WILMINGTON — Guests won’t just hear about the local traditions of Seabreeze and its history on Aug. 2 — they’ll taste it.
A well-known Black beach community, Seabreeze existed near Carolina Beach in the midst of the Jim Crow era and will be featured in the next Saltwater Stories — a dinner series that pairs historical storytelling with menus rooted in the foodways of the Cape Fear region’s Black coastal communities. It will take place on Seabreeze land, adding another layer of significance to the event.
The series launched in April 2026 as a collaboration between WilmingtonNColor tour founder Cedric Harrison and local chef Keith Rhodes, who operates Catch and the recently opened Voyce.
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“It’s a whole entire experience where you can come and eat alongside the story being told while you are on the historical land,” Harrison said. “It’s a very full-circle historical moment.”
Rhodes competed on Bravo’s “Top Chef” season nine and has received multiple James Beard Award nominations for his culinary work. He also is a designated culinarian for the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, which hosts the annual Rice Festival in Brunswick County. It educates and keeps alive the heritage of colonial rice farming and Gullah Geechee culture, as founded by West Africans who were brought to the South as part of the Transatlantic Slave Trade to work on plantations.
“I just want to help tell the story,” Rhodes said of Seabreeze. “I’m at an age where it’s not about proving I can be a great chef. People already know that. It’s more about leaving a different kind of carbon footprint and making sure I inspire through food and through a great story.”
Harrison operates WilmingtonNColor, a nonprofit dedicated to documenting marginalized people and overlooked events in traditional accounts of Wilmington’s history. WilmingtonNColor is best known for its downtown tour examining the 1898 Wilmington coup and massacre.
Guests can also book separate 60-minute tours exploring Shell Island or Seabreeze. The Shell Island tour informs about the resort, built in 1923 on a 70-acre strip of sand north of Wrightsville Beach. It was one of the first beach destinations where Black residents could vacation, but it burned down in 1926. The cause of the fire remains unknown.
Harrison and Rhodes’ focused on Shell Island for the first four Saltwater Stories, all of which sold out.
“The first dinner sold out so fast and we had so many people on the waiting list, so we decided to make a series out of it,” Harrison said. “But, eventually, the goal was not just to do this one story but to share multiple stories that are connected to the coast of the Carolinas.”
They landed on Seabreeze for the fifth event because WilmingtonNColor already launched a tour about the Black destination; it’s led by Sister Elise Freeman-Muhammad, a descendant of one of the community’s founding families and the owner of private land in Seabreeze. She will be part of the upcoming event, along with Brea Baker, author of “Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership,” to discuss the area’s history.
The discussion will examine Seabreeze and Freeman’s Beach, pioneering Black communities established in 1922 and 1951, respectively. Because of their close geographic and historical ties, the two communities are often discussed together.
Freeman-Muhammad traces her family’s history of land ownership in the area to before the founding of the United States, through her Black and Native American ancestry. Her father, William “Bill” Freeman, worked in parking lots on Freeman Beach as a child, according to former reporting by WWAY. His aunt and uncle operated Monte Carlo by the Sea there, where people would dance, eat and vacation beachside.
Freeman-Muhammed said she inherited the property from her father.
The acreage was among thousands of parcels purchased by the Freemans throughout the years. The North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources documents Alexander and Charity Freeman and their children, who descended from free Blacks, purchased 100 or so acres in the 1850s.
After Alexander’s death, property was passed down to his eldest son, Robert Bruce Freeman Sr., who bought thousands more acres. His children, Roland and Nathan Freeman, also owned land in the Myrtle Grove Sound area and started Seabreeze in 1922.
At the dinner, Freeman-Muhammed will highlight details she often tells on the WilmingtonNColor tour — stories of longtime residents and businesses that shaped the community.
“We are truly the ones who showed how to use beachfront land to live on, and make industries from that and eventually sustained our family and sustained other people in the community,” Freeman-Muhammad said.
Seabreeze was made up of Black-owned hotels, amusement parks, juke joints, restaurants and more. Black fishermen often caught the daily seafood to sell at Seabreeze restaurants and even sold some to white-owned Carolina Beach establishments.
By 1975, the resort businesses were closed, due to hurricane damage, as well as beach erosion and desegregation.
Since then, properties have been taken by governmental eminent domain, the Town of Carolina Beach bought portions for Freeman Park and some heir properties still exist.
A Seabreeze landmark was bestowed with a North Carolina Highway historical marker in May 2024 at 7617 Carolina Beach Road near its intersection with S. Seabreeze Road.
Harrison said families directly connected to these stories are often excluded from telling them. By inviting Freeman-Muhammad, he hopes the event elevates Black voices in their own history.
The menu will feature clam fritters, oysters on the half shell, shrimp and seasonal vegetables. Rhodes said he drew inspiration from the seafood and coastal ingredients central to Seabreeze’s culinary traditions.
“It’s important that we talk about the foodways associated with the Black history being told,” Rhodes said. “All of those foods are foods that also are considered part of the Gullah Geechee diaspora.”
Historian David Cecelski has written about visitors to Seabreeze, noting they could buy clam fritters from local stands or eat fish caught by members of the Freeman family.
Rhodes said the menu also has personal meaning. Raised as a Seventh-day Adventist, he did not eat meat as a child, but he remembers visiting Seabreeze with his grandmother after sunset for clam fritters.
“I remember the taste of the clam and the green pepper,” Rhodes said. “It was such a treat because I’d never had anything like that before.”
While Rhodes remembers Seabreeze through its food, Baker examines the community through its history. Her book “Rooted” explores both the 1898 Wilmington coup and Seabreeze’s development, including the environmental challenges Seabreeze and Freeman’s Beach faced throughout the 20th century.
For Baker, the setting is as important as the conversation: “We’re going to be on the beachfront, talking about Seabreeze and Freeman Beach and what Black land ownership has looked like in Wilmington across time — with a beautiful meal in front of us and beautiful views behind us.”
Tickets are $125 and include the three-course dinner and a copy of Baker’s “Rooted.” The event begins at 6 p.m. Aug. 2 at 1114 S. Seabreeze Road.
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