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 […]
Rural Issues
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 […]
Posted inEminent Domain, Rural Issues
A Year After Attempted Land Grab, Hilton Head Elder’s Case Is Settled
Until her last breath, 94-year-old Josephine Wright fought tirelessly to protect her family’s land from developers. Two months after her passing, the battle is over. The lawsuit filed against Wright has reached a settlement, according to a report from South Carolina Public Radio. Altimese Nichole, a family spokesperson, said the settlement requires developer Bailey Point […]
Posted inHousing, Rural Issues
Rural America Has an Eviction Crisis, Too
Black rural Americans are still feeling the strain of the failed promises of the Reconstruction era and discrimination in lending, as redlining has pushed them away from homeownership into tenancy. A new report illuminates the struggle: Southern Black counties have higher eviction filing rates than their white counterparts. In four states — Georgia, Mississippi, North […]
Posted inRural Issues
What Solutions Exist to Eradicate the Digital Divide?
Capital B’s “Disconnected: Rural Black America and the Digital Divide” project explores the disparate effects of broadband accessibility on Black Americans in the rural South. Check out the first story here. You can read the second story here. The digital divide in the Black rural South has been a problem for decades — but the […]
