Charleston, Johns Island undergoing huge demographic shift among Blacks, Whites
By Adam Parker (aparker@postandcourier.com) | The Post and Courier | May 28, 2021
The demographics of the city of Charleston are undergoing big changes, especially on Johns Island, Daniel Island and the peninsula. The numbers appear to confirm the concerns of many: Charleston is losing its racial diversity.
The biggest change is on Johns Island, where from 2010 to 2018 Black households declined by 31 percent while White households increased by 64 percent, according to census data reported in Charleston’s 2020 City Plan.
Johns Island has been a focal point of concern among longtime Black residents who have been trying to protect its rural character and cultural legacy. Once predominantly Black, and featuring several Black-owned farms, the island has quickly become part of Charleston’s expanding suburbia as new housing developments sprout up and down River Road and along Maybank Highway.
The demographic switcheroo likely has accelerated since 2018. A casual drive along Johns Island’s main arteries reveals dramatic recent changes: New restaurants, neighborhoods, coffee shops and retail centers.
Traffic has worsened, too, prompting road improvements and discussions among city officials about how best to ameliorate the problem. Many, including Mayor John Tecklenburg, have pushed for the completion of the Interstate 526 project, which would extend the highway across a part of Johns Island. Black residents for the most part object to the plan.
Abe Jenkins, a community activist and the grandson of Johns Island’s Esau Jenkins, said some of the decline in the Black population on the island can be traced to heirs’ property challenges. A lot of property has been handed down to descendants of the original purchasers, and its ownership now is shared among several family members. Without a formal deed, it’s possible for one person in a family to agree to sell a portion (or more) of the property even if others prefer to keep it intact.
Pressure from developers, along with the promise of a cash windfall, has resulted in incremental property loss among African Americans, Jenkins said. Growth on the island has driven up the cost of living, and jobs that pay a living wage in the area are too scarce, making it difficult for some Black people to hold on, he said.
Johns Island has become “the gateway to Kiawah Island,” Jenkins said. It’s all about getting affluent residents of Kiawah and Seabrook islands there and back efficiently, he said. “That’s the bottom line.”
The demographic trends will continue “until we get to the point where our elected officials and our county governments and our city governments have a passion to look out for the interests of the people who have been there forever,” Jenkins said.
Many on Johns Island and in other parts of the Lowcountry under pressure from new development tend to relocate to the Ladson and Summerville areas, miles up Interstate 26, he said. Young people leave to seek opportunities elsewhere.
The population of Ladson, now 15,500, increased by 23 percent since 2010, according to census data. Goose Creek’s population spiked 25 percent to 45,000 during that period. Summerville experienced similar increases. It’s population today is 54,000, a 23 percent increase over 10 years.
Now, Black people represent 21 percent of Summerville, 19 percent of Goose Creek, and 23 percent of Ladson.
On the Charleston peninsula, which has seen an explosion of new hotels and apartment buildings (especially along upper Meeting Street), Black households have declined by 22 percent from 2010 to 2018, the data shows. White households have increased by 4 percent during that period.
The demographic data indicates that a trend which began in the 1980s is continuing apace. The peninsula has around 5,000 single-family homes — and now a growing number of rental apartments. From 1950 to 1980, nearly two-thirds of the White population left; since then, the Black population has fallen by nearly 60 percent as Whites return and move into areas that had been predominantly African American.
The forces of gentrification have been at work on the East Side, in Cannonborough and Elliottborough, and in the neighborhoods around Hampton Park. In just one decade, 2000-10, these areas lost roughly half of their Black residents. And in 2010, the Charleston peninsula became majority White again for the first time in 60 years.
West Ashley is seeing comparatively modest growth: White households have gained by 17 percent, far outpacing the 6 percent growth rate of their Black counterparts.
Daniel Island and Cainhoy have seen huge population increases, facilitated by the completion of the Interstate 526 beltway in the early 1990s and the subsequent incorporation of this land by the city of Charleston.
The census data shows that Whites households have increased by 58 percent — twice the rate of Black households, which saw a 29 percent spike from 2010 to 2018.
Daniel Island, a planned community, is mostly White and growing fast. Cainhoy, once a distant rural area inhabited predominantly by African Americans, now is the site of several developments, some enormous in scope. Cainhoy Plantation, for example, ultimately could include 9,000 new homes.
The influx of new subdivisions sometimes has caused tension as longtime Black residents, many of whom live in communities settled by emancipated enslaved people after the Civil War, fight to preserve what they have.
Recently, threats to an old Black burial ground in the Oak Bluff neighborhood sparked concern and eventually required the intervention of the Department of Health and Environmental Control. The state agency required the developer to stop work and conduct a new archaeological survey to identify and protect gravesites.
Fred Lincoln, a community advocate in Cainhoy, said the growth in his area is understandable and dictated by economic forces.
“It’s just the reality of things,” he said. “We have an area not far from the Atlantic Ocean, and folks want to come and enjoy the climate here. They’re coming because there’s cheap labor and cheap politicians.”
The changes are driving out many people who work in the service industry because they can’t afford to live close to their jobs, he said. And that makes it more difficult for employers in the hospitality sector to find reliable staff, so there’s a domino effect.
These are people already making a sacrifice, working in low-wage jobs “to help make the area attractive” to newcomers and tourists, Lincoln said. “They don’t reap any benefits of growth.”
So Lincoln and his allies in Cainhoy are trying to prevent property value spikes. They want to ensure that mobile homes (“the only truly affordable housing”) remain part of the landscape.
“That’s our main goal now,” he said. “We can’t stop those numbers, but we don’t want to be a victim where we no longer exist in the community.”
A big new home here or there is fine, so long as there’s still room for established residents.
“We have something precious in the Black community, and that’s land,” Lincoln said. “With development coming, how do we protect the ownership of those lands for generations to come?”