Georgia Gullah Community Fighting Rezoning Changes Threatening Their Homeland
Black residents of a small island off the Georgia coast filed a civil lawsuit last Thursday (Oct. 12) accusing Georgia county officials of violating state zoning procedure and public meeting laws, the Associated Press reports.
Slave descendants of the Gullah-Geechee community suspect that McIntosh County officials voted in September to double the size of houses allowed in Hogg Hummock, a community on Sapelo Island, to increase property taxes, making it unaffordable. The endgame is to force them to sell their homes.
Gullah-Geechee residents fear the construction of vacation homes and an influx of outsiders to the island, once the plantation of Thomas Spalding, will destroy their culture and the community to accommodate wealthy, White land buyers and developers.
According to the lawsuit, filed in McIntosh County Superior Court on behalf of nine residents, the new zoning law “discriminates against the historically and culturally important Gullah-Geechee community on Sapelo Island on the basis of race, and that it is therefore unconstitutional, null, and void.”
The lawsuit also accuses county commissioners of violating the due process rights of the low-income community, consisting of about 30 to 50 Black residents.
County commissioners approved the larger home sizes after three public meetings over five days. But county officials didn’t allow Hogg Hummock residents and landowners who attended the meetings to express their opposition to the rezoning.
The plaintiffs also allege that county officials failed to provide adequate transportation to the meetings. Many Hogg Hummock residents depend on state-operated ferry service for transport to the mainland, where officials held the meetings on evenings after the last scheduled ferry. Residents complained that county officials waited too long to arrange for later ferry operation to accommodate their needs.
Meanwhile, Hogg Hummock residents launched a petition campaign to force officials to hold a special election to override the zoning changes.
McIntosh County’s government did not immediately respond to the AP’s request for comments.
