ATLANTA (AP) — Residents and property owners in one of the few remaining Gullah-Geechee communities of slave descendants on the Southeast coast are suing a variety of state and county agencies, accusing them of discrimination and neglect.
The lawsuit alleges landowners on Sapelo Island, along Georgia’s coast about 68 miles south of Savannah, pay high property taxes while receiving few basic services from surrounding McIntosh County or the state of Georgia. They say that’s making it nearly impossible for them to live there and is destroying their community and culture. Attorney Reed Colfax said he filed the lawsuit Wednesday in federal court in Atlanta. The Gullah, referred to as Geechee in Georgia, are scattered in island communities over 425 miles of Atlantic coast where they’ve endured after their slave ancestors who worked island plantations were freed by the Civil War. Hogg Hummock on Sapelo, also known as Hog Hammock, is home to fewer than 50 people and is one of the last such communities from North Carolina to Florida. Scholars say these people long separated from the mainland retained much of their African heritage from a unique dialect to skills and crafts such as cast-net fishing and weaving baskets. But isolation also caused Gullah communities to shrink. The state claims it owns 97 percent of the island, but its “ownership stake is based on a history of fraudulent land transfers and land theft by white millionaires throughout the twentieth century,” the lawsuit says. And a zoning ordinance designed to protect the Gullah-Geechee community is flouted in favor of mostly white developers who build expensive vacation homes that violate zoning requirements, the lawsuit says. Reginald Hall, 49, grew up in Ohio but spent countless vacations on his family’s property on Sapelo and said his family roots there go back 224 years. Now he’s a leader of an effort to improve conditions for the community. “We’re looking for those protections to say our survival and sustainability is more important than vacation homes and losing the land by measures we consider illegal,” he said following a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Atlanta. Among the defendants named in the lawsuit are the state of Georgia, McIntosh County and the Sapelo Island Heritage Authority. Adam Poppell III, the attorney for McIntosh County, declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying he had not yet seen it. He said county officials had already dealt with an outcry by Sapelo residents over steep property tax increases they saw in 2012 when their properties were reassessed. The county agreed to roll back most of those increases. “We’re astounded they’re bringing actions, especially after we lowered the values across the board,” Poppell said. The state attorney general’s office, which represents state agencies, had no comment, spokesman Nicholas Genesi said in an email. The county doesn’t maintain the roads, run a modern sewer system or provide emergency services on the island despite collecting high taxes, Colfax said. A perfect example, he said, is that an annual garbage fee paid by all county landowners guarantees curbside pickup on the mainland but provides nothing for the Gullah-Geechee. The state operates the ferry that runs back and forth between the island and the mainland, but it runs on such an infrequent schedule that it makes it tough to live on the island and have a job on the mainland, Colfax said. Combined with the fact that there are few jobs available on the island, it’s virtually impossible for working families to live there, he said. Sarah Drayton, 87, one of the 57 property owners who brought the lawsuit, has fond memories of visiting her grandparents on the island when she was a child growing up in coastal Brunswick. Now she lives in a mobile home on the land they owned and treasures the rich history. “When I walk some of those roads, I can see and feel my grandparents because they walked those same roads,” she said in a phone interview. “I would like to be able to pass that down to my children and grandchildren.” ___ By Kate Brumback; Associated Press writer Russ Bynum in Savannah contributed to this report. Source
0 Comments
Attorney Reed Colfax speaks at a news conference outside federal court where he filed a lawsuit on behalf of one of the few remaining Gullah-Geechee communities of slave descendants on the Southeast coast, suing state and county entities accusing them of discrimination and neglect, Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2015, in Atlanta. The lawsuit alleges landowners on Sapelo Island pay high property taxes while receiving few basic services from surrounding McIntosh County or the state of Georgia. They say that’s making it nearly impossible for them to live there and is destroying their community. (AP Photo/David Goldman) ATLANTA -- Residents and property owners in one of the few remaining Gullah-Geechee communities of slave descendants on the Southeast coast are suing a variety of state and county agencies, accusing them of discrimination and neglect.
