basketball players, LeBron James is the first active NBA player to make Forbes' billionaire list. James started his NBA career at 18 years old with the Cleveland Cavaliers, and he went on to play for the Miami Heat and his current team, the Los Angeles Lakers. Beyond basketball, James makes money through endorsement deals with Pepsi, Walmart, and Nike and has equity in Beats by Dre and Blaze Pizza.
- Net worth: $1.1 billion
- Global wealth rank: 2,505
- Age: 47
- Source of wealth: Golf
Tiger Woods is considered one of the best golfers ever and is tied for first in PGA Tour wins. He is the second active athlete—after LeBron James—to make the Forbes billionaire list. Beyond golf, Woods makes money through his investments in real estate, a golf course design business, a high-end mini-golf chain, and TMRW Sports, a tech and sports venture he co-founded with plans to launch a new golf league.
- Net worth: $1.2 billion
- Global wealth rank: 2,303
- Age: 42
- Source of wealth: Software
Tope Awotona is the founder and CEO of Calendly, a software company that automates meeting scheduling. Born in Nigeria, Awotona and his family immigrated to Atlanta when he was a teenager. He has a background in sales for tech companies and founded Calendly in 2013.
- Net worth: $1.8 billion
- Global wealth rank: 1,700
- Age: 55
- Source of wealth: Software firm
Alexander Karp is co-founder and CEO of Palantir, a software company specializing in big data analytics driven by artificial intelligence. Palantir does contract work for the Department of Defense, the FBI, and the Danish National Police, which use the platform for defense and intelligence strategy. Karp is originally from New York and grew up in Philadelphia; Palantir is headquartered in Denver.
- Net worth: $2 billion
- Global wealth rank: 1,528
- Age: 60
- Source of wealth: Charlotte Hornets, endorsements
Michael Jordan is considered one of the all-time greatest basketball players alongside LeBron James. Jordan won six NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s. Today, his wealth comes from owning the Charlotte Hornets NBA team, co-owning a NASCAR team, investing in DraftKings, and endorsement deals with Nike, Hanes, and Gatorade.
- Net worth: $2.5 billion
- Global wealth rank: 1,256
- Age: 53
- Source of wealth: Multiple
Jay-Z, whose name is Shawn Carter, is a multihyphenate and hip-hop's first billionaire. He is a rapper, record producer, and entrepreneur married to singer Beyoncé. Jay-Z's wealth comes from his fine art collection, music catalog, the Roc Nation entertainment company he founded, and various brand investments, including liquor, clothing lines, music streaming, a chain of sports bars, and more.
- Net worth: $2.5 billion
- Global wealth rank: 1,254
- Age: 69
- Source of wealth: TV shows
Oprah Winfrey was the first Black woman billionaire in the U.S. and is the only woman on this list. The foundation of her wealth is her nationally syndicated talk show, "The Oprah Winfrey Show," which aired for 25 years starting in 1986. Winfrey leveraged her talk show into a media empire that now includes the OWN cable channel and Harpo Productions. Winfrey, born in Mississippi and raised in Milwaukee and Nashville, also has made money as an actor and an investor in WeightWatchers.
- Net worth: $6 billion
- Global wealth rank: 431
- Age: 71
- Source of wealth: IT provider
David Steward is the founder of World Wide Technology, an IT provider that helps large companies with digital strategy and technology and supply chain solutions. Steward also co-founded Telcobuy, a spinoff of World Wide Technology that provides enterprise networking services and data security. He was born in Chicago and grew up in Missouri.
- Net worth: $8 billion
- Global wealth rank: 266
- Age: 60
- Source of wealth: Private equity
The richest Black American is Robert F. Smith, who founded Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm that invests in software companies. Smith grew up in Denver and worked as a chemical engineer before earning his MBA. He started Vista Equity Partners in 2000, and it has posted annual returns of 30% every year.
Data reporting by Elena Cox. Story editing by Jeff Inglis. Copy editing by Paris Close. Photo selection by Abigail Renaud.
PHILLIPS COMMUNITY, S.C. — The Rev. Elijah Smalls Jr. once grew okra, butter beans and other vegetables in the neighborhood where his family has lived near the South Carolina coast since survivors of slavery bought patches of their plantation after the Civil War.
Then came half-a-million-dollar homes in a nearby subdivision, overwhelming the drainage system. Runoff meant for sewers now pools in the 80-year-old veteran’s backyard, making gardening impossible.
Smalls and his relatives in Phillips Community are the many Black families still living in historic settlement communities around Charleston. Like others all along the South Carolina coast, their land is being targeted by developers of vacation getaways and new homes.
And as real estate prices rise from Myrtle Beach to Hilton Head, Black property owners have found themselves embroiled in disputes with investors and their own relatives.
State reforms approved in 2017 provided what supporters described as “shark repellant” - a law that made it harder for developers to strike deals below market prices with distant heirs who had long since moved away.
But skyrocketing property taxes create a growing burden. Elders worry that their family legacies - established by formerly enslaved ancestors who acquired land despite entrenched racism across the defeated South - are slipping away.
PHOTOS: Developers have Black families fighting to maintain property and history
“If we don’t take steps to protect them, we’re going to lose them parcel by parcel,” said Coastal Conservation League Executive Director Faith Rivers James.
—
Orange mesh fences the raw dirt of a new development that now encircles the ranch-style house where Josephine Wright has taken her stand. The 93-year-old woman is the matriarch of a family that has owned land on Hilton Head Island since Reconstruction.
“I’m being surrounded, really,” Wright said in the Brooklyn accent she picked up before returning to her late husband’s home 30 years ago in Jonesville Historic Gullah Neighborhood, where the 2020 Census estimated about 440 people still live.
They wanted tranquility as his Parkinson’s disease progressed. But gone is the lush greenery that once grew on 29 acres their relatives previously owned around Wright’s home. A Georgia-based developer, Bailey Point Investment, LLC, broke ground last summer on a 147-unit vacation rental complex there.
Managers of her family’s trust had failed to pay escalating tax bills. The land sold at a 2014 tax auction for just $35,000 - a fraction of its current worth.
