This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. See the full interview below.
Jennie L. Stephens has served as the chief leader of the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation since its inception in 2005. At the Center, she is responsible for overall strategic planning, resource development, financial management and organizational development. She has worked more than 25 years in the nonprofit field in such positions as fiscal director at a community action agency, sponsored programs director at a historically black college, and senior program director at a community foundation. She also has several years of experience in consulting as a program reviewer, strategic planning facilitator and grants writer. Most recently, Jennie had the pleasure of being a speaker at TedXCharleston with a talk titled, “Heirs Discover Money Does Grow on Trees” https://youtu.be/TMeaii8csFY and was selected to be a 2018 BALLE Fellow, a member of 25 brilliant leaders who are building healthy and equitable rural economies across US and Canada (bit.ly/2FFycyx).
Jennie’s passion in life is to help people help themselves.
This interview was recorded on September 17, 2020.
Resources:
- Center for Heirs Property Preservation: https://www.heirsproperty.org
- On Facebook and Twitter
- Post & Courier article: We must preserve, protect African American settlement communities: https://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/commentary/commentary-we-must-preserve-protect-african-american-settlement-communities/article_26cf4b94-f764-11ea-87bc-6f02f074738e.html
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Fiona Martin (FM):
Welcome Jennie Stephens to The Eco-Interviews. We're very excited to have you. How are you doing today?
Jennie Stephens (JS):
I'm doing well, doing well. Thank you for having me.
FM:
Perfect. Yeah. Jennie Stephens is from the Center of Heirs Property Preservation. It'd be great if you could introduce yourself and tell us about the Heirs Property Center.
JS:
Okay. As Fiona said, I have the privilege of being the CEO here at the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation. We're a nonprofit organization that was created in 2005. If you may not know what heirs property is, it's land that has been passed down without a will so the result is the family ends up owning it jointly and have to make decisions jointly for the use to be maximized. When we started in 2005 it was really providing that legal education and those direct legal services to resolve any issues to the title. Let me give you an example” People who own Heirs’ Property can't get a mortgage because there's not a clear, marketable title. They have very limited access to conservation programs or housing rehabilitation funds from the state or the federal government. Now the Gulf Coast has just gone through a hurricane and people who own heirs property, it's difficult for them to benefit from FEMA funds. There's a lot of “can'ts.” Even though land is considered a major asset, for heirs’ property owners they see it more as a liability than they do as an asset. Here at this organization, we see ourselves as a tool that landowners can use to resolve any title issues and unlock the potential in their family land.
FM:
When I first heard of heirs property, the term was new to me. I Googled it. It very much comes up for South Carolina. Is it unique to South Carolina or is it something that happens across the country or maybe even across the world?
JS:
Actually, it is across the world. It's not just a South Carolina thing but in the South it is seen to have resulted after the Civil War where African Americans could acquire ... They acquired land, either worked for it or paid for it outright. Where one, there weren't a lot of lawyers, they didn't know who to approach on how to pass this asset down to their loved ones. There's also an article, it was written by, sorry having a senior moment, the title of the article was Torn From The Land where it talks about how African Americans lost a lot of land after the Civil War. One, if there were lawyers, they didn't trust them. Two, they maybe couldn't afford them. Then the result was that basically they created a way to pass down this asset to their family but the problem with that is usually it was orally passed down. They'd say, "Hey, Sue you have this piece by the road. Jim, you have the piece on the corner." But we all know if it's not in writing, it's not valid.
I just gave you a little snapshot of how it looks in the South but really it's not an African American issue only. To me it's a low income issue. If you were to go to the Appalachian area, the skin color of the land owner would change but it would be the same issue. It's also known among Native Americans except it's called fractionated land for them. Basically, low income folk do not sit around the dinner table and talk about estate planning.
FM:
You have touched a little bit on it, it's interesting I'm interviewing different people because I have become aware of what we're calling Colonial settlers and the negative impacts. I'm hearing more about this in the South, I'm going to speak to a Native American woman later this week about similar issues. Yesterday I interviewed a gentleman from Indonesia talking about the indigenous people not being able to claim their land. Exactly the same thing. It's not that written title. Can you speak to this issue in South Carolina and remind us of the history of post-Civil War black land ownership?
