How the Resort Town of Edisto Beach, South Carolina Went From Being 90% Black to Just Two Black Residents

Tracing the Displacement of Edisto’s First Peoples and Freedpeople

Sara Dean from Charleston, SC, USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

This story came from research on another subject which wasn’t ripe for publication as the Supreme Court might say. That story was about the fire that destroyed the home of a Jewish circuit court judge in South Carolina who has been verbally attacked by Donald Trump for blocking handing over private voter information data to the federal government. Judge Diane Goodstein previously received multiple death threats and now her home is destroyed. I’ll wait until there is a determination as to whether the fire was accidental or arson before writing on that. My preliminary research led me to this story about Goldstein’s community of Edisto Beach which at the last census had only two Black residents after once being over 90% Black. I wanted to know why.

Edisto Beach is a small section on the southern tip of Edisto Island. The first known inhabitants of Edisto Island were Indigenous peoples, specifically the Edistow (or Edisto) Indians, a sub‑tribe of the larger Cusabo group who lived along the South Carolina coast. Archaic cultures (as early as 2000 B.C.): Archaeological evidence shows Native peoples lived seasonally on the Sea Islands…