Then the investment company sued Wright, who owns her one acre separately, alleging that a corner of her screened-in porch, a shed and a satellite dish encroach on the construction project. A lawyer for the company did not return a call from The Associated Press.
She suspects they want to run her off, but she’s not intimidated. NBA superstar Kyrie Irving and filmmaker Tyler Perry have lent their support. Town officials don’t intend to issue building permits until the case is closed. She says other residents have thanked her for holding out.
—
The first self-governed town of formerly enslaved people in the United States was on Hilton Head Island. Wright’s neighborhood gets its name from a Black Civil War veteran named Caesar Jones, who had escaped enslavement and purchased more than 100 acres, finding refuge in marshland dismissed by colonists as unsuitable.
It’s hardly undesirable today. Air conditioning made the land more appealing. New highways improved access to the coast, where newcomers have helped make South Carolina the 10th fastest-growing state during the past decade.
Those searching for land found easy targets in the Gullah Geechee community, owned by descendants of West Africans who were forced into slavery on rice, indigo and cotton plantations. They developed a unique culture on isolated islands, but their separation from the U.S. legal system left them vulnerable to exploitation.
Developers took advantage in many cases of what’s known as heirs’ property - land transferred from generation to generation without a will and shared equally by part-owners whose numbers grow with the family tree. Investors could buy a single heir’s interest and wind up taking everything from outmatched families suddenly navigating an unwieldy legal system.
Heirs’ property, a legacy of slavery’s aftermath across the Deep South, is under threat throughout the Black Belt. Roughly 5 million acres over 11 states worth almost $42 billion collectively remains trapped in cloudy titles, according to the most conservative estimates from a research team led by rural sociologist Ryan Thomson at Auburn University.
South Carolina’s 2017 reforms stymied some predatory behavior, according to Josh Walden of the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation. The Charleston-based non-profit has helped clear titles for over 3,000 tracts worth some $17.5 million since 2009. Walden estimates about 40,000 tracts remain held in heirs’ property across six coastal counties alone.
The clamor for these lands is so feverish that even people with clear titles are vulnerable. James calls it “the next frontier in preserving African American property.”
She’s proposed that state lawmakers pass a new “cultural property preservation” tax exemption to provide incentives to support historic communities, just like existing credits help preserve historic buildings.
“Property is not just a commodity,” James said. “Property has a sentimental value that the law should recognize.”
—
Longtime residents report that Phillips Community sounds different nowadays. Traffic thrums along a busy road. The scuttle of fiddler crabs no longer accompanies walks to a nearby creek. Woods once filled with the calls of raccoon hunts have been replaced by a quiet subdivision.
And still more development looms. A private Charleston-based company plans dozens of houses in the center of Phillips Community, spreading closer to the 35 acres bought by the Smalls’ great-grandfather in 1875. The Rev. Elijah Smalls Jr. has heard rumblings about new commercial enterprises entering the frenzy.
“If that comes in, that would definitely be the death of the community,” the pastor said.
His brother Fred Smalls isn’t moving either. Wearing a black “ARMY” baseball cap, he noted that many original members fought for their own freedom with the U.S. Colored Infantry. He served in Germany, Turkey, Alaska and Oklahoma. But he always knew he’d return.
—
Pollard is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
PHILLIPS COMMUNITY, S.C. — The Rev. Elijah Smalls Jr. once grew okra, butter beans and other vegetables in the neighborhood where his family has lived near the South Carolina coast since survivors of slavery bought patches of their plantation after the Civil War.
Then came half-a-million-dollar homes in a nearby subdivision, overwhelming the drainage system. Runoff meant for sewers now pools in the 80-year-old veteran’s backyard, making gardening impossible.
Smalls and his relatives in Phillips Community are the many Black families still living in historic settlement communities around Charleston. Like others on the South Carolina coast, their land is being targeted by developers.
As real estate prices rise from Myrtle Beach to Hilton Head, Black property owners find themselves embroiled in disputes with investors and their own relatives.
State reforms approved in 2017 provided what supporters described as “shark repellant” — a law that made it harder for developers to strike deals below market prices with distant heirs who had long since moved away.
But skyrocketing property taxes create a growing burden. Elders worry that their family legacies — established by formerly enslaved ancestors who acquired land despite entrenched racism across the defeated South — are slipping away.
“If we don’t take steps to protect them, we’re going to lose them parcel by parcel,” said Coastal Conservation League Executive Director Faith Rivers James.
Orange mesh fences the raw dirt of a new development that now encircles the ranch-style house where Josephine Wright has taken her stand. The 93-year-old woman is the matriarch of a family that has owned land on Hilton Head Island since Reconstruction.
“I’m being surrounded, really,” said Wright, who with her late husband returned 30 years ago to the home in Jonesville Historic Gullah Neighborhood, where the 2020 census estimated about 440 people still live.
They wanted tranquility as his Parkinson’s disease progressed. Gone is the lush greenery that once grew on 29 acres their relatives previously owned around Wright’s home. A Georgia-based developer, Bailey Point Investment LLC, broke ground last summer on a 147-unit vacation rental complex there.
Josephine Wright stands July 18 between her home and an orange safety fence that borders a construction site in Hilton Head Island, S.C.
Managers of her family’s trust failed to pay escalating tax bills. The land sold at a 2014 tax auction for just $35,000 — a fraction of its current worth.
Then the investment company sued Wright, who owns her one acre separately, alleging that a corner of her screened-in porch, a shed and a satellite dish encroach on the construction project. A lawyer for the company did not return a call from The Associated Press.
She suspects they want to run her off, but she’s not intimidated. NBA superstar Kyrie Irving and filmmaker Tyler Perry have lent their support. Town officials don’t intend to issue building permits until the case is closed. She says other residents thanked her for holding out.
The first self-governed town of formerly enslaved people in the United States was on Hilton Head Island. Wright’s neighborhood gets its name from a Black Civil War veteran named Caesar Jones, who escaped enslavement and purchased more than 100 acres, finding refuge in marshland dismissed by colonists as unsuitable.