The lawsuit alleges landowners on Sapelo Island, along Georgia's coast about 68 miles south of Savannah, pay high property taxes while receiving few basic services from surrounding McIntosh County or the state of Georgia. They say that's making it nearly impossible for them to live there and is destroying their community and culture. Attorney Reed Colfax said he filed the lawsuit Wednesday in federal court in Atlanta. Click here to read more Source: AJC.com 4:59 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2015 | Filed in: News By Rich Phillips, CNN
October 26, 2013 -- Updated 1559 GMT Sapelo Island, Georgia (CNN) -- It's a culture struggling to survive. Fewer than 50 people -- all descendants of slaves -- fear they may soon be taxed out of the property their families have owned since the days of slavery. They are the Gullah-Geechee people of Sapelo Island off Georgia's coast, near Savannah. This small, simple community is finding itself embroiled in a feud with local officials over a sudden, huge increase in property assessments that are raising property taxes as much as 600% for some. Many say the increase could force them to sell their ancestral properties. "That's part of the American history. That's part of what built this country," said Charles Hall, 79, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who was born under a midwife's care in the same home he lives in today. "Sapelo being the only intact Gullah-Geechee community in the country that's left, that is a part of history. It will be a shame not to preserve" it, he told CNN. McIntosh County's decision to reappraise homes on the island sparked the problem. County Attorney Adam Poppell told CNN that the Gullah-Geechee culture is invaluable, but the properties had been historically undervalued due to errors in previous property appraisals. "We have to follow the law, and assess at fair market value," he told CNN. To fix the problem, he said, "the state has to create a special exemption for cultural communities." Sapelo Island, about the size of Manhattan, is a short 20-minute boat ride from Georgia's coast. But in some ways, it seems much farther. The bumpy, unpaved dirt roads are a constant reminder that this is an island with few services. There are no police officers, fire rescue personnel, doctors or hospitals. There is no school or post office. People drive their garbage to a single garbage compactor. There are no grocery stores. The gas station is open only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ninety-seven percent of the island is owned by the state of Georgia. Residents live on a small section known as Hog Hammock. A ferry makes three round trips each day, with the last departure from the mainland at 5:30 p.m. Residents can't miss that ferry if they want to work or go to school on the mainland. They complain this limits their employment opportunities and prohibits their children from participating in after-school activities. Many have fled the island over the years because opportunity just doesn't exist there. Cornelia Bailey has been one of the loudest defenders of the island where she was born and raised. She's the ninth generation of her family to live on the island, whose slave roots are traced back to Angola. She said the taxes on her one acre property have gone from $600 a year to about $2,300. "All these years of getting nothing, then all of a sudden, they want to lay this tax on your back and still not give you nothing," she said. "For the last three years, we've been paying $128 a year for garbage collection. I don't even have my green garbage can. Where's my can?" She added, with a hint of anger in her voice, "You can call 911, but nobody gonna squeal up to your front door, so forget it." Homeowners are hiring lawyers now to have their displeasure heard in state and federal court. Reed Colfax -- a partner at Relman, Dane & Colfax, one of the leading housing discrimination litigation firms in the country -- is heading full speed into court to have the tax bills struck down for at least half the residents of the island. "The solution is that we freeze the tax assessments, we get the services to this island, so the people can live here," he said. "Families can move back in, have children here, have jobs on the mainland, or even develop their own economy here on the island." Tax Assessors Board Chairman James Larkin suggests the Sapelo residents brought this issue on themselves, as some began to sell their property to developers and non-islanders who built bigger, upscale vacation homes, causing valuations to increase, and along with them their property taxes. "If they hadn't started selling their property, there wouldn't be a problem," he told CNN. But Reginald Hall isn't buying that argument. He and his family own three properties on more than seven acres of property on the island. The assessed "fair market value" of their property went from $176,075 in 2011 to $910,333 in 2012. That brought on increase of more than 500% in property taxes. He is refusing to pay the taxes and he refuses to sell his family land, which he says is worth over $3 million. "Once you leave, you are separated from more family members ... which is a real interruption in the generational teachings on this island of the culture," he said. "We leave, and we're gone. Can't come back, because if we try to come back after we sell, you can't afford to buy," he told CNN. Cornelia Bailey said her land may be worth about $384,000, but in reality it is priceless. "I told one guy it was priceless, and he said everything has a price, and I said, you don't know me, this is priceless. You don't have enough money to buy it, so forget it," she said. "We have a legacy that most people would die to have. We're fighting to keep it even for the unborn." see original article FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 16, 2011 Media Contact: (912) 601-3000 GA STATE SENATOR DONZELLA JAMES PROPOSES STATE INSTITUTIONS AND PROPERTIES STUDY COMMITTEE Historic Geechee Gullah Culture Equity in Governance Press Conference, Public Hearing Set for Tomorrow ATLANTA/SAPELO ISLAND, Georgia – Tomorrow, Senator Donzella James, member of the Senate State Institutions and Properties Committee, will conduct an historic public hearing that spans a Geechee Gullah cultural history of over two hundred years on Sapelo Island. Data submitted into the official record of the public hearing will be submitted for full review in a State Institutions and Properties Study Committee being proposed by Sen. James.
To publicly announce her proposal, Sen. James will hold a press conference tomorrow at noon in the Georgia State Senate Pressroom (Room 204, Coverdell Legislative Office Building). SCLC newly-elected President Isaac Newton Farris, Jr., Rainbow Push Southeast Regional Director Joe Beasley, and Concerned Black Clergy President Rev. Dr. Richard Cobble will speak in support of Sen. James’ proposal and her role in this matter on the State Institutions and Properties Committee. Sen. James will conduct a public hearing delving into data collection and research efforts that indicate land grabs of title deed - purchased land (owned by descendants of Sapelo Island’s enslaved West African ancestors) started taking place in 1871, and have continued to the present. Efforts are already underway by Sen. James to reach across the legislative branch to the executive branch in developing strategies – long-term and short-term – to resolve existing equity in governance issues for the Geechee Gullah descendants on Sapelo Island. “This is a chilling and compelling issue that concerns us all,” states SCLC President Farris, Jr., the nephew of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Senator James will propose a State Institutions and Properties Study Committee on this matter during next week’s legislative session. The purpose of the study committee is to conduct thorough research into the framework of initial skeletal legislation entitled “Geechee Gullah Culture Equity in Governance Act.” The Equity in Governance legislative act is slated to be introduced during the 2012 legislative session of the Georgia General Assembly. A delegation of descendants from Sapelo Island, along with representatives and stakeholders of the Geechee Gullah Culture Non-Government Organization, Inc., will be testifying in Senator James’ public hearing tomorrow from 1:00pm - 4:00pm in Room 307 of the Coverdell Legislative Office Building at the Georgia State Capitol. The public is invited to attend. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
August 2022
Categories |