Taken

To the east of the Gay Fish Co. dock on South Carolina’s St. Helena Island, a new bridge soars above the water, high enough for the shrimp boats to clear as they head to sea. It hits ground near the gatehouse for the private Harbor Island, where some of the colorful triple-decker beach homes have backyard tennis courts and putting greens.

- Margaret Newkirk

Across the water to the south, a guard turns the uninvited away from Fripp Island, a playground studded with luxury homes and three golf courses. The gate to a third private island is down Sea Island Parkway toward the mainland. Hilton Head is a short boat ride away.

In the middle of them all sits St. Helena, the largest of the sea islands that stretch out from the antebellum city of Beaufort. St. Helena has no golf courses, no gated guardhouses. Mobile homes are its primary housing stock.

Bordered by tidal estuaries, sounds, and bays, the island holds a special place in Black history. Freed slaves flocked here after the Civil War. They held political power and produced one of the highest concentrations of Black landowners in the US. Gullah culture, the richest expression of African traditions and language in the country, is centered here. But St. Helena is also a case study in how Black-owned land is lost.

Just west of the Gay dock, across an inlet filled with seagrass, sits one of St. Helena’s few residential subdivisions— Horse Island, a loop of two-story homes, many with long docks reaching into the tide. John and Hilda Gay, founders of the fish company, developed the subdivision in the 1960s on 40 acres of land that a Black woman named Evelina Jenkins thought she owned.