Newcomers helped make South Carolina the 10th fastest-growing state during the past decade. Those searching for land found easy targets in the Gullah Geechee community, owned by descendants of West Africans who were forced into slavery on rice, indigo and cotton plantations. Their separation from the U.S. legal system left them vulnerable to exploitation.
Developers took advantage in many cases of what’s known as heirs’ property — land transferred from generation to generation without a will and shared equally by part-owners whose numbers grow with the family tree. Investors could buy a single heir’s interest and wind up taking everything from outmatched families.
Queen Davis sits on the truck of a live oak tree overlooking a marsh July 18, 2023, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. She faces the prospect of losing about 11 acres after a June judicial order that would place a portion on the market for $7 million.
Heirs’ property, a legacy of slavery’s aftermath across the Deep South, is under threat throughout the Black Belt. Roughly 5 million acres over 11 states worth almost $42 billion collectively is estimated trapped in cloudy titles, according to a research team led by rural sociologist Ryan Thomson at Auburn University.
South Carolina’s 2017 reforms stymied some predatory behavior, according to Josh Walden of the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation. The Charleston-based nonprofit helped clear titles for over 3,000 tracts worth some $17.5 million since 2009. Walden estimates about 40,000 tracts remain held in heirs’ property across six coastal counties alone.
The clamor for these lands is so feverish, even people with clear titles are vulnerable. James calls it “the next frontier in preserving African American property.”
She’s proposed that state lawmakers pass a new “cultural property preservation” tax exemption to provide incentives to support historic communities, just like existing credits help preserve historic buildings.
Longtime residents report that Phillips Community sounds different nowadays. Traffic thrums along a busy road. The scuttle of fiddler crabs no longer accompanies walks to a nearby creek. Woods once filled with the calls of raccoon hunts have been replaced by a quiet subdivision.
And still more development looms. A private Charleston-based company plans dozens of houses in the center of Phillips Community, spreading closer to the 35 acres bought by the Smalls’ great-grandfather in 1875. Elijah Smalls heard rumblings about new commercial enterprises entering the frenzy.
“If that comes in, that would definitely be the death of the community,” he said.
His brother Fred Smalls isn’t moving. Wearing a black “ARMY” baseball cap, he noted many original members fought for their own freedom with the U.S. Colored Infantry. He served in Germany, Turkey, Alaska and Oklahoma, but always knew he’d return.
They're entertainers, media moguls, elite athletes, music artists, tech tycoons, and investors.
Stacker compiled a list of the 10 richest Black Americans using data from Forbes. Individuals were ranked by their overall wealth ranking, with the richest person taking the #1 spot.
America's Black billionaires represent an array of industries and business ventures; however, over half of those on this list made the bulk of their wealth in the sports or entertainment industries. The people on this list are worth $27 billion combined, which is a lot of money—but that's just one-eighth of the net worth of the world's richest person, Elon Musk, at an estimated $218 billion.
The United States is home to the most billionaires of any country represented on Forbes' list of 2,640 billionaires in 2023. And yet, of the 1,000 wealthiest people in the world, only two are Black Americans. This wealth gap results from long-standing practices in the United States that denied Black Americans the ability to accumulate wealth while their labor often contributed to the wealth of white Americans. This dates back to slavery and continued with discriminatory practices in the housing and labor markets that have never been fully redressed.
Despite these barriers, America's Black billionaires have risen to the top tiers of financial success.
- Net worth: $1 billion
- Global wealth rank: 2,593
- Age: 53
- Source of wealth: Movies, television
Tyler Perry is a director, actor, producer, and writer who built his empire from movies and television. He owns 100% of his content, including the popular "Madea" franchise. Perry lives in Atlanta, where his 330-acre, 12-stage Tyler Perry Studios is located.
- Net worth: $1 billion
- Global wealth rank: 2,537
- Age: 38
- Source of wealth: Basketball
Considered one of the all-time greatest basketball players, LeBron James is the first active NBA player to make Forbes' billionaire list. James started his NBA career at 18 years old with the Cleveland Cavaliers, and he went on to play for the Miami Heat and his current team, the Los Angeles Lakers. Beyond basketball, James makes money through endorsement deals with Pepsi, Walmart, and Nike and has equity in Beats by Dre and Blaze Pizza.
- Net worth: $1.1 billion
- Global wealth rank: 2,505
- Age: 47
- Source of wealth: Golf
Tiger Woods is considered one of the best golfers ever and is tied for first in PGA Tour wins. He is the second active athlete—after LeBron James—to make the Forbes billionaire list. Beyond golf, Woods makes money through his investments in real estate, a golf course design business, a high-end mini-golf chain, and TMRW Sports, a tech and sports venture he co-founded with plans to launch a new golf league.
- Net worth: $1.2 billion
- Global wealth rank: 2,303
- Age: 42
- Source of wealth: Software
Tope Awotona is the founder and CEO of Calendly, a software company that automates meeting scheduling. Born in Nigeria, Awotona and his family immigrated to Atlanta when he was a teenager. He has a background in sales for tech companies and founded Calendly in 2013.
- Net worth: $1.8 billion
- Global wealth rank: 1,700
- Age: 55
- Source of wealth: Software firm
Alexander Karp is co-founder and CEO of Palantir, a software company specializing in big data analytics driven by artificial intelligence. Palantir does contract work for the Department of Defense, the FBI, and the Danish National Police, which use the platform for defense and intelligence strategy. Karp is originally from New York and grew up in Philadelphia; Palantir is headquartered in Denver.
- Net worth: $2 billion
- Global wealth rank: 1,528
- Age: 60
- Source of wealth: Charlotte Hornets, endorsements
Michael Jordan is considered one of the all-time greatest basketball players alongside LeBron James. Jordan won six NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s. Today, his wealth comes from owning the Charlotte Hornets NBA team, co-owning a NASCAR team, investing in DraftKings, and endorsement deals with Nike, Hanes, and Gatorade.
- Net worth: $2.5 billion
- Global wealth rank: 1,256
- Age: 53
- Source of wealth: Multiple
Jay-Z, whose name is Shawn Carter, is a multihyphenate and hip-hop's first billionaire. He is a rapper, record producer, and entrepreneur married to singer Beyoncé. Jay-Z's wealth comes from his fine art collection, music catalog, the Roc Nation entertainment company he founded, and various brand investments, including liquor, clothing lines, music streaming, a chain of sports bars, and more.
