Is rural life overrated?

The debate over Johns Island's rural character often excludes blacks, who are some of the island's oldest residents and who have a different set of concerns about heirs' property and the loss of their culture.

JOHNS ISLAND--Nancy Butler remembers well this island's rural past, but she isn't inclined to revel in nostalgia. "I didn't enjoy it -- getting up early in the morning and working in the sun all day," she says of her time in the fields. "I didn't enjoy it, but it's what you did to survive. Everybody did it because that's what we had to do to earn a dollar." As a teenager, Butler worked the tomato and potato farms in and around Mullet Hall, just like preceding generations of her family, the Bonneau family, had done as far back as the days of slavery. She remembers the pay, 10 cents for a large sack of potatoes. She remembers the helpers, the "lugger men" who would carry the sacks from the field to the truck, and she recalls how work would continue well after the vegetables were plucked. "There was always something to do on the farm," she says. "You'd farm all year round." She also remembers the difficult times, such as when her parents' uninsured home burned and they had to leave to live with relatives in New York. She, her brother and sister remained on the island to be raised by her grandparents. At age 16, she moved north to live with her parents year-round and to take advantage of better schools and job opportunities. Today, one of her biggest worries is whether her family will be able to remain on its land, much of which is "heirs property," property with multiple owners. The heirs property issue is a major problem for many others on Johns Island and along much of the once isolated coasts of the Carolinas and Georgia. The issue generally stems from land that was jointly inherited by several members of a family without a will or clear direction on ownership. Ownership becomes further confused if that happens over successive generations. The problem became exacerbated as many of the coastal regions were opened to recreation and development. Many of the "heirs" lost their land in tax sales that resulted because no one had paid property taxes because there was no clear owner of record. Ownership of other family plots became so confused among the families that no one knew who could rightfully live on it. So far Butler's family has avoided those problems. In 1979, when she was a young mother, she moved back to the island, not to work in the fields or to work in somebody else's house, but to savor the quiet. She still does, living with her mother and sister on five acres of family land off Bonneau Road, a small community along River Road. "That was my main focus in moving back. I wanted the closeness and family unity and the quietness," says Butler, a bookkeeper at Rural Mission, Inc., a nonprofit outreach center just a few miles from her home. "Where I live is quiet, but it's not going to be for long because of the development moving in here." For 25 years, she has had a close-up look at the assorted changes on her native island. The tide began turning when resorts opened on neighboring Kiawah and Seabrook islands during the 1970s, when she was still in New York. The resorts allowed many of her friends and family members to leave farming for better paying work. Also, the gains from the civil rights movement led to more new opportunities, and other blacks got cars and could commute into the city, like she did when she returned to Johns Island and got a job at the Medical University of South Carolina. She has watched as the island has become an increasingly popular suburb of Charleston. Its population is almost double what it was in 1960, and the newcomers are mostly white. Johns Island was two-thirds black in 1960 but is a little more than one third black today. She has watched as tomato farms along River Road have evolved into horse farms, especially in the last 10 years. Mullet Hall, where she once worked in the fields, is now a new county equestrian park. "That's the big trend now -- to raise, breed and train horses." She has watched as new owners bought the farmland around her family home and put up gates. "We used to be able to go to the water to go crabbing and fishing and swimming," she said. "We don't have access to it no more. The property has been sold, and they've put up a gate. That was my uncle's livelihood. He would go down there in his truck and catch fish. When I see the gate locked, I just don't bother." She has watched as blacks from Florida -- "Florida people," as locals called them -- gradually arrived to do the farm work that islanders no longer wanted to do. Then she watched as Hispanics replaced them and like them, began to stay throughout the year. "The Hispanics, they're settling out," she says. "A lot of them have started to buy their own homes, start their own businesses. They're getting better jobs and moving off the farm. It's just like with the black population. It's the same thing." And she has watched as property values have risen and locals have sold their family's land for development. "I love the island. I hate to see the way it's changing. When a large corporation comes in, smaller people have to leave," she says. "There's a good side and a bad side. I don't think you can stop development, but why can't a large corporation work with the people who are there?" She is aware of Charleston County's efforts to preserve the island's rural character through a sweeping set of zoning changes a few years ago, but she doesn't know much about the details. She is concerned, however, because her grandmother's death has left an heirs' property situation that the family still has not sorted out. A few of her aunts and uncles live on these 15 acres, but others live elsewhere. "We're trying to resolve that now," she says. She has been to a seminar for advice, but no outside experts are helping her family sort it out. "It falls on the families." She is concerned that the county's new zoning law might not allow for the division of the land into eight parcels. "How do you divide 15 acres of land among eight children if you need one house per 3 acres?" she asks. "When they tell you how to use your land, it created a problem." She said the Unified Development Ordinance "put a hardship on families." Butler is used to seeing things come full circle on Johns Island. She grew up hearing Gullah speech but being told that was not the proper way to speak. Now, she sees the growing interest in reviving this unique African-American culture that once flourished on sea islands, especially Johns Island. "When you was younger, it was, 'Don't speak like that. You have to get away from that," says Butler, whose own speech occasionally reveals her link to that tradition. "We were told as children that Gullah was a bad way of speaking. Now, the trend is that people want it back, people want that culture back again." And she is seeing a growing number of people who want to do what she did a quarter of a century ago, move back to their native island. "Now the trend is they're starting to move back. Those people who left and moved elsewhere are now trying to move back," she says. "We don't want to move into the city because we like it out in the country. Most people who leave cities are doing it for just that reason." She has mixed feelings about the development on the island. She senses an inevitability about it but would like to ensure that the changes it brings about benefit those already on the island, particularly the elderly and the children, who often can't simply move somewhere else that's more to their liking. Is Johns Island a better place to live today, even with its new subdivisions, shopping centers and increasingly common traffic jams, than it was a half century ago, when it undoubtedly was more rural and picturesque? "Some would say they were better off back then. I guess it's who you talk to," Butler says. "It still comes down to survival. "I'm glad I'm out of the fields. I'll tell you that."

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