Law, Power, and Justice

www.theguardian.com/news/2026/jan/22/gullah-geechee-georgia-development-referendum

The community is home to the Gullah Geecheepeople, descendants of enslaved west Africans who worked on cotton, indigo and rice plantations from North Carolina to Florida. In places like South Carolina’s Hilton Head Island, the Gullah Geechee population was nearly wiped out by development starting in the 1960s.

On Sapelo Island, post-enslavement, freed Black folks were granted land in Hogg Hummock in part because it was seen as marshy and less desirable than the rest of the island. It is the only remaining sea island community of Gullah Geechee people in Georgia.

“All that’s family,” Grovner summed up. “All those people who want to build houses here ain’t gonna close me in.”

Outsiders building large vacation houses was what was at stake in Tuesday’s election in McIntosh county, where Sapelo is located – only the second citizen referendum on a county plan or policy in Georgia history. (Nearby Camden county voters defeated a county plan to build a rocket-launching pad through a referendum in 2022.)

The referendum, brought about after more than 2,000 registered voters in the county signed petitions, allowed residents to vote on whether they were for or against a zoning amendment increasing the amount of residential square footage permitted in Hogg Hummock from 1,400 to 3,000.

Unofficial results released on Tuesday evening showed that nearly 85% of 1,869 county voters opposed the zoning increase.

Allowing larger houses to be built on the island would have opened the door to developers – “all those people” Grovner named – which then would raise taxes, making it harder for Gullah Geechee