- Net worth: $2.5 billion
- Global wealth rank: 1,254
- Age: 69
- Source of wealth: TV shows
Oprah Winfrey was the first Black woman billionaire in the U.S. and is the only woman on this list. The foundation of her wealth is her nationally syndicated talk show, "The Oprah Winfrey Show," which aired for 25 years starting in 1986. Winfrey leveraged her talk show into a media empire that now includes the OWN cable channel and Harpo Productions. Winfrey, born in Mississippi and raised in Milwaukee and Nashville, also has made money as an actor and an investor in WeightWatchers.
- Net worth: $6 billion
- Global wealth rank: 431
- Age: 71
- Source of wealth: IT provider
David Steward is the founder of World Wide Technology, an IT provider that helps large companies with digital strategy and technology and supply chain solutions. Steward also co-founded Telcobuy, a spinoff of World Wide Technology that provides enterprise networking services and data security. He was born in Chicago and grew up in Missouri.
- Net worth: $8 billion
- Global wealth rank: 266
- Age: 60
- Source of wealth: Private equity
The richest Black American is Robert F. Smith, who founded Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm that invests in software companies. Smith grew up in Denver and worked as a chemical engineer before earning his MBA. He started Vista Equity Partners in 2000, and it has posted annual returns of 30% every year.
Data reporting by Elena Cox. Story editing by Jeff Inglis. Copy editing by Paris Close. Photo selection by Abigail Renaud.
PHILLIPS COMMUNITY, S.C. — The Rev. Elijah Smalls Jr. once grew okra, butter beans and other vegetables in the neighborhood where his family has lived near the South Carolina coast since survivors of slavery bought patches of their plantation after the Civil War.
Then came half-a-million-dollar homes in a nearby subdivision, overwhelming the drainage system. Runoff meant for sewers now pools in the 80-year-old veteran’s backyard, making gardening impossible.
Smalls and his relatives in Phillips Community are the many Black families still living in historic settlement communities around Charleston. Like others on the South Carolina coast, their land is being targeted by developers.
As real estate prices rise from Myrtle Beach to Hilton Head, Black property owners find themselves embroiled in disputes with investors and their own relatives.
State reforms approved in 2017 provided what supporters described as “shark repellant” — a law that made it harder for developers to strike deals below market prices with distant heirs who had long since moved away.
But skyrocketing property taxes create a growing burden. Elders worry that their family legacies — established by formerly enslaved ancestors who acquired land despite entrenched racism across the defeated South — are slipping away.
“If we don’t take steps to protect them, we’re going to lose them parcel by parcel,” said Coastal Conservation League Executive Director Faith Rivers James.
Orange mesh fences the raw dirt of a new development that now encircles the ranch-style house where Josephine Wright has taken her stand. The 93-year-old woman is the matriarch of a family that has owned land on Hilton Head Island since Reconstruction.
“I’m being surrounded, really,” said Wright, who with her late husband returned 30 years ago to the home in Jonesville Historic Gullah Neighborhood, where the 2020 census estimated about 440 people still live.
They wanted tranquility as his Parkinson’s disease progressed. Gone is the lush greenery that once grew on 29 acres their relatives previously owned around Wright’s home. A Georgia-based developer, Bailey Point Investment LLC, broke ground last summer on a 147-unit vacation rental complex there.
Josephine Wright stands July 18 between her home and an orange safety fence that borders a construction site in Hilton Head Island, S.C.
Managers of her family’s trust failed to pay escalating tax bills. The land sold at a 2014 tax auction for just $35,000 — a fraction of its current worth.
Then the investment company sued Wright, who owns her one acre separately, alleging that a corner of her screened-in porch, a shed and a satellite dish encroach on the construction project. A lawyer for the company did not return a call from The Associated Press.
She suspects they want to run her off, but she’s not intimidated. NBA superstar Kyrie Irving and filmmaker Tyler Perry have lent their support. Town officials don’t intend to issue building permits until the case is closed. She says other residents thanked her for holding out.
The first self-governed town of formerly enslaved people in the United States was on Hilton Head Island. Wright’s neighborhood gets its name from a Black Civil War veteran named Caesar Jones, who escaped enslavement and purchased more than 100 acres, finding refuge in marshland dismissed by colonists as unsuitable.
Newcomers helped make South Carolina the 10th fastest-growing state during the past decade. Those searching for land found easy targets in the Gullah Geechee community, owned by descendants of West Africans who were forced into slavery on rice, indigo and cotton plantations. Their separation from the U.S. legal system left them vulnerable to exploitation.
Developers took advantage in many cases of what’s known as heirs’ property — land transferred from generation to generation without a will and shared equally by part-owners whose numbers grow with the family tree. Investors could buy a single heir’s interest and wind up taking everything from outmatched families.
Queen Davis sits on the truck of a live oak tree overlooking a marsh July 18, 2023, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. She faces the prospect of losing about 11 acres after a June judicial order that would place a portion on the market for $7 million.
Heirs’ property, a legacy of slavery’s aftermath across the Deep South, is under threat throughout the Black Belt. Roughly 5 million acres over 11 states worth almost $42 billion collectively is estimated trapped in cloudy titles, according to a research team led by rural sociologist Ryan Thomson at Auburn University.
South Carolina’s 2017 reforms stymied some predatory behavior, according to Josh Walden of the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation. The Charleston-based nonprofit helped clear titles for over 3,000 tracts worth some $17.5 million since 2009. Walden estimates about 40,000 tracts remain held in heirs’ property across six coastal counties alone.
The clamor for these lands is so feverish, even people with clear titles are vulnerable. James calls it “the next frontier in preserving African American property.”
She’s proposed that state lawmakers pass a new “cultural property preservation” tax exemption to provide incentives to support historic communities, just like existing credits help preserve historic buildings.
Longtime residents report that Phillips Community sounds different nowadays. Traffic thrums along a busy road. The scuttle of fiddler crabs no longer accompanies walks to a nearby creek. Woods once filled with the calls of raccoon hunts have been replaced by a quiet subdivision.