JS:
Actually, I forgot my one little disclaimer I usually give. I just want to remind the audience that I'm not an attorney. I'm not providing you any legal advice but just the broad overview about this issue. I think it was USDA, they have the agriculture census. I think African American, it was in relation to farmers. I don't know if it's just South Carolina but just from that perspective, right after the Civil War, African Americans owned about 15 million acres of land. Then in the, I think in the early 21st century that was down to about 3 million acres. Some of the researchers has attributed that loss to the policy that USDA had with African American farmers, heirs property, because if you don't pass it down ... Heirs property is also a very vulnerable form of land ownership because literally one person can sell their interest. If you want to think about it, think about heirs property as a pie. You might have started out with four slices of pie because you've had a spouse and three children who are the heir of the person who is on the deed. However they continue to not have an estate plan or not probate that loved one's estate, so the pie doesn't get any bigger, the slices do. It makes it hard to utilize the land.
You asked me a question. Yes, a lot of land was lost because people either didn't pay their property taxes. That's the other thing about heirs property, who does pay the property tax? Really all the owners are responsible for it but what we've discovered, there's usually a couple of responsible folk who are staying on top of it and making sure the bill is paid. There are several reasons why land has been lost among African Americans.
FM:
That must be nearly impossible to get all family members of a large, extended family to pay the taxes.
JS:
Well, you know, we all get along with all of our family members, don't we?
FM:
Exactly.
JS:
I know, right? But if you think about it, too, in some cases some family members left the South. We always joke, we tease the Philly and the New York people but you're in essence asking people to make a business decision and they don't know each other, maybe except for the dropping in for a family reunion. In some cases, not even that. What do you expect to happen when you ask two strangers to make a business decision?
FM:
Yeah. In one of your presentations, I watched your TedX talk that you did in Charleston. You talked about these families being land rich but cash poor. Can you elaborate on that?
JS:
It goes back to, as I said, there are a lot of “can'ts” associated with heirs property. But typically land is one of the major assets that people use to build wealth. If you don't have clear, marketable title then you have land but you don't have the cash to either resolve the title issue or to, as I said, maximize the use. It could be through ag, it could be through leasing the land because you don't have a clear title. One of the things that we operate is a sustainable forestry program here. Let's say people have a certain amount of acreage and they haven't managed it well but they have the timber cut. Typically they're not going to get the best price for that timber being cut because the timber buyer, of course, is going to make sure that he or she is protected from not knowing the heir. That's why it's land rich but cash poor. You really cannot tap into the equity, that's the better way of putting it, in that asset. I've heard one researcher call it dead capital. That's how they described it.
FM:
Right, it's an asset that's not working in your favor at that point. I've seen some really sad stories of people who unfortunately were taken advantage of due to the shaky ground that heirs property left them on. Is there one of these stories that you'd be okay to share with us to crystallize it in our heads?
JS:
It's interesting that you said you watched my TedX talk. I use an example, that scenario happened before the Center was established where really I believe it goes back to lack of knowledge. People don't understand what it means to own land as heirs property. This particular gentleman, it was the Rivers family, that's who I refer to. It was on the front page of our regional paper where, because the sister had approached her brother in saying basically, "Buy me out." He felt she had no right to ownership because she didn't live there. Long story short, it was a really not so nice case, the family ended up being forced off the property. When I say the family, not only was Mr. Rivers staying there on this land and basically you could stand on this man's backyard and look out on the marsh and you could see the interstate. Just prefacing how valuable this land is. When they went to court, because they could not agree because that's the key point, what we do here is we bring about agreement before the case goes to court. In essence, we're saying to the judge, "Hey, we've identified all the heirs, here's how they want this to happen."
But this case didn't do that because they weren't in agreement. They went to court and ultimately the judge said, "It's easy to divide money versus land." The judge forced a sale. A group of developers bought it for, I think, about $500,000 however once they cleared the title, they made I think over $2 million on that property. The cash or the wealth, whichever word you want to use, that was in that land that belonged to that family had been lost because they didn't understand what it meant to either own the land as heirs property or how to resolve it in a favorable way.
FM:
Right. It sounds like people in a vulnerable position being taken advantage of, not coming to the table possibly with the best hand, if we're in negotiations with someone trying to buy your land.
