Black Landowners Fight to Reclaim Georgia Home

[groovedaddy]

HARRIS NECK NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Ga. — When the managers from the federal Fish and Wildlife Service talk about this 2,800-acre preserve of moss-draped cypress, palmetto and marsh, they speak of endangered wood stork rookeries and disappearing marsh habitat, dike maintenance and interpretive kiosks.

But when the members of the Harris Neck Land Trust talk about it, they speak of injustice, racism and a place they used to call home.

In 1942, Harris Neck, a thriving community of black landowners who hunted, farmed and gathered oysters, was taken by the federal government to build an airstrip. Now, the elders — who remember barefoot childhoods spent climbing trees and waking to watch the Canada geese depart in formation — want to know why they cannot have it back.

The Harris Neck Land Trust, formed by the former residents, their descendants and a handful of white families who owned land but did not live on Harris Neck, is asking Congress to return the land. The Fish and Wildlife Service maintains that the land is a crucial part of the national refuge system.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/us/01harris.html?th&emc=th

[sabbat hunter]

1. it seems that the owners

were compensated (although the black owners got less money than the whites, something that should be rectified). Was the compensation given, fair value at the time? If so, other than making equal the compensation, I do not see how this is bad. We need our nature and wildlife areas to be preserved. Even if current plans only call for developing part of it, once back in private hands it would eventually all get developed. That cannot happen.