And still more development looms. A private Charleston-based company plans dozens of houses in the center of Phillips Community, spreading closer to the 35 acres bought by the Smalls’ great-grandfather in 1875. Elijah Smalls heard rumblings about new commercial enterprises entering the frenzy.
“If that comes in, that would definitely be the death of the community,” he said.
His brother Fred Smalls isn’t moving. Wearing a black “ARMY” baseball cap, he noted many original members fought for their own freedom with the U.S. Colored Infantry. He served in Germany, Turkey, Alaska and Oklahoma, but always knew he’d return.
They're entertainers, media moguls, elite athletes, music artists, tech tycoons, and investors.
Stacker compiled a list of the 10 richest Black Americans using data from Forbes. Individuals were ranked by their overall wealth ranking, with the richest person taking the #1 spot.
America's Black billionaires represent an array of industries and business ventures; however, over half of those on this list made the bulk of their wealth in the sports or entertainment industries. The people on this list are worth $27 billion combined, which is a lot of money—but that's just one-eighth of the net worth of the world's richest person, Elon Musk, at an estimated $218 billion.
The United States is home to the most billionaires of any country represented on Forbes' list of 2,640 billionaires in 2023. And yet, of the 1,000 wealthiest people in the world, only two are Black Americans. This wealth gap results from long-standing practices in the United States that denied Black Americans the ability to accumulate wealth while their labor often contributed to the wealth of white Americans. This dates back to slavery and continued with discriminatory practices in the housing and labor markets that have never been fully redressed.
Despite these barriers, America's Black billionaires have risen to the top tiers of financial success.
- Net worth: $1 billion
- Global wealth rank: 2,593
- Age: 53
- Source of wealth: Movies, television
Tyler Perry is a director, actor, producer, and writer who built his empire from movies and television. He owns 100% of his content, including the popular "Madea" franchise. Perry lives in Atlanta, where his 330-acre, 12-stage Tyler Perry Studios is located.
- Net worth: $1 billion
- Global wealth rank: 2,537
- Age: 38
- Source of wealth: Basketball
Considered one of the all-time greatest basketball players, LeBron James is the first active NBA player to make Forbes' billionaire list. James started his NBA career at 18 years old with the Cleveland Cavaliers, and he went on to play for the Miami Heat and his current team, the Los Angeles Lakers. Beyond basketball, James makes money through endorsement deals with Pepsi, Walmart, and Nike and has equity in Beats by Dre and Blaze Pizza.
- Net worth: $1.1 billion
- Global wealth rank: 2,505
- Age: 47
- Source of wealth: Golf
Tiger Woods is considered one of the best golfers ever and is tied for first in PGA Tour wins. He is the second active athlete—after LeBron James—to make the Forbes billionaire list. Beyond golf, Woods makes money through his investments in real estate, a golf course design business, a high-end mini-golf chain, and TMRW Sports, a tech and sports venture he co-founded with plans to launch a new golf league.
- Net worth: $1.2 billion
- Global wealth rank: 2,303
- Age: 42
- Source of wealth: Software
Tope Awotona is the founder and CEO of Calendly, a software company that automates meeting scheduling. Born in Nigeria, Awotona and his family immigrated to Atlanta when he was a teenager. He has a background in sales for tech companies and founded Calendly in 2013.
- Net worth: $1.8 billion
- Global wealth rank: 1,700
- Age: 55
- Source of wealth: Software firm
Alexander Karp is co-founder and CEO of Palantir, a software company specializing in big data analytics driven by artificial intelligence. Palantir does contract work for the Department of Defense, the FBI, and the Danish National Police, which use the platform for defense and intelligence strategy. Karp is originally from New York and grew up in Philadelphia; Palantir is headquartered in Denver.
- Net worth: $2 billion
- Global wealth rank: 1,528
- Age: 60
- Source of wealth: Charlotte Hornets, endorsements
Michael Jordan is considered one of the all-time greatest basketball players alongside LeBron James. Jordan won six NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s. Today, his wealth comes from owning the Charlotte Hornets NBA team, co-owning a NASCAR team, investing in DraftKings, and endorsement deals with Nike, Hanes, and Gatorade.
- Net worth: $2.5 billion
- Global wealth rank: 1,256
- Age: 53
- Source of wealth: Multiple
Jay-Z, whose name is Shawn Carter, is a multihyphenate and hip-hop's first billionaire. He is a rapper, record producer, and entrepreneur married to singer Beyoncé. Jay-Z's wealth comes from his fine art collection, music catalog, the Roc Nation entertainment company he founded, and various brand investments, including liquor, clothing lines, music streaming, a chain of sports bars, and more.
- Net worth: $2.5 billion
- Global wealth rank: 1,254
- Age: 69
- Source of wealth: TV shows
Oprah Winfrey was the first Black woman billionaire in the U.S. and is the only woman on this list. The foundation of her wealth is her nationally syndicated talk show, "The Oprah Winfrey Show," which aired for 25 years starting in 1986. Winfrey leveraged her talk show into a media empire that now includes the OWN cable channel and Harpo Productions. Winfrey, born in Mississippi and raised in Milwaukee and Nashville, also has made money as an actor and an investor in WeightWatchers.
- Net worth: $6 billion
- Global wealth rank: 431
- Age: 71
- Source of wealth: IT provider
David Steward is the founder of World Wide Technology, an IT provider that helps large companies with digital strategy and technology and supply chain solutions. Steward also co-founded Telcobuy, a spinoff of World Wide Technology that provides enterprise networking services and data security. He was born in Chicago and grew up in Missouri.
- Net worth: $8 billion
- Global wealth rank: 266
- Age: 60
- Source of wealth: Private equity
The richest Black American is Robert F. Smith, who founded Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm that invests in software companies. Smith grew up in Denver and worked as a chemical engineer before earning his MBA. He started Vista Equity Partners in 2000, and it has posted annual returns of 30% every year.
Data reporting by Elena Cox. Story editing by Jeff Inglis. Copy editing by Paris Close. Photo selection by Abigail Renaud.
