By Russ bynum
SAVANNAH, GA. (AP) – The highest court in Georgia trampled Wednesday in a fight between black landowners and local officials who have weakened the long -standing protections for one of the last communities of the South Gullah -Geechee founded by released slaves.
Residents of the island of Sapelo widely preserved tried to make the zoning changes imposed by those responsible for the county of McIntosh who doubled the size of the houses authorized in a small enclave called Hogg Hummock. The owners fear that change leads to unaffordable tax increases, threatening one of the most historically unique black communities in America.
The Supreme Georgia Court heard the legal arguments on Wednesday on the question of whether residents can try to repeal the 2023 zoning changes by forcing a special election.
The residents of Hogg Hummock and their supporters last year gathered more than 2,300 voter petition signatures registered in search of a referendum in the coastal county at 60 miles (96 kilometers) south of Savannah.
McIntosh county commissioners continued to arrest the referendum. A judge of the lower court canceled the vote less than a week before the elections, judging that he was illegal after hundreds had already made ballots early.
Philip Thompson, lawyer for Hogg Hummock residents, urged the State Supreme Court to declare that they have a “constitutional right to a referendum” on zoning changes so that they can defend a place “a cultural and historical treasure”.
The lawyer for the county of McIntosh, Ken Jarrard, argued that the powers of zoning “are absolutely different” of the others granted to the governments of the county by the constitution of Georgia, and are therefore not subject to the disputed by referendum.
About 30 to 50 black residents live in Hogg Hummock, also known as Hog Hammock, a community of dirt roads and modest houses founded by their enslaved ancestors who worked the cotton plantation of Thomas Spalding.
It is among a number declining small communities launched by emancipated island slaves – known collectively under the name of Gullah, or Geechee in Georgia – dispersed along the Côte de Caroline du Nord in Florida. The scholars say that their separation from the continent has preserved these communities a large part of their African heritage, their unique dialect in skills and crafts such as fishing and weaving baskets in the event of molding.
Hogg Hummock obtained a place in 1996 on the national register of historic places, the official list of precious American historic sites. But for the protections to preserve the community, residents depend on the local government of the County of McIntosh, where 65% of the 11,100 residents are white.
Hogg Hummock’s land owners said they were blind in the fall of 2023 when the county commissioners voted to relax the zoning restrictions adopted from decades earlier to help protect black residents of the pressure community to sell land held by their families for generations.
McIntosh county lawyers claim that the concerns of residents are exaggerated, claiming that in a court depositing that the authorization of larger houses in their community is so “banal” that it “borders the banal”.
The questions of which the Supreme Court of Georgia has nothing to do with the fact that Hogg Hummock deserves special protections. Instead, the judges are invited to deal with technical details as to whether local zoning laws can be challenged by referendum and if the County Commissioners of McIntosh had the right to continue to stop the October vote.
The case follows a decision in 2023 of the Georgia judges who confirmed a referendum which prevented the County of Camden from the construction of a launch of commercial rockets. The court judged that a rarely used provision of the Georgia constitution allows veto citizens to the decisions of the government’s government in the ballot box.
This decision encouraged Hogg Hummock residents to continue their own referendum to reverse the Zoning changes from McIntosh.
But the lawyers of the Comté commissioners argued that the constitutional provision authorizing the referendums of citizens do not apply to local zoning decisions, because the powers of zoning are treated in a section distinct from the Constitution of the State. They also say that the judge of the Court of First Instance was wrong to suspend the zoning changes pending a decision of the Supreme Court of the State, which could take six months.
The lawyers of Hogg Hummock residents say that the referendum should not have been interrupted and that the Comté commissioners had no legal position to continue it, citing the High Court decision in the Spaceport case.
The Supreme Court weighs the affair of the island of Sapelo while the residents recover from an independent tragedy.
Hundreds of tourists visited the island on October 19 when a footbridge collapsed on the Ferry quay operated by the State, killing seven people. This happened while Hogg Hummock celebrated his annual cultural day festival, a day intended to be a joyful respite against the concerns of the uncertain future of the community.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
