Descendants of Black slaves in a tiny island community in the US state of Georgia have resumed a long-time legal battle against local government officials over a proposal to eliminate protections that for decades helped shield the Gullah-Geechee residents from high taxes and pressure to sell their land to developers.
On Thursday, the residents of Hogg Hummock and their supporters packed a courtroom with the aim of keeping protections in place that helped them keep their land.
The group opposed a proposal by McIntosh County officials to cast aside zoning ordinances that limit homes to modest sizes in the enclave of 30 to 50 Black residents on Sapelo Island off the coast of Georgia.
They said removing the zoning protections would drive out Hogg Hummock residents by attracting developers looking for profits and wealthy buyers eager to build large beach houses, causing land values and property taxes to soar and the Black residents to move elsewhere.
"It's the erasure of a historical culture that's still intact after 230 years," said Reginal Hall, a Hogg Hummock landowner whose family has deep roots on the island. "Once you raise those limits and the land value increases, we only have two to three years at most. If you talk about the descendants of the enslaved, 90 percent of us will be gone."
Commissioner Roger Lotson, whose district includes Sapelo Island, said it was not the first time Black residents of Sapelo Island were battling with the county government.
Lotson said he was trying to persuade them that Hogg Hummock was worth preserving.
"It's a step back in time," Lotson said. "And the fear of many, including myself, is that by allowing any size house over there, soon the uniqueness of Sapelo will go away."
However, Patrick Zoucks, the county manager, defended the zoning proposal in a statement issued before the Thursday meeting, saying it was "in the best interest of the residents of Hogg Hammock and all of the citizens of McIntosh County."
Before devising the zoning ordinances, some of the Black families in the enclave had sold their land to outsiders who built vacation homes. This caused soaring property values and tax increases.
The remaining Hogg Hammock residents and landowners packed the county courthouse in 2012 to appeal to the painful tax rises. County officials rolled most of them back.
The Black residents in Hog Hammock on Sapelo Island are the last known members of the Gullah-Geechee community, descendants of enslaved West Africans sent to the island in the 1700s and 1800s for forced labor on the island's plantations.
In 1996, the Hogg Hammock community was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Hog Hammock Historic District and to visit the preserved island, one must obtain a permit issued by state tourism authorities.
Any moment now I am expecting John Cleese (a veteran of Monty Python) to jump out of the bushes and announce the creation of the Ministry of Silly Wars, with Donald Trump as the deranged leader. For you youngsters out there, Monty Python’s skit, The Ministry of Silly Walks, helped make the members of MP legends. I had to reference Monty Python because the line of bullshit the Trump administration is feeding the American people and the world about the amazing, obliterating US attack on Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday morning, is more ridiculous that all of the silly walks pictured in the following video:
My hopes that Donald Trump would finally act like a responsible adult are dashed. He’s a dangerous buffoon. While the team around him are working frantically to maintain the fiction that Trump has a vision and is calling the shots on the foreign policy front, he is careening around the globe like an out-of-control cue ball on a billiards table. It started a week ago… first, he claimed...
Tuesday marks the third anniversary of the launch of the Fujian, China's first aircraft carrier equipped with electromagnetic catapults. Official media said China is about to enter a three-aircraft-carrier era, with the Fujian expected to enter service by 2025.
After the launch of the Fujian on June 17, 2022, it carried out its first sea trial from May 1 to 8 in 2024. Since then, the Fujian has completed multiple sea trials, accumulating more than 100 days of sea trial, China Central Television (CCTV) News reported on Tuesday.
Wei Dongxu, a Chinese military affairs commentator, said that the aircraft carrier Fujian has been making steady progress in sea trials, and is expected to be commissioned within this year, CCTV News reported.
With a full displacement of more than 80,000 tons, the Fujian is the world's first conventionally powered aircraft carrier to feature electromagnetic catapult technologies, according to CCTV News. The report noted that it will carry a wide variety of carrier-borne...
Chinese President Xi Jinping said Tuesday that China and Central Asian countries have explored and formed the China-Central Asia Spirit, which features mutual respect, mutual trust, mutual benefit, mutual assistance, and the pursuit of common modernization through high-quality development.
Xi made the remarks in his speech at the second China-Central Asia Summit in the Kazakh capital of Astana.
Xi said that the Chinese side has decided to establish three cooperation centers and a trade facilitation platform within the China-Central Asia cooperation mechanism.
When addressing the summit, Xi said these institutions include the China-Central Asia poverty reduction cooperation center, the China-Central Asia education exchange cooperation center, the China-Central Asia desertification control cooperation center, as well as the China-Central Asia trade facilitation cooperation....more below