JS:
Correct. Even though the laws have changed now that would have made it a little different and they could have gotten a higher price but back then that law was not in place.
FM:
What laws have they put in place now to prevent that from happening?
JS:
It's the Uniform Partition Heirs Property Act. But for South Carolina it's called the Senator Clementa Pinckney Heirs Property Act if I'm not mistaken, where it would have required that the land be put up for a traditional real estate sale versus an auction because that's what happened. That family could have gotten a better price for the property. Also that law looks at, what is the word? It's not intrinsic value but the value that the family associates with that land versus the economic value (sentimental value). There are a couple of things that could have made the outcome of that case differently if it was tried 20 years later.
FM:
That's sad. A previous guest of ours, Queen Quet, who is the Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee people who are down in the Lowcountry, speaking to her, that sounds like a community that has been very much affected by heirs property. Can you talk about the difficulties faced by, well we've spoken a little bit about the difficulty of those in an heirs property situation but in particular, especially with the Lowcountry, there's a lot of this coming up as it relates to gentrification.
JS:
Yeah.
FM:
Can you talk to us about that?
JS:
It's interesting, when the descendants of the enslaved folk acquired land, it was often the less productive land. Back then it was not of value. It's interesting now, I'd like to say everybody and their momma wants to live next to the marsh or to the water. What wasn't valuable back then now is. We're like any city or town where you're blessed that there are attractions that bring folk from outside to your area but that also can be seen as a curse because once those people arrive here, they often want to change the things that they loved and which brought them to this community. Yes, we live in a region where there is home to Boeing, home to Volvo, home to Mercedes. It's constantly growing. You have to accommodate the growth to support those industries. Unfortunately the individuals who don't have clear title or who don't have a louder voice, I'll put it that way, oftentimes their communities are changed. They no longer live there. The flavor, the culture, the history that made that community what it was is now gone.
FM:
I was just reading Farming While Black by Leah Penniman and she talked a little bit about gentrification. Just as you mentioned, it was areas that were previously less productive or undesirable but then the hard work of those people there have changed that. Now other people want to come in.
JS:
That's right.
FM:
One of the articles I read is talking about losing some of this African American history and culture in the process because there are these developments being built right next to, say, a historic AME church or graveyard. Can you talk about that?
JS:
Correct, correct. We haven't had a lot of exposure to that but we have heard how, when developers acquire a property where there was or is an African American cemetery, of course it becomes a gated community. That means that those families have to have permission to go see their loved ones. In some cases, it's not been as nice and they basically move them to another spot. I don't know what else to say about that.
FM:
I can't imagine how not even unpleasant just quite traumatic to not be able to visit something that is sacred to your family and your community.
JS:
Right. And so with our Gullah history project that we have through a grant from South Carolina Department of Archives, we've made nine grants to communities and I think about a third of those communities are looking at restoring cemeteries and actually making them a spot people want to visit. I don't mean just the family but it's amazing what you can learn, I know it sounds a little morbid but when you walk through a cemetery and how they're discovering they had people who were in World War I or World War II and the fact that they didn't know it. There really is a lot of history in those cemeteries.
FM:
Do you want to talk about that grant program a little more and tell us the work that's being done to preserve this history.
JS:
You never really hear us talk about gentrification. What we're saying, though, is we want to make sure that folk learn about the culture and history that occurred in the communities because once you know it, then you can, what's the word I'm looking for? You can emphasize that. At least people know the history and culture so it's less likely to be gentrified if possible. Our route has been helping everyone, the broader community, understand the history and culture associated with these communities and of course resolving heirs property. To us, that is a way of preventing gentrification and making sure the land owners are also aware of how planning and zoning, how those decisions are made so they can also be involved in that process.
FM:
I think there's a Richard Louv quote in regards to the Earth, "You cannot love what you cannot know and you cannot know what you cannot see." I feel like that hearkens to that. You can't respect or understand what you're on unless you understand the history that you're on. Hopefully these preservation initiatives are going to bring a deeper understanding and also a consideration when it comes to residential development. That we don't continue to make the mistakes we've made for centuries in this country when it comes to whitewashing everything.
JS:
Your term, not mine.
