Harris Neck, Loss and Reparations

As I type this post, I am looking out over my land. Well, "land" makes my modest suburban acre — including house and yard — sound more grand than it actually is. Nevertheless, this little plot we own is an important part of my family's lifestyle and the centerpiece of our wealth (such as it is).

There is value in land — power that goes beyond just money. So it should come as no surprise that American history is littered with stories about people of color being denied access to land by theft, violence or governmental maneuvering.

In fact, some families are still fighting to regain valuable land lost generations ago.

Just ask the Harris Neck Land Trust, which represents a group of African-American families (and some white families, as well) who are battling to return to what is now a wildlife preserve in Georgia. According to a recent New York Times article, Harris Neck was deeded by a plantation owner to a former slave in 1865. Black families settled there and built a community that was "too independent for the comfort of McIntosh County’s whites."  Generations later during World War II, when federal officials were looking for a place to site an Air Force base, they selected Harris Neck, and families living there were summarily pushed out — with the promise, some residents remember, that they'd be able to return after the war.

That didn't happen. Blacks were left and given a mere $26.90 per acre for what they lost; whites received $37.31. After the war concluded, a wildlife refuge was eventually established.

Now, these displaced families want the right to return to Harris Neck and live in harmony among the area's rich flora and fauna, as they did for nearly 100 years before the government took over. In keeping with that heritage, the Trust has proposed a low-impact living plan using solar energy and other green tactics.

Meanwhile, the regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposes that rather than return the land, authorities should establish an 'annual homecoming day' at Harris Neck, and that former residents should collaborate on an 'interpretive kiosk.'”

Yeah.

Environmental groups have stayed conspicuously mum on the Harris Neck issue. But it's worth noting that the former inhabitants of Harris Neck come from a culture that is as endangered as the environment in which they once lived. Former residents — descendants of enslaved West Africans — boast Gullah/Geechee heritage and a distinctive culture that is being threatened by development in Georgia and South Carolina's low country.

The displacement of black families is, sadly, not a unique story in American history. A few years ago, PBS Independent Lens documentary Banished! told the story of the thousands of black families who were run off of their land and out of their hometowns by white residents. In the film, descendants of displaced black families lament the loss of a family legacy. Edith Lester, whose family was expelled from Forsyth County, Ga., said, "Would have been great if we would have still had something that, you know, our kids and grandkids would be able to hold onto. We don't have anything to, you know, pass down...There would have been a lot of land there and a lot of blacks there had they not did what they did, had they not ran them all out in 1912."

In researching my own family history, I have learned that ancestors on both my maternal and paternal sides were able to purchase land generally reserved only for white citizens. And they fought hard to keep it — my maternal grandfather recalled his father sitting up nights in front of their Alabama home, holding a shotgun to ward off those who might come to harm his family and take their land by force. My ancestors' land remains in the family to this day.

There's no doubt that my ancestor's land ownership paved the way for some of the opportunities I enjoy today. The land has also allowed members of my father's family to continue and expand upon the agrarian lifestyle of their forefathers and mothers.

Whether they are victims of legal or physical aggression, African Americans deprived of legally-owned land haven't just lost land. They've also lost heritage, homes and wealth that could otherwise have been passed down over generations.

How to compensate for such losses? Banished discusses the possibility of reparations, in the form of monuments and money. But what the former residents of Harris Neck want most of all is to return to their home. As Kenneth Dunham, 80, who lived among the moss and cypress of Harris Neck as a child, says: “We’re going to move on, and we’re going to come on in spite all. Won’t that be a happy time, when we all get to heaven? I’m talking about Harris Neck, now.”

Photo Credit: Tambako the Jaguar