That aforementioned, problematic flooding area, including the intersection of Line and Hagood streets, happens to be on the site of the Gadsden Green housing complex in the center of the Gadsden Green community, a historically African American neighborhood on Charleston’s Westside. Running through it, and the source of much of the flooding, Gadsden Creek was once a healthy, navigable tidal creek where residents fished and swam. It was part of the community’s livelihood and where many residents were baptized.
As part of a “land reclamation program” in the 1950s, the city began filling Gadsden Creek and its surrounding wetlands, using much of it for a dump, all of which has played into the flooding issues that today plague the Gadsden Green community and Harmon Field. In 2015 when the developers of WestEdge—a biomedical development across the Crosstown from MUSC—proposed filling the remnants of the creek to build another high-rise condominium complex, a coalition of residents, organizations, and activists came together as Friends of Gadsden Creek (FOGC) to oppose the permit on environmental grounds.
FOGC aims not only to “daylight” the creek (ie restore it as a viable natural waterway), which would revitalize its habitat and ecosystem and re-establish it as a flood mitigation resource, but also to highlight the history of racism and environmental injustice surrounding the Gadsden Green community. “This area was once home to the largest number of Black property owners in Charleston,” says Mika Gadsden (no relation), a founding member and cochair of FOGC who now serves as an adviser to Mayor William Cogswell. “I’ve grown up knowing how pervasive racism is, but this was the first time I was confronted with environmental injustice—I was gobsmacked to see [in the archives] how intentionally the city went about depositing a dump on a historically Black community,” she says.
The WestEdge proposal is but the latest of many attempts at “Black erasure” and gentrification, according to Gadsden, but the fact that Gadsden Green community members are still there and still battling back “is proof of their resilience and shows that this area and this creek are worth fighting for,” she says. In January 2023, the South Carolina Environmental Law Project and FOGC appealed the state Department of Heath and Environmental Control’s approval of the WestEdge permit; a hearing before the South Carolina Supreme Court occurred on Juneteenth—an auspicious date, notes Gadsden—though no decision is expected soon. “We’ve been gearing up for moments like this,” she says.
By encouraging the public to weigh in and making sure the Gadsden Green community is informed and engaged, FOGC hopes to save the creek and enlighten others about the ecological importance of one of the last remaining tidal creeks on the peninsula. “Gadsden Creek is not a worthless, polluted ‘ditch’ as WestEdge developers claim,” says Gadsden. Instead, if restored and allowed to reclaim its natural function before it was turned into a landfill, the creek will help alleviate flooding, welcome birds and wildlife, and once again become an asset to an African American community that has faced a long history of injustice.
Learn more: friendsofgadsdencreek.com
