HOGG HUMMOCK — With the sun peeking over Sapelo Island‘s ancient live oaks, Maurice Bailey stepped through the morning dew on a brisk Saturday.

Stitched on the front of his hat were the words, “I am Sapelo.” It’s a message that seems to define his life and his work.

Bailey owns a country store, one of the only shops on this remote island off the Georgia coast. He leads a cultural preservation nonprofit, Save Our Legacy Ourself, farming sugar cane, Geechee red peas, indigo and other crops his ancestors have grown here for generations.

But lately, new threats to Hogg Hummock — one of the country’s last remaining communities of Gullah Geechee people, the descendants of enslaved people brought to the coast from West Africa — have emerged.

A bruising rezoning fight that could allow larger v

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