FM:
I said it, I'm sorry.
JS:
I also want to say, though, that it is, I alluded to this or I said it, actually, in my op ed is the fact that Charleston is going to be home to the International African American Museum. African Americans have made, there's not a lot of documentation of the contributions from African Americans in history books that children get to know but yet the communities that help make Charleston what it is is now, they are literally being erased because of development.
FM:
Exactly. We don't want that to be in the museum. Excuse me.
JS:
Why do you want to protect the history and culture in the museum but you don't care anything about the actual communities or the people who helped make that history happen.
FM:
It's similar with the conservation movement of let's conserve this beautiful land but then kick the people off the land in the process.
JS:
Yeah, I've knocked heads a couple of times with conservation folk. I've always posed the question, "You're conserving or preserving it for whom?"
FM:
These are all questions that are coming up a lot right now and rightfully so. It needs to be brought back up. The heirs property issues certainly come up when we're talking about selling land, that's a lot of the stuff we're talking about but you mentioned just briefly that the Heirs Property Preservation also educates people on how to use their land to work for them. Turning that asset into an actual asset. In particular through sustainable land use with forestry. Can you tell us about this?
JS:
Sure. Prior to 2013, as I said earlier, the Center's focus really was on legal education and delivering direct legal services but a couple of funders said, "Well, hey, if that's all you guys are ever going to do, we may not fund you in the future." We started thinking about other alternatives. Of course, it's hard to resolve titles to heirs property but it's a valid question. Once people's titles are cleared, what are they now doing with the land? We had the opportunity to create a partnership with our state forestry commission, with our local division of USDA, two of them, Natural Resource Conservation Service and the Farm Service Agency and conservation groups in the Wildlife Federation. Literally, we sat around the table and when the US Endowment for Forest and Communities came out with this grant application or grant notice in saying, we have the forestry folk saying, "Look, we can't serve this group of folk because they don't have clear title." You have the USDA folk saying, "Well, one, they either don't know we exist or they're not coming to our office." It was really a great match to bring all of us together to see how we could work together and basically, I like to use the term, to have an opportunity for families to see that their land can work for them rather than them working for the land.
We started our sustainable forestry program in 2013. We started out with one forester on staff. I think we're up to five now and we serve a third of the state, both with our forestry services and our legal services. What we discovered is we thought that more folk would be interested in the sustainable forestry side but when our forester would go out and conduct presentations, inevitably there would be someone saying, "Yeah but don't y'all work with heirs property" because we discovered that forestry became the carrot to have heirs property owners deal with issues. Now that they saw there was some potential money, maybe Aunt Sue or Uncle Bob wasn't that bad and I might try to have a conversation with them. It was a nice marriage of the two. It's also been proven that individuals who are making money from their land, they're more likely to have a will or a succession plan and they're less likely to sell it. When you look at it, we stepped into the field, we literally stepped into the conservation arena, which we weren't ever thinking about because even though our primary focus has always been land, we always see the people first. We always talk about families. We never saw ourselves initially as a conservation group but lo and behold, that's really what we do.
FM:
You have the forestry program, is there any interest in agriculture?
JS:
Traditional ag?
FM:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
JS:
Some of our families actually do traditional ag. We have agri-forestry which is that combo but we want to make sure that we're perfecting certain areas. We don't want to become all things to all people. Hence why we partner with other groups who may be providing that traditional ag piece.
FM:
Excellent. As I mentioned, tomorrow I'm going to speak to someone who is actually in that Northeast, goodness the acronym, Northeast ... I don't know. It's basically a land trust for people of color.
JS:
Okay.
FM:
They're trying to expand it.
JS:
Is it the Northeast? It's not the Black Family Land Trust?
FM:
I haven't had a chance to speak to them yet.
JS:
Got it.
FM:
The connection is up in the northeast. I know they do serve just the northeast but they're starting to mark on a US map people of color who are farming the land. I noticed there were three in South Carolina. That's-
JS:
I'd love to know the name of that organization when you do-
FM:
100%. I will get it for you because, we'll talk about this in a different interview but that's another part of African Americans losing their land, unfortunately. You mentioned the USDA. Something like 20% of farmland in 1890 was owned by black people and now it's less than 1%.
JS:
Correct, right.
