A couple times a year, Mary Mack would visit the centuries-old Big House Cemetery on St Helena Island, South Carolina, to visit her grandparents. The cemetery was in an idyllic location, situated on a waterfront property and surrounded by large oak trees. On cleanup days, Mack gathered leaves and branches, swept off vaults, and raked up debris. As a Gullah Geechee woman, the descendant of formerly enslaved west Africans in the sea islands of the south-eastern US, Mack saw the burial ground as tying together past, present and future generations. But in the spring of 2024, she was shocked to learn that landowners blocked access to the Gullah Geechee cemetery through padlocked gates.
“We’ve not been able to go in and clean the cemetery. We’ve not been able to go in and bury deceased loved ones,” Mack told the Guardian last year. “It’s important for the younger folks to know that we don’t just bury our loved ones and leave them there. The way we love them in life is the way we love them in death. And so to continue that bond so that it passes on to the younger generation, it’s very important.”
Mack and 10 other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in April 2025 against the landowners Theresa Aigner, Robert Cody Harper and Walter Robert Harper Jr, who they said obstructed access to the land. The lawsuit alleged that they prevented the community from visiting and conducting burials by erecting locked gates along a long-used easement on a road that led to the cemetery. For the Gullah Geechee people, the struggle over the cemetery has served as another example of how increased development and gentrification have threatened their way of life.
In a win for the Gullah Geechee community, the circuit court judge Carmen T Mullen ordered landowners to open the gates that lead to the cemetery for funerals and maintenance in a temporary injunction issued on 20 February. However, those who want to access the cemetery must provide a written request to the landowners prior to attempting to enter the land. The plaintiffs must also post a $5,000 bond for potential roadway repairs necessitated by vehicular access. If the parties are unable to come to a resolution through mediation in the upcoming months, the case will continue to move forward in court toward a trial.
“This order means a lot to me,” plaintiff Julia B Scott said in a statement. Several generations of her family have been buried in the cemetery. “Now we can use the road to access the cemetery for funerals and cleanup efforts, and I know that when my time comes, I can be laid to rest next to my mother and other family members. I hope and pray that one day soon we will again be able to visit the cemetery anytime, without having to ask.”
The location of the cemetery also holds significance, since Gullah Geechee people have long buried their loved ones near the ocean because they believe that their spirits will use the water to return to Africa.
The Big House Cemetery was formerly a plantation and has since been used as a cemetery for the Gullah Geechee community. But Aigner locked a gate on a road that led to the cemetery in the spring of 2024 and the Harpers later installed another gate that acted as another barrier to access.
Gregory Alford, the defendants’ attorney, said that the private dirt road was riddled with trash and people would park on his clients’ properties during funerals. In court documents, he argued that the cemetery is also accessible through another road, Pope Estates Way, while the plaintiffs say that it is not a viable route for vehicles to access the cemetery. “We’re not saying no to trying to assist these people in getting to their funerals,” Alford told the Guardian last year. “But we need to protect our property and our homes.”
The struggle over access to the cemetery is part of a decades-long assault on the Gullah Geechee community, said Dr Rachel Watkins, a University of Pennsylvania associate professor of anthropology. It is part of the American tradition to erase the histories of people of African descent, she added. “To hold sacred space for memory and remembering and commemoration,” Watkins said, is “antithetical to capitalist projects”.
One of the plaintiffs, Tamika Middleton, grew up on St Helena Island and her mother, Sheila, is the legal owner of the land where the cemetery is located. Middleton learned that access to the burial ground was blocked in the spring of 2024, when the community was unable to access the cemetery after a fatal car crash. As a result, the deceased had to be buried elsewhere.
“How can you have a funeral if you can’t bring a hearse, if you can’t bring a body to the grave site?” said Korbin Felder, an attorney and a justice fellow with the Center for Constitutional Rights.
The fight over the easement hit close to home for Michael F Rivers Sr, a Gullah Geechee man and South Carolina state representative whose district includes St Helena Island. “It’s like inviting someone into your house,” Rivers said, “and they start rearranging the furniture without your permission.” Inspired by the plaintiffs’ efforts, he introduced a bill in December 2024 that would establish jail time and fines if someone blocks access to a burial ground. There has not been any movement on the bill since January 2025.
“To some people, land by the water is just valuable property, but for us, where a graveyard is, it’s very spiritual,” Rivers said. “That’s the dynamic of people who see land as only monetarily, as opposed to people who see certain pieces of land as being sacred and connected to their ancestors.”
Middleton hopes that some protections will be put into place at the state level in the future. “This is a battle that we’ve heard a number of folks talk about, and we do need some protection for these community cemeteries that play a significant role, both culturally, logistically and economically, for our communities,” Middleton said. “There’s a certain level of recognition that feels important about these cemeteries with the role that they play, especially in South Carolina in a state that relies so heavily on the Gullah Geechee culture for tourism dollars.”
