Hi Calyssa, thanks for this! I was born in Charleston, SC in the mid-fifties when it was a majority Black city. And like you, my entire family are Gullah as well, but from Edisto Island, another of the Sea Islands near the city (even though we had a great beach about 10-15 minutes from my grandmother's house, when I was growing up, my mother would take us all to Hilton Head or Folly Beach a couple times a month on weekends as well. That was when, of course, there were more of us than it was of white folk and we always had a blast!

And yes, our culture is rapidly dying as gentrification, with the help of greedy investors and their buyers, erase us. What you wrote about gentrified Detroit, has already happened to Charleston with the same results you describe. I tell people I'm not houseless, but I do feel homeless as everything I knew has been swallowed up and regurgitated into a place I no longer recognize as my home. The property thing has also happened both on the island and in the city as well. When investors come in, flashing more money than folk have ever seen in their lifetime as they struggle to just eat and survive -- plenty of heirs take it, not realizing how much, not only of THEM their selling for the almighty dollar, but their heritage, culture and customs. Because when they move into and buy up our neighborhoods, they have no interest in creating that "beloved community" about which Dr. King spoke. Instead they make rules they expect us to follow, disregarding those by which we'd been living for generations. Also, we cannot ignore the sheer greed some of us experience when those dollars are flashed. My family's financial stake in the island has also dwindled -- there's nothing like heirs, fighting over heirs property, let me tell you!