FM:
Which is just land theft to the extreme, such a shame.
JS:
Right. On top of that, you have the issue of slavery and how African Americans, even though organic farming is the "new thing" as formerly enslaved folk or even after that, African Americans were practicing what was organic farming before there was a name. But because of the stigma, it is hard to get African Americans to return or as I was talking on a committee earlier this morning, is that we need to reconnect with the land. Not see the negative aspects of it but the fact that it is positive. You're working your own land. There's a difference.
FM:
Yes. That's exactly the book I'm reading right now is Farming While Black and talking about the generational trauma associated with black people working the land. The organization I'm speaking to tomorrow is the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust.
JS:
Okay.
FM:
I will certainly connect you or send you an email with that information as well.
JS:
Okay, thanks.
FM:
Do you have an idea of how many people, families or acres of land are affected by heirs property?
JS:
We have what we call a guesstimate because really for you to clearly know what land is heirs property and what isn't, you would need conduct a title search and you would need to know the names of all heirs. That would defeat the purpose because you would just resolve the title if you knew that. We're currently serving 18 counties and in that 18 counties, we are estimating that there is at least 108,000 acres of heirs property. We've been resolving heirs property since 2005 and we're up to 274 titles with land valued at $16.3 million. Back in the day I came up with an average of about $7,000 per acre. Now, of course, a lot of that land was in Charleston County which is going to skew the value. But if you took that 108,000 and multiplied it by 7,000, I think it was almost $1 billion. That's tax assessed value. That's not what the market rate is. That's tax assessed value. Can you imagine, our philosophy is if we could unlock the potential, resolve the title issues to that land, then folk who are low income or have been in poverty for a while, they really should have the means to help themselves move out of poverty.
I know you probably heard about the Corridor of Shame, which is around Interstate 95 where several of the counties, there's been people greater than 20% of poverty for several years, Congressman Clyburn is the one who coined it the I95 corridor and how the majority of our land owners live in that corridor. Our point is, wow. If we can connect these tools to these land owners, look at the difference that we can have not just on them now but generations to come.
FM:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). You mentioned a lot of this is in Charleston County. As you just mentioned that corridor, I didn't know it was called the Corridor of Shame but I've certainly driven through it from Charleston up to where I live in Lugoff. It's different when you drive through there.
JS:
It's Interstate 95, not 26 but Interstate 95. If you Google Corridor of Shame, that's in relation to the educational system in those low income areas. But that Corridor of Shame happens to overlap what Congressman Clyburn has called the I95 Corridor. How there is a, as I said, a greater percentage of families who have been in poverty for several years.
FM:
That was my next question. You serve 18 counties in South Carolina. Excluding Charleston County, what are these counties that are the next up and coming heirs property hotspot?
JS:
I thought you were going to ask me to name all 18. I was like, "Okay, I've got to do the alphabet and I may forget some."
FM:
Nope.
JS:
Definitely Berkeley, Dorchester because that right now is the hub for Volvo and Mercedes. You have that area. There is supposed to be creation of, what is the word? Basically creating industry around the 26 and 20 intersection of the Interstate, which would be Orangeburg County. Off the top of our heads, or my head, those would probably be the three. The other one I would add would be Jasper County because of the widening of the port for Jasper and Savannah. You've got these traditionally poorer counties, except for Berkeley and Dorchester, they're not as poor but if you're looking at Orangeburg and Jasper, they definitely are.
FM:
What do you envision for the future of heirs property? For the Heirs Property Center, there might not be an end goal but what would be the, let's forecast 20 years ahead or 50 years ahead. What are we looking at?
JS:
If it were a perfect world, what we'd like to see is that everybody would have a will and their families would know where the will is located and what to do once the person dies. The interesting piece about heirs property is literally it only takes 10 years for it to become, you can resolve title to something, somebody can die, have a will, they pass it onto their children. If the children don't probate the will, in another 10 years guess what? Even though you resolved that issue, it's occurred again. To answer your question, in a perfect world everybody would remember all the legal education we provided to them and would have a will. Families would know what to do with it. But we know this is not a perfect world. I'd like to say we want to work ourselves out of business but I don't know if that's going to be the case. But what we've also discovered in those cases I told you that we've resolved over our 15 years is two thirds of them have been around probate, which our attorneys look at it as it's prevention.
