‘This is not David and Goliath’: Hilton Head grandma now has legal giants fighting developer’s suit

Sleek, muted suits mingled with the vibrant patterns of traditional Gullah outside Hilton Head town hall Thursday afternoon.

The contrasting garb effectively reflected the two fronts that have united in support of 93-year-old Hilton Head native islander Josephine Wright, who has been sued over an alleged encroachment by a developer building a new Jonesville Road neighborhood next to her land. The family suspects the lawsuit is an attempt to force them to sell their parcel, surrounded on all sides by the dusty under-construction neighborhood.

Suit jackets and neat slacks fit for a courtroom emphasized the legal expertise Wright now has backing her roughly a month after her story went public. Former state legislator Bakari Sellers was chief among the legal experts who rallied to Wright’s aid. He arranged Tuesday afternoon’s press conference after his initial attempt to communicate with the builders received no response.

“Perhaps more disrespectful than a no is a non-answer,” Sellers said. The company, Bailey Point Investment LLC, and its legal team have refused comment to Sellers and myriad press outlets since May. The company is filed in South Carolina under a Charleston registering agent address, but is also registered in Georgia, where the company’s Bizapedia registry page has drawn negative comments.

Other courtroom experts who have had eyes on Wright’s fight include the NAACP’s legal team and Ben Crump, Sellers said. Crump has previously represented the family of George Floyd, the Minnesota man whose death sparked nationwide protests and riots in 2020.

Wright’s situation is reminiscent of many others over the years involving Black land owners being pressured into selling their land, Sellers said. Gullah landowners make up a fraction of Hilton Head private owners today, having seen their share of the island’s limited land shrink by the decade despite being among the first to permanently settle on Hilton Head after the Civil War.

Wright’s own attorney, Bluffton-based lawyer Roberts Vaux, said if that is the company’s angle, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s seen it in the Lowcountry.

“I’ve spoken to (them) about the fact that there is a concerted effort to take property from Black folk in our community, who have lived a great life,” Sellers said. “This is about generation wealth, it’s very difficult to obtain. This is about land ownership, this is about heirs’ property, which we know we deal with a lot down here.”

Wright, whose family is Gullah and has owned her 1.8-acre property since shortly after the Civil War, has also drawn considerable support from Gullah organizations and her own Jonesville Road neighbors.

Arnold Brown, a member of the governing board at the Penn Center, a nonprofit protecting the interests Gullah and Black Americans based around the former Penn School on St. Helena, spoke at the press conference as well.

“We just wanted the community to know and the county to know and the state to know that we’re in 100% support of the Wright family,” Brown said. “Long-time owners and residents for hundreds of years have owned property on the coast, and it’s being challenged by, I wouldn’t even call them developers, but investors that are anxious to turn some easy money.”

St. Helena was the epicenter of another development controversy surrounding a proposed golf course and gated communities.

Sellers called on the island and Beaufort County community to put pressure on developers by continually asking to get in touch and keeping the lawsuit in the public eye.

“We’re asking the community to join us in action - write letters to the developer, call the developer,” Sellers said. “We’re asking the community to pray for this family in everything they’re going through, and we’re asking the community just to not let this die. ... This isn’t really a Black and white issue, this is a right and wrong issue, and there have been a lot of white folks in this community that have stood up with her.”

Sellers pledged to raise as much money as needed to help the Wright family pay for legal fees, and an already existing GoFundMe page to do the same has garnered over $29,000 in donations so far.

“This is not David and Goliath, because God has her,” Sellers said. “This is a more even fight than that, but they need to know that we are prepared to fight.”

Wright addressed the media briefly on Thursday, and said her ultimate goal in the suit is simply to be left alone.

“It (the property) is historical. We want to keep our property in the family, and not be harassed to sell it,” Wright said.

The family commissioned an independent survey to see if the alleged encroachment, their home’s back porch, crosses the parcel boundary. Wright said the porch has around 22 feet of space between its end and the property line.

The lawsuit is still in the discovery phase, Vaux told The Island Packet last week.