Explore Hilton Head Island

The Island and its Neighbors, as the Narrators Knew Them

The stories in Hilton Head Island Voices don’t stop at the island’s edge. For generations, life here was tied by water to Daufuskie Island, Bluffton, Beaufort, and Savannah. People traveled by bateau and sailing vessel to sell crops and oysters, visit family, find work, and go to school. Until 1956, there was no other way to reach the mainland.

Explore the places the narrators called home and hear how each one figures in their memories.

Hilton Head Island

For most of its history, the island was home to small, close-knit Black communities that farmed, fished, and kept Gullah traditions alive. Narrators remember that life, the Mitchelville legacy, and the rapid changes that followed the 1956 bridge and the resort development that came after.

Daufuskie Island

Hilton Head’s smaller neighbor to the southwest, reachable only by boat. Narrators describe its schools, its oyster factories, and how pollution from the Savannah River ended the oyster trade and pushed families to leave.

Bluffton

The mainland town across the water, and a key stop for islanders traveling to trade, shop, or reach the rest of South Carolina.

Beaufort County

The county that includes Hilton Head, Daufuskie, and Bluffton, and the seat of the schools, courts, and government decisions that shaped island life, including desegregation.

Savannah, Georgia

The nearest city and a regional hub. Islanders sailed there to sell goods and buy supplies, and many had family and work ties across the state line.

Savannah River

The river that forms the border between Georgia and South Carolina. Its waters carried people and goods to and from the islands and, in later years, the pollution that damaged the oyster beds.

Explore the Places

Charlie Simmons

Emory Cambell

From this county, I don’t know. For one white school on this island, there must’ve been about four or five little Black schools, you know? ‘Cause they had neighborhood schools.

Perry White

The residents of the Black community were former slaves, who literally survived here from the time they were brought into slavery, to freedom, up till today. The ancestors are still here from those slaves.

Charlotte Heinrichs

And then, a woman in the church came up to me, and she said, did I need money? And I said of course, I needed money and that all I had to give was my time. She gave me $10,000. And of course, we got it through the Presbyterian Church because she needed a tax write-off for that $10,000.

Janie Aiken Grant

Perry White

When I grew up, the whites didn’t have any private schools. The public schools were theirs. For us in the higher grades, we were all at private schools.

Ms. Billie Burn

There were sea-goin’ vessels that would come out here. If you were goin’ to Daufuskie, you’d go to Savannah, or Bluffton, or Hilton Head. You wouldn’t come from here. These are sailin’ vessels, with all the—brought in spices, and probably slaves, and everything else in here back in those days.

Isaac Wilborn

The Black kids had to go to Beaufort, Savannah, someplace else to complete high school. They did not have a full high school. And so, after elementary school, many of them had to quit if the parents couldn't afford to send them away.

Ms. Billie Burn

Charlie Simmons

You know, when they changed those names, maybe they didn’t buy those companies from the different company and they changed the name, you know.