If we can get people to do that aspect, to probate the estate, the tougher one is the quiet title where you have multiple generations and people may not know each other. But for probate it's not the same. If we can focus on getting people, even if they can resolve the issue in 10 years and we're still in that prevention bucket. Ultimately we know we can't stop it but if we can focus on what would prevent the, I'd like to say prevent the growth and prevent the loss of heirs property. There's two sides to that.
FM:
I didn't even think about the fact it could be heirs property, title resolved and then in a generation or two it can go back into an heirs property situation.
JS:
Correct. A prime example, I became an Ancestry.com geek a couple years back. I was looking at my family and one of my great grandfathers, I don't know how far back but I went and I looked up his will in the probate court in that county. This gentleman could not read and write but he had a will with an X. This was early 1900s. Then it begs the question, what's happened to this generation now where we have more education, more book sense or exposure and yet we're not dying in a prepared way if that makes sense. Here it was, this gentleman couldn't read and write, there's a will. There's a will and how he transferred his land down to his heirs. Unfortunately two, three generations and now it becomes heirs property.
FM:
Do you have any suppositions or ideas about what has happened? I'm thinking are there resources out there for people to get a will? We talked about not knowing who to go to, we talked about the cost of hiring a lawyer. There's also an aspect of distrust that's going to be within either a lawyer or within our legal system to go to the courthouse. What do we do?
JS:
One of the tools that we have used here is what we call a Wills Clinic. Literally, with our attorneys on staff, we enlist the assistance of for profit or pro bono attorneys and students from our local law school. Literally on a Saturday, this is pre-COVID because it's a little different now after COVID but pre-COVID we would be in a church, in a community center or some public building. From 9:00 am in the morning to 3:00 we would be drafting free, simple wills for individuals. It could be a project of someone's law school, to answer your question, in how people could get reduced wills. A lot of for profit attorneys in our state, I don't know how it is in other states, at one time they were required to do so much pro bono or provide so much pro bono assistance. Any who, I think that's part of the option, working with local law schools or a local bar that is doing drafting of wills. I know right after 9/11 a lot of bars were doing wills clinics, I'm going to forget the name, what do you call our fire folk, police, what do you call them?
FM:
First responders?
JS:
Yes, they were drafting wills for first responders. One, it could be a project of a local bar association, it could be a project of a law school. There are ways to get a will drafted if people thought outside the box and created a partnership. But that's how we've done it.
FM:
Everything you're saying, having a will is incredibly necessary to almost be a full citizen, use the assets you have in your favor. I would hope we can create more resources for people, anyone who needs that sort of help.
JS:
Right. You posed the question not how to stop it but literally if everyone, as I said earlier, could have that will, the personal representative knows where the will is and what to do with the will after the person dies, that is a way to reduce the growth of heirs property.
FM:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). This has been enlightening for me, a situation I wasn't aware of until speaking to Queen Quet and looking into it further. I really appreciate you joining us. Do you have any closing thoughts or anything you'd like to tell our audience along the lines of heirs property or sustainability?
JS:
I think that what I've discovered is sometimes the majority groups find it hard to approach people of color for whatever reason. Just remember, I've been around conservation groups where they had acquired easements from all the larger land owners but what was left was a donut hole. In that donut hole were the people of color. People who own smaller tracts of land have the same values for their land as those that are larger. I would embrace building relationships with all land owners. One of the things that I'm talking about, too, is oftentimes conservation groups want to do things for the community but they need to help build the leadership capacity of the community and involve them on the conversations so that one, I'm an only child and a little independent. I never want anybody to do stuff for me. I think if we can empower the community to make their own decisions and really, they are environmentalists, they just don't use those large terms that are used in the mainstream. It's basically get out of your comfort zone and reach out to all land owners. You would find there's great value in doing
that.
FM:
That's something I hadn't thought of. Can you talk a bit more on how heirs property plays into working with conservation groups or that they're being excluded it sounds like?
