After Hilton Head grandma dies, Tyler Perry says he’ll honor promise to build home

Ask most people about their dream home and the odds are they’re aiming for luxury. Have a celebrity promise to pay for “whatever you want” and images of extravagant staircases, grand foyers and ornate columns come to mind.

Not for 94-year-old Hilton Head Island resident Josephine Wright. All she wanted was “a good solid living without any kind of fancy doodads.” Even if actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry promised to foot the bill.

Perry will keep his promise to build Wright a home despite her death Jan. 7, he said in a Facebook post Monday.

“My prayer is that you rest in peace knowing that I will honor the commitment that I made to you,” he said. “I know you will be watching over us all as I hand those same keys to your family.”

Perry made the promise after Georgia-based developer Bailey Point Investment sued Wright in February. Wright feared the lawsuit — claiming parts of her property crossed into Bailey Point property — was a financial bullying ploy to get her to leave the land that had been in her late husband’s family since shortly after the Civil War. In August, the town halted construction on the planned development until the lawsuit is out of mediation. It would have created a 147-unit neighborhood.

During an interview with The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette weeks before her death, Wright spoke fondly of everyone who helped in her fight against developers to keep her land, including Perry, Snoop Dogg, Kyrie Irving and Meek Mill. In September, Wright reached the original $350,000 fundraising goal set by the GoFundMe page her family launched in May. It’s now at $367,090. Her family is using the donations to establish the Josephine Wright Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping other Gullah landowners retain their family land.

She also mentioned the kindness of everyday strangers, not just the big names.

“It wasn’t just them. It was just ordinary people who came and just wished me luck,” she said in the interview. “People sent in (money) from all over the world. Believe it or not, we’ve heard from every country in this whole world. Every country, from Asia to Africa. It’s wonderful.”

Wright inspired not just those in Hilton Head, but around the world by her resolute defense of her home and fearlessness when standing up to developers.

“Right here on this island, in the past, they have been able to frighten off people that own property with little things like lawsuits and most people are not able to address it,” she said. “It was just my determination that my husband’s hard work and his family’s work was not going to go to waste.”

Relatives of her husband, Samuel Wright Sr., like tens of thousands of Africans, were enslaved and brought to South Carolina to work on rice, indigo and Sea Island cotton plantations. This group of African descendants are called Gullah Geechee and primarily live in the Lowcountry, including Hilton Head Island. They purchased land after the Civil War in the 1860s and it has decades of cultural significance and familial ties.

For Wright’s family, the land has been theirs ever since. But the same can’t be said for many other Gullah families. Following the Civil War Gullah people owned over 3,500 acres of land on the island, today they own fewer than 700 acres, according to Lowcountry Gullah, a nonprofit focused on Gullah land preservation. At the height of ownership, Gullah owned 14% of Hilton Head Island’s 26,880 acres of land. Now that it’s down to fewer than 700 acres, they own less than 2.6%.

The 1.8-acre parcel will pass on to Wright’s four living children, Wright said in the interview. What she wanted for her dream home was something that could help host her children, grand-children, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. At the time Wright explained she left a five-bedroom home in New York to move to Hilton Head about 30 years ago, and it was her dream to have that again.

In the weeks before her death, Wright worked with Perry’s design team. They mainly discussed the floor plan, landscaping — highlighting her love of Azaleas — and potential for a pool.

“Everything else is still up in the air,” Wright said at the time of the interior decoration and color scheme. The new home will be built at a different location and then installed on the property. In December, Wright’s granddaughter, Charise Graves, said they hoped to submit the building permit and break ground this month.

Though Wright won’t be able to see it, her family with the help of Perry will build her dream home.

“Your four children, 40 grandchildren, 50 great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren will still be able to gather at YOUR house on YOUR land and tell the world what kind of fighter that you were,” he posted. “You have run your race and fought an incredible fight! Journey well my dear lady. You have inspired me.”