By JAMES POLLARD (Associated Press/Report for America)
PHILLIPS COMMUNITY, S.C. (AP) — The Rev. Elijah Smalls Jr. once grew okra, butter beans and other vegetables in the neighborhood where his family has lived near the South Carolina coast since not long after the Civil War. That was before new half-a-million-dollar homes in a nearby subdivision overwhelmed the drainage system.
Runoff meant for sewers now pools in the 80-year-old veteran’s backyard, making gardening impossible.
Smalls and his relatives are among the many original families still living in historic settlement communities around Charleston. People who had been enslaved at Phillips Plantation bought patches of it to make their futures. Their descendants question whether the next generation can afford to stay.
“This is the only place I wanted to live and raise my family,” said Fred Smalls, standing outside the home where his two sons grew up.
All along the South Carolina coast, land owned by the descendants of enslaved people is being targeted by developers looking to make money on vacation getaways and new homes. From Myrtle Beach south to Hilton Head, Black landowners who inherited property have been embroiled in disputes with investors looking to capitalize on rising real estate values.
State reforms approved in 2017 provided what supporters described as “shark repellant” — a law that made it harder for developers to strike deals below market prices with distant heirs who had long since moved away.
But skyrocketing property taxes are creating a growing burden as assessments rise. Younger family members may not qualify for homestead exemptions and other tax breaks. Elders worry that their family legacies — established by formerly enslaved ancestors who acquired land despite entrenched racism across the defeated South — are slipping away.
Most of the hundreds who still live on the remaining 450 acres or so of Phillips Community trace their lineage to the founders. Residents enjoy the pace of the South Carolina Lowcountry in the settlement communities, where neighbors have long taken care of each other.
“If we don’t take steps to protect them, we’re going to lose them parcel by parcel,” said Coastal Conservation League Executive Director Faith Rivers James.
—
Orange mesh fencing lines the dirt expanse of a new development site that encircles the ranch-style house where Josephine Wright has taken her stand. The 93-year-old woman is the matriarch of a family that has owned land on Hilton Head Island since Reconstruction.
“I’m being surrounded, really,” Wright said recently in the Brooklyn accent she picked up before returning to her late husband’s home 30 years ago in Jonesville Historic Gullah Neighborhood.
They wanted tranquility as his Parkinson’s disease progressed. But gone is the lush greenery that once grew on 29 acres previously owned by other relatives bordering Wright’s home. A Georgia-based developer, Bailey Point Investment, LLC, broke ground last summer on a 147-unit vacation rental complex there.
Managers of her family’s trust failed to pay escalating tax bills. The land sold at a 2014 tax auction for just $35,000 — a fraction of its current worth.
Then the investment company sued Wright, who owns her one acre separately. The company alleged that a corner of her screened-in porch, a shed and a satellite dish encroach on the construction project. A lawyer for the company did not return a call from The Associated Press.
She suspects they want to run her off, but she’s not intimidated. NBA superstar Kyrie Irving and filmmaker Tyler Perry have lent their support. Town officials don’t intend to issue building permits until the case is closed. She says other residents have thanked her for holding out.
She expected to spend these days in peace. Her small home remains the gathering spot for an extended family that includes 40 grandchildren, generations who she hopes will also enjoy the land.
“I just want to be able to live here in this sanctuary with a free mind,” Wright said.
—-
The first self-governed town of formerly enslaved people in the United States was located on Hilton Head Island. Wright’s neighborhood gets its name from a Black Civil War veteran named Caesar Jones who had escaped enslavement and purchased more than 100 acres himself, finding refuge in marshland that had been dismissed by colonists as unsuitable for farming.
It’s hardly undesirable today. The advent of air conditioning helped make coastal land more appealing. New highways improved access to the coast, where population increases have made South Carolina the 10th fastest-growing state during the past decade.
Those searching for land found easy targets in the Gullah Geechee community, owned by descendants of West Africans who were forced into slavery on rice, indigo and cotton plantations along the Atlantic coast. They developed their unique culture on isolated islands, but their separation from the U.S. legal system left them vulnerable to exploitation.
Developers took advantage in many cases of what’s known as heirs’ property — land transferred from generation to generation without a will and shared equally by part-owners whose numbers balloon with each branch in the family tree. South Carolina developers could buy a single heir’s interest and wind up taking everything from outmatched families suddenly navigating an unwieldy system.
Heirs’ property is under threat throughout the Black Belt. Roughly 5 million acres over 11 states worth almost $42 billion collectively remains trapped in cloudy titles, according to the most conservative estimates from a 2023 study led by rural sociologist Ryan Thomson at Auburn University. It’s a strain acutely felt by Black landowners given the Deep South’s legacy of enslavement.
Some remaining owners are more determined than ever to stay.
Julia Campbell, 60, has spent two decades establishing a family tree to identify every heir with even the slimmest stake in the 25-acre John’s Island land her family has held since the 19th century. The former member of a Charleston group established to protect Black cemeteries emphasized that the ground itself bears witness to history.
It’s important for her to document — especially at a time when she said “some people want to close the book on us.”
“These people who could barely read or write were able to hold onto the property,” she said. “We should be able to hold onto it.”
—-
South Carolina’s 2017 reforms stymied some predatory behavior, according to Josh Walden of the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation. The Charleston-based non-profit has helped clear titles for over 3,000 tracts worth some $17.5 million since 2009, but his most modest estimates suggest about 40,000 tracts remain held in heirs’ property across six coastal counties alone.
Risk persists for those facing heightened assessments that come with exurban gentrification.
“Obviously, people are still looking for land,” Walden said. “They’re still approaching heirs’ property owners asking if they’ll sell their interests.”
The clamor for these lands is so feverish that even people with clear titles remain vulnerable. James calls it “the next frontier in preserving African American property.”
South Carolina tax law evaluates residential land at its highest usage — a boon to sellers but a burden for those who want to stay.
“They’re not planning to take the money and run,” Phillips Community Association President Richard Habersham said of his neighbors. “They’re planning to pass it down.”
James has proposed that state lawmakers ease growing pains by passing a new “cultural property preservation” tax exemption to provide incentives to support historic communities, just like existing credits help preserve historic buildings.
