Joseph Askew Sr. reveled in good news on a recent Sunday afternoon. The 77-year-old retiree has been in a legal battle to keep his historic properties from being destroyed by the city officials in his hometown, Kinston, North Carolina. Already, they’ve demolished some of his properties. He contends it’s because of his race because officials […]
Rural Issues
Posted inEminent Domain, Infrastructure, Partner Content
Black Women Say An Amtrak Project Threatens Their Baltimore Neighborhood’s Homes — and Children
Originally published by The 19th Angel St. Jean has seen big improvements to the Reservoir Hill neighborhood of Baltimore since she moved there 11 years ago. The historic, now majority-Black community had long been considered “perpetually up and coming,” she said, and parts of it had been underdeveloped for some time. In recent years, however, […]
Posted inBlack Businesses, Rural Issues
Dollar Stores Force Local Grocery Stores to Close. This Woman Opened One Anyway.
Marquitrice Mangham never imagined that she’d open a grocery store in her hometown of Webb, Mississippi. She left in the 1990s after high school. But in 2016, she inherited her family’s farm, splitting her time between the majority-Black town of fewer than 500 people in the rural Delta and her current home in Atlanta. Webb […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Infrastructure, Partner Content, Rural Issues
How Alabama Turned to Restrictive Deed Covenants to Ward Off Flooding Claims From Black Residents
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News. SHILOH COMMUNITY, Ala.—Their land is bound forever. The deeds of three homeowners — Pastor Timothy Williams, Aretha Wright, and Page Jones — all living in the historically Black Shiloh community of south Alabama, tell the tale. Restrictive covenants attached to their deeds limit the ability of current and […]
Posted inRural Issues
This City Wants to Raze Black Properties, at the Cost of Generational Wealth.
On the east side of Kinston, North Carolina, historic buildings still bear the original architecture. Whether it’s on Queen Street, where formerly enslaved people became entrepreneurs, or Gordon Street, the neighborhood’s significance is clear. The rural North Carolina town was once known as a thriving tobacco and textile manufacturing industry and the birthplace of funk […]
Posted inBlack Farmers, Economy, Food Access
A New Road Threatens to Displace a ‘Safe Haven’ for New Orleans’ Black Youth
NEW ORLEANS — As the youth group sat in its warm-up circle, Kennedy Turner, half-jokingly, scoffed at his peers. “Why didn’t y’all react to my prom photos in the group chat?” Quickly, Cionne Chase, 19, jumped in to explain that she did, in fact, react to the photos and most definitely did not deserve to […]
Posted inRural Issues, Technology
Millions May Lose Internet Benefits if Lawmakers Don’t Act
For years, Leon Hudson struggled to get high quality home internet in the countryside of Selma, Alabama. If he wanted the service, he would “have to get a petition, go to the neighborhood, and get people to sign it for them to put their stuff there,” the 50-year-old recalled last fall about what internet service […]
Posted inEminent Domain, Money, Rural Issues
Rural Georgia Community Keeps Fighting Despite Railroad’s Win to Take Their Land
After a year-long legal battle with a railroad company over their land, landowners in a rural, majority-Black town in Georgia may be forced to sell their homes. In an initial decision on Monday, a Georgia Public Service Commission officer approved a proposed rail spur in Sparta. Several property owners had refused to sell the land […]
Posted inCulture, History, Rural Issues
The Fight to Protect One of America’s Last Historic Black Communities
ROYAL, Florida — The calmness of the wind reverberated across the burial ground as Beverly Steele motioned to her mother’s grave in Oak Hill Cemetery. Three months ago, they buried her here, just 12 days shy of her 102nd birthday. It’s not uncommon for residents in the majority-Black, unincorporated community of Royal, Florida, to live […]
Posted inCulture, History, Rural Issues
A Florida Community Faces Erasure. Residents Are Honoring Its History.
If you ask any native, they all know the history of Royal, Florida, mostly because they are living descendants of it. As 67-year-old minister Janice Rivers put it: “There was not one corner that you could go to where the individuals didn’t know each other’s names or their history. You could talk to the elders […]