JS:
I wouldn't say excluded. Here's a conversation that I had before we started working on our sustainable forestry program. When I would approach conservation groups about working with our land owners, of course the primary tool is always a conservation easement and then people would say, "The costs outweigh the benefit" because it takes just as much to, what do you do, the thing they do every year to maintain that you're doing what you said you were going to do on the easement? I can't remember the terminology, sorry. To monitor it, it takes just as much for a 10 acre for 1,000 acres. It's interesting though, how those special critters can be found on the land that those other folk that you hadn't approached. If you want to help preserve those critters, for me it's about sustainability because I think it needs to be a balance between preserving the land and helping families generate some economic value from the land that is owned. Unfortunately, because of the history of land loss among African Americans, they don't look very favorably on conservation easements. However, when we offered the sustainable forestry option, the conservation groups saw, "Wow, that's a way of protecting land, too. It's just not a conservation easement." Once again, I think it's just about being open and looking at different ways of doing things.
FM:
I agree with what you're saying. The conservation movement definitely has some skeletons in its closet and some, maybe archaic ways of going about their business.
JS:
I'm not trying to beat anybody up because we all have skeletons in our closet. I'm just saying.
FM:
It's something I've realized through my research. I don't come from an environmentalism or conservation background. It's literally just me looking at the climate crisis and saying, "What can I do?" I'm just trying to talk to as many people as possible. Looking into the history of the conservation movement, with the idea of protecting but excluding all the people from the land is, you have to wonder what was going ... Well, I think we know what was going on there. Anyway.
JS:
We all know, once again, you said it, I didn't.
FM:
Exactly, I said it. Fiona said it. That's it. I take responsibility for what I'm saying.
JS:
Right.
FM:
Jennie, I'm definitely not putting words in your mouth, please don't let me do that. You brought up a very good point of the historical occurrence of people wanting to come in and help but dictating what that help is, instead we need to empower and listen.
JS:
Correct.
FM:
We want to encourage that. Ask the people who are already there what they want to do. Any other closing thoughts Jennie or do we need to not go down that rabbit hole?
JS:
No, I will just say thank you for allowing me the opportunity to talk about a plethora of things on the interview but also, most importantly, talking about heirs property and the importance of resolving it and helping families to maximize the use of that land. I say thank you.
FM:
Perfect. How do people follow the Heirs Property Preservation?
JS:
There are many ways.
FM:
How do we support the work you guys are doing?
JS:
We have a website, we have a Twitter account, we have a YouTube channel, we have Instagram, Facebook, you name it. We have all of that. How can you support us? Like any other nonprofit, money will work but I also think just learning more about the issue and how do you help this issue be addressed in your neck of the woods or your community. If you're a lawyer and you're in South Carolina, you can always volunteer with us at a wills clinic or a law student, you can volunteer. Anything else I may be missing? I think that's about it.
FM:
Are there any big projects coming up that you want to highlight? We spoke a little bit about the African American History Museum in Charleston. Is there anything else or do you want to expand on that project any more?
JS:
The biggest thing for us is the fact that we turned 15 this year.
FM:
Happy birthday, congratulations.
JS:
We're planning our 15th finale, I can't get into the details but definitely Jeff will send you, invite you to turn into that. Our thing is, even though we're in South Carolina, there aren't a lot of organizations across the country that are providing direct legal services for this particular issue. For us, we've been doing it for 15 years. We want to share what we've learned. Ideally we would love to serve the entire state of South Carolina. We already feel we have a national and a regional leadership role in this issue. The other option is not how do we clone ourselves but how do we replicate this model for other states who may be interested. That's where we are now.
FM:
Excellent. I'll definitely make sure to put links to the website and social media and everything in there. We will share it on our social media channels, definitely keep us in the loop about your 15 year celebrations. It's such a shame that the Heirs Property Center is celebrating 15 years and the Gullah/Geechee Nation is celebrating 20 and we're in COVID. Everything is different but hopefully we're adapting and still celebrating those milestones.
JS:
The one good thing about COVID is it's made us be creative.
FM:
Yeah. For me, it's also, as much as I can't meet with people personally, it has allowed me to connect with people like yourself and people all over the world. We're just a little bit more open to trying something new and getting on Zoom and talking to each other.
JS:
Yeah.
FM:
We'll take the wins where we can get them, for sure.
JS:
Thank you again.
FM:
All right, thank you Jennie. Have a wonderful day.