A statewide measure could resemble local efforts. One ordinance blocked a golf course on Gullah Geechee land on St. Helena Island. Last month, the Beaufort County Council rejected a developer’s request to remove a 502-acre plot from a zoning district that bans gated communities and resorts in locations considered culturally significant. Other officials are soliciting feedback from Gullah Geechee and African American communities to identify historical sites in the Charleston area for preservation.
“Property is not just a commodity,” James said. “Property has a sentimental value that the law should recognize.”
—-
That value became more elusive for Queen Mary Davis when a housing development next door restricted her access to a family cemetery by requiring her to gain admission from security guards.
A formerly enslaved ancestor named Dennis Allen purchased the first patches of what is now the family’s 31-acre property back in 1897. It’s nestled in a Hilton Head neighborhood that is home to some of the largest Gullah extended families.
But Davis, 70, could soon lose nearly a third of it. The land is stuck in a cumbersome legal dispute with other heirs dating back to 2009. A judge has ordered that 11 acres be placed on the market for $7 million. A previous deal fell apart after a North Carolina firm rescinded its $7.5 million offer.
The situation is an egregious example of sagas that attorney Willie Heyward has seen all too often during a 37-year career largely focused on heirs’ property. He’s represented members on both sides of Davis’ contentious case at various points, and says many families get mired in costly, yearslong court battles that ultimately diminish the returns for everyone.
This generation of heirs’ property owners will be the last with numbers Heyward considers manageable — about 250 relatives is the most he’s seen.
As family trees number thousands of people, any outcome other than land loss can become impractical — a “crushing” prospect for his elderly clients clinging to the last vestiges of their ancestry.
Relatives interested in selling have a legal right to pursue that option, and defending land becomes especially difficult when families aren’t united. Heyward and James both want legislators to expand opportunities for mediation so resource-limited families don’t rack up legal fees trying to protect their interests.
What was once a vehicle for maintaining ownership has become an engine of its demise.
“I see a very dark future on the horizon if something is not done,” Heyward said.
—-
Longtime residents report that Phillips Community sounds different nowadays. Traffic thrums along a busy road. The scuttle of fiddler crabs no longer accompanies walks to a nearby creek. Woods once filled with the calls of raccoon hunts have been replaced by a quiet subdivision.
And still more development looms. A private Charleston-based company has plans for several dozen houses in the center of the neighborhood, spreading closer to the 35 acres bought by the Smalls’ great grandfather and largely kept within the bloodline since 1875. The Rev. Elijah Smalls Jr. said he’s heard rumblings about new commercial enterprises entering the frenzy.
“If that comes in, that would definitely be the death of the community,” he said.
Some of Smalls’ neighbors may have left, but the pastor says he’s not going anywhere. He built the brick house that sits right off Elijah Smalls Road. He can’t start over at his age, and nearby homes cost too much anyway.
Fred Smalls isn’t moving either. Wearing a black baseball cap with “ARMY” emblazoned in gold, he notes that many original members fought for their own freedom in the 128th Regiment of the U.S. Colored Infantry. Paintings of 19th century African American soldiers hang on his walls.
His Army service took him to Germany, Turkey, Alaska and Oklahoma. But he always knew he’d return.
—-
This story corrects the name of John’s Island, not St. John’s Island
—-
Pollard is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Runoff meant for sewers now pools in the 80-year-old veteran’s backyard, making gardening impossible.
Smalls and his relatives are among the many original families still living in historic settlement communities around Charleston. People who had been enslaved at Phillips Plantation bought patches of it to make their futures. Their descendants question whether the next generation can afford to stay.
“This is the only place I wanted to live and raise my family,” said Fred Smalls, standing outside the home where his two sons grew up.
All along the South Carolina coast, land owned by the descendants of enslaved people is being targeted by developers looking to make money on vacation getaways and new homes. From Myrtle Beach south to Hilton Head, Black landowners who inherited property have been embroiled in disputes with investors looking to capitalize on rising real estate values.
State reforms approved in 2017 provided what supporters described as “shark repellant” — a law that made it harder for developers to strike deals below market prices with distant heirs who had long since moved away.
But skyrocketing property taxes are creating a growing burden as assessments rise. Younger family members may not qualify for homestead exemptions and other tax breaks. Elders worry that their family legacies — established by formerly enslaved ancestors who acquired land despite entrenched racism across the defeated South — are slipping away.
Most of the hundreds who still live on the remaining 450 acres or so of Phillips Community trace their lineage to the founders. Residents enjoy the pace of the South Carolina Lowcountry in the settlement communities, where neighbors have long taken care of each other.
“If we don’t take steps to protect them, we’re going to lose them parcel by parcel,” said Coastal Conservation League Executive Director Faith Rivers James.
Orange mesh fencing lines the dirt expanse of a new development site that encircles the ranch-style house where Josephine Wright has taken her stand. The 93-year-old woman is the matriarch of a family that has owned land on Hilton Head Island since Reconstruction.
“I’m being surrounded, really,” Wright said recently in the Brooklyn accent she picked up before returning to her late husband’s home 30 years ago in Jonesville Historic Gullah Neighborhood.
They wanted tranquility as his Parkinson’s disease progressed. But gone is the lush greenery that once grew on 29 acres previously owned by other relatives bordering Wright’s home. A Georgia-based developer, Bailey Point Investment, LLC, broke ground last summer on a 147-unit vacation rental complex there.
Managers of her family’s trust failed to pay escalating tax bills. The land sold at a 2014 tax auction for just $35,000 — a fraction of its current worth.
Then the investment company sued Wright, who owns her one acre separately. The company alleged that a corner of her screened-in porch, a shed and a satellite dish encroach on the construction project. A lawyer for the company did not return a call from The Associated Press.
She suspects they want to run her off, but she’s not intimidated. NBA superstar Kyrie Irving and filmmaker Tyler Perry have lent their support. Town officials don't intend to issue building permits until the case is closed. She says other residents have thanked her for holding out.
She expected to spend these days in peace. Her small home remains the gathering spot for an extended family that includes 40 grandchildren, generations who she hopes will also enjoy the land.
“I just want to be able to live here in this sanctuary with a free mind,” Wright said.
