Six years ago, Congress took note of one of the nation’s great sagas of endurance — descendants of slavery who survived for generations on the barrier chain of Sea Islands along the southeast coast. The government created a cultural heritage corridor from North Carolina to Florida to celebrate the Gullah and Geechee peoples, as they are known.

It is sadly ironic that one of the last intact communities — the saltwater Geechees of Hog Hammock on Sapelo Island off Georgia — now must fight for its historic landhold in the face of a sudden burst of exorbitant real estate taxes from local government.

“The whole thing just smells,” Jasper Watts told Kim Severson of The Times. His family faced a 500-percent-plus tax increase on her house. Some in the doughty community of about 50 people received even bigger bills. Local officials insisted that their only intent is to reform badly outdated tax rates. The explanation is understandably questioned by Geechees who fear a move is afoot to force them to abandon their land to the wave of resort development that has been eroding Gullah-Geechee culture with gated communities and endless golf courses.

Hog Hammock is itself a last redoubt, one small part of an island that has been mostly claimed by the State of Georgia for research and education. Although the Geechees have endured through two centuries of slavery and Jim Crow suppression, they need and deserve help in their latest stand, if it is not to be their last.