Lowcountry Gullah founder outlines heirs-property losses and urges local tax-sale protections

Walnut Graves Sellers, founder of the Lowcountry Gullah Foundation, told a Beaufort County meeting that heirs property — land passed across generations without wills or clear title — has driven large losses of Black-owned land and leaves families vulnerable to partition sales and tax-auction purchases.

"I pay people's taxes, plain and simply," Sellers said, describing how her foundation scrubs tax lists, pays imminent tax-sale bills in crisis cases and connects families with attorneys, trustees and other resources.

Sellers placed heirs property in historical context, saying it emerged after the Civil War and estimating that 90% of Black-owned land was lost between 1910 and 1997 and that Black Americans are losing roughly 30,000 acres a year. She described practical consequences for families and local governments: higher tax assessments on parcels without clear title, inability to use land as loan collateral, increased vacancy and blight, lost municipal tax revenue and barriers to public projects that require easements or clear title.

The presentation included local program results: Sellers said the foundation preserved about $3.3 million in assessed land value and more than 18 acres in the last reporting period, at an expenditure of roughly $54,000. She described partnerships with the county treasurer and assessor, the Heritage Library (which conducts genealogy research), the Center for Heirs' Property and Lowcountry Legal Volunteers, and said the foundation uses targeted mailers, door-to-door outreach and a recent television campaign to reach elderly landowners who are not online.

Sellers outlined legal and administrative obstacles: many families lack wills (she stated an estimate of about 81% without wills), South Carolina's rules let a single heir trigger a partition or petition sale, and some counties interpret redemption and tax-sale rules in ways that prevent living heirs from reclaiming property after a tax sale. She said one bill she helped draft — the Heirs Property Tax Relief Act — had just passed the South Carolina House and was signed by Gov. McMaster on May 15; Sellers said that law preserves tax protections when property is kept within family lines.

County officials and planning staff asked for clarifications about definitions, what the foundation provides and how the county could help. Participants suggested practical county responses Sellers and others recommended: add clear identification and categorization of heirs-property parcels in tax databases; create special tax-sale exceptions or a verification process that allows family members to redeem parcels without added penalties; restrict outside bidding on parcels identified as heirs property at county tax sales; fund or contract dedicated genealogy and title-research support; and expand public information distribution through municipal channels and the county broadcast network.

Speakers at the meeting cited personal experience with partition and tax-sale losses, and attendees encouraged coordination with municipal websites and the county public-information office to distribute the foundation’s collateral materials and workshop notices. Sellers asked for staff or municipal help publicizing workshops and free-will clinics; she said the foundation aims to scale operations to adjacent counties while keeping a focus on Beaufort-area communities.

The meeting ended with procedural business: members agreed to skip a July meeting and reconvene in August.

Why it matters: Heirs-property complications can strip families of generational wealth and block routine municipal functions such as infrastructure easements and disaster-recovery assistance. Sellers’ recommendations focus on county-level administrative fixes (data, verification, outreach and limited tax-sale protections) that do not require new federal programs but do rely on clearer local procedures and coordination with state law.