The first self-governed town of formerly enslaved people in the United States was located on Hilton Head Island. Wright’s neighborhood gets its name from a Black Civil War veteran named Caesar Jones who had escaped enslavement and purchased more than 100 acres himself, finding refuge in marshland that had been dismissed by colonists as unsuitable for farming.
It’s hardly undesirable today. The advent of air conditioning helped make coastal land more appealing. New highways improved access to the coast, where population increases have made South Carolina the 10th fastest-growing state during the past decade.
Those searching for land found easy targets in the Gullah Geechee community, owned by descendants of West Africans who were forced into slavery on rice, indigo and cotton plantations along the Atlantic coast. They developed their unique culture on isolated islands, but their separation from the U.S. legal system left them vulnerable to exploitation.
Developers took advantage in many cases of what’s known as heirs’ property — land transferred from generation to generation without a will and shared equally by part-owners whose numbers balloon with each branch in the family tree. South Carolina developers could buy a single heir’s interest and wind up taking everything from outmatched families suddenly navigating an unwieldy system.
Heirs’ property is under threat throughout the Black Belt. Roughly 5 million acres over 11 states worth almost $42 billion collectively remains trapped in cloudy titles, according to the most conservative estimates from a 2023 study led by rural sociologist Ryan Thomson at Auburn University. It’s a strain acutely felt by Black landowners given the Deep South’s legacy of enslavement.
Some remaining owners are more determined than ever to stay.
Julia Campbell, 60, has spent two decades establishing a family tree to identify every heir with even the slimmest stake in the 25-acre John’s Island land her family has held since the 19th century. The former member of a Charleston group established to protect Black cemeteries emphasized that the ground itself bears witness to history.
It’s important for her to document — especially at a time when she said “some people want to close the book on us.”
“These people who could barely read or write were able to hold onto the property,” she said. “We should be able to hold onto it.”
South Carolina’s 2017 reforms stymied some predatory behavior, according to Josh Walden of the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation. The Charleston-based non-profit has helped clear titles for over 3,000 tracts worth some $17.5 million since 2009, but his most modest estimates suggest about 40,000 tracts remain held in heirs’ property across six coastal counties alone.
Risk persists for those facing heightened assessments that come with exurban gentrification.
“Obviously, people are still looking for land,” Walden said. “They’re still approaching heirs’ property owners asking if they’ll sell their interests.”
The clamor for these lands is so feverish that even people with clear titles remain vulnerable. James calls it “the next frontier in preserving African American property.”
South Carolina tax law evaluates residential land at its highest usage — a boon to sellers but a burden for those who want to stay.
“They’re not planning to take the money and run,” Phillips Community Association President Richard Habersham said of his neighbors. “They’re planning to pass it down.”
James has proposed that state lawmakers ease growing pains by passing a new “cultural property preservation” tax exemption to provide incentives to support historic communities, just like existing credits help preserve historic buildings.
A statewide measure could resemble local efforts. One ordinance blocked a golf course on Gullah Geechee land on St. Helena Island. Last month, the Beaufort County Council rejected a developer’s request to remove a 502-acre plot from a zoning district that bans gated communities and resorts in locations considered culturally significant. Other officials are soliciting feedback from Gullah Geechee and African American communities to identify historical sites in the Charleston area for preservation.
“Property is not just a commodity,” James said. “Property has a sentimental value that the law should recognize.”
That value became more elusive for Queen Mary Davis when a housing development next door restricted her access to a family cemetery by requiring her to gain admission from security guards.
A formerly enslaved ancestor named Dennis Allen purchased the first patches of what is now the family’s 31-acre property back in 1897. It’s nestled in a Hilton Head neighborhood that is home to some of the largest Gullah extended families.
But Davis, 70, could soon lose nearly a third of it. The land is stuck in a cumbersome legal dispute with other heirs dating back to 2009. A judge has ordered that 11 acres be placed on the market for $7 million. A previous deal fell apart after a North Carolina firm rescinded its $7.5 million offer.
The situation is an egregious example of sagas that attorney Willie Heyward has seen all too often during a 37-year career largely focused on heirs’ property. He’s represented members on both sides of Davis’ contentious case at various points, and says many families get mired in costly, yearslong court battles that ultimately diminish the returns for everyone.
This generation of heirs’ property owners will be the last with numbers Heyward considers manageable — about 250 relatives is the most he’s seen.
As family trees number thousands of people, any outcome other than land loss can become impractical — a “crushing” prospect for his elderly clients clinging to the last vestiges of their ancestry.
Relatives interested in selling have a legal right to pursue that option, and defending land becomes especially difficult when families aren’t united. Heyward and James both want legislators to expand opportunities for mediation so resource-limited families don’t rack up legal fees trying to protect their interests.
What was once a vehicle for maintaining ownership has become an engine of its demise.
“I see a very dark future on the horizon if something is not done,” Heyward said.
Longtime residents report that Phillips Community sounds different nowadays. Traffic thrums along a busy road. The scuttle of fiddler crabs no longer accompanies walks to a nearby creek. Woods once filled with the calls of raccoon hunts have been replaced by a quiet subdivision.
And still more development looms. A private Charleston-based company has plans for several dozen houses in the center of the neighborhood, spreading closer to the 35 acres bought by the Smalls’ great grandfather and largely kept within the bloodline since 1875. The Rev. Elijah Smalls Jr. said he’s heard rumblings about new commercial enterprises entering the frenzy.
“If that comes in, that would definitely be the death of the community,” he said.
Some of Smalls’ neighbors may have left, but the pastor says he’s not going anywhere. He built the brick house that sits right off Elijah Smalls Road. He can’t start over at his age, and nearby homes cost too much anyway.
Fred Smalls isn’t moving either. Wearing a black baseball cap with “ARMY” emblazoned in gold, he notes that many original members fought for their own freedom in the 128th Regiment of the U.S. Colored Infantry. Paintings of 19th century African American soldiers hang on his walls.
His Army service took him to Germany, Turkey, Alaska and Oklahoma. But he always knew he’d return.
This story corrects the name of John’s Island, not St. John’s Island
Pollard is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.