McIntosh County voters are scheduled for a countywide vote on the single issue of Hogg Hummock zoning on Oct. 1, 2024, even as the county heads to court to prevent the referendum from taking place.
Community groups in McIntosh County filed a petition in probate court Tuesday to force a county-wide vote on a controversial zoning change on Sapelo Island’s Hogg Hummock.
Black residents of Hogg Hummock on Sapelo Island refiled a legal challenge to zoning they fear will lead to higher taxes and push them off their ancestral Gullah Geechee community in McIntosh County.
Attorneys plan to refile a lawsuit over zoning changes that they say threaten one of the South's last Gullah-Geechee communities of Black slave descendants. A Superior Court judge threw out the original civil complaint Tuesday, ruling that the lawsuit improperly named individual commissioners of coastal McIntosh County.
A lawsuit by Black descendants of slaves that challenges zoning changes affecting their island homes is before a Georgia judge, who must decide whether to allow lawyers to amend the civil complaint to avoid having it dismissed.
Black residents of Sapelo Island are mounting a legal challenge to a controversial rezoning they fear will lead to higher taxes and ultimately spell the demise of the only remaining intact Gullah-Geechee community on the coast.
Lifelong residents of a tiny Georgia island who are descended from slaves are pushing to give voters a chance to override local zoning changes that they say threaten one of the last Gullah-Geechee communities in the U.S. South.
The rezoning more than doubles the maximum legal size of homes on Hogg Hummock, worrying many that Gullah Geechee descendants will be priced out of their ancestral land.
One of the few remaining Gullah-Geechee communities in the U.S. is in another fight to hold onto land owned by residents' families since their ancestors were freed from slavery. Residents of the tiny Hogg Hummock community on Georgia's Sapelo Island packed a county government meeting Thursday to oppose a proposal to end zoning protections enacted to protect the enclave from wealthy buyers and tax increases.
Descendants of enslaved African community have been on Sapelo Island for 13 generations. But just 30 Geechee descendants of the original 44 enslaved families remain — and the General Assembly quietly passed a bill on March 2 to modify the rules of the Sapelo Island Heritage Authority without the input of those residents.
The community’s legal battles with the state and local authorities began in 2016. The residents received a $19 million settlement from the State of Georgia in 2020 forcing state agencies to upgrade the transportation facilities that the historic Black community residents and descendants rely on to travel to Sapelo.
For a while, Purple Ribbon Sugarcane thrived on Sapelo Island, off the Georgia coast. Then, disease nearly wiped it out altogether in North America, but...
