Sapelo Island residents renew rezoning fight at historic community

This story was originally published by The Current GA.

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.

The original complaint filed in October challenged zoning change passed by county commissioners to allow houses on the island to double in size to 3,000 square feet. Attorneys for several members of the last intact Gullah Geechee community on Georgia’s coast say the new ordinance is discriminatory.

That complaint was dismissed on a procedural error because it named not only the county but also individual commissioners as defendants. Plaintiffs were able to sue only the county, due to the waiver of sovereign immunity set forth in a Georgia constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2020. The new legal document names the county and drops the additional defendants, but retains the same legal arguments.

About 96% of Sapelo is owned by the state. In the 434-acre enclave called Hogg Hummock, about 250 acres are owned by descendants of enslaved people brought to the island from West Africa, the complaint states. Hogg Hummock is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The nine plaintiffs fighting the county also are unchanged. Each is a Black “resident, citizen, and taxpayer of Sapelo Island and McIntosh County,” the complaint notes. They are: Georgette “Sharron” Grovner, Marvin “Kent” Grovner Sr., Lula B. Walker, Francine Bailey, Mary Bailey, Merden Hall, Florence Hall, Yvonne Grovner, and Ire Gene Grovner Sr. Attorneys from Southern Poverty Law Center and Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore are representing them.

“Zoning has become the new redlining in too many communities,” attorney Crystal McElrath of the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote in an email to The Current GA. “We continue to stand with the Gullah Geechee descendants in Hogg Hummock to challenge unjust and discriminatory zoning policies which would strip this community of its ancestral land.”

County Attorney Ad Poppell did not respond immediately to a request for comment. Attorney Ken Jarrard, of Jarrard & Davis, LLP of Cumming, Ga. confirmed his firm is handling the refiling on behalf of McIntosh. “I have not been authorized to make comment at this time,” Jarrard wrote in an email to The Current GA.

The renewed complaint was filed May 30 in McIntosh County Superior Court. It again asks the court to reverse the zoning for a number of reasons, including that it “discriminates against the historically and culturally important Gullah-Geechee community on Sapelo Island on the basis of race.”

While the zoning repeal continues through the court, activists continue their effort to undo the Hogg Hummock zoning through a county referendum. They began gathering signatures in September, aiming to collect the 20 percent of registered voters needed to put the issue on the ballot.

Credit: The Current GA

Credit: The Current GA

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