Georgia's highest court sides with slave descendants fighting to protect threatened island community

Georgia’s highest court on Tuesday sided with Black landowners in a fight over zoning changes that weakened longstanding protections for one of the South’s last Gullah-Geechee communities founded by freed slaves.

- by Kate Brumback Associated Press

The state Supreme Court unanimously reversed a lower court ruling that had stopped a referendum to consider repealing a revised zoning ordinance passed by McIntosh County officials two years ago. Residents of Sapelo Island opposed the zoning amendments that doubled the size of homes allowed in a tiny enclave called Hogg Hummock.

Homeowners feared the change would result in one of the nation’s most historically and culturally unique Black communities facing unaffordable tax increases. Residents and their supporters submitted a petition last year with more than 2,300 signatures from registered voters, seeking a referendum in the coastal county, which lies 60 miles (96 kilometers) south of Savannah.