- Gullah-Geechee residents on Sapelo Island fight zoning changes threatening displacement and cultural erasure.
- With support from the Southern Poverty Law Center, descendants use litigation and civic engagement to defend land.
- Josiah “Jazz” Watts emphasizes ancestral connection to land as central to community survival and identity.
- SPLC attorneys Miriam Gutman and Malissa Williams demand county respect full community participation in zoning decisions.
- Sapelo’s struggle highlights broader racial property injustice and the stakes of intergenerational wealth for Black Americans.
A community’s land is home to priceless, deep-rooted culture, treasured memories and beloved familial ties, qualities no real estate appraisal can portray. But what happens when outside forces try to push a community off that land?
That’s been the plight of the Gullah-Geechee residents on Sapelo Island, Georgia, for the better part of the last century. Most recently, developmental pressures are threatening to displace the descendants of the formerly enslaved ancestors.
With support from the Southern Poverty Law Center, these descendants are pushing back through litigation and civic engagement. Sapelo Island advocate Josiah “Jazz” Watts and attorneys from the SPLC’s Economic Justice litigation team unpack the fight to preserve one of the nation’s last intact Gullah-Geechee communities on the Georgia coast in the latest episode of Apathy Is Not an Option, “Protect Sapelo. Defend Our Legacy.”
The land is everything
Watts said he is fortunate to live among descendants who have held firm in the face of proposed development and systemic inequities aimed at severing their ties to the land.
“There’s something about being connected to the very land and the very space that your ancestors survived on after they were brought here in chains and survived this brutal Middle Passage,” Watts says. “To be able to walk on that land — what we do own of it — to be able to understand that we’re still surrounded by land that is essentially our land, is everything.”
As McIntosh County pursues zoning changes on Sapelo, SPLC attorneys want the county to respect the Gullah-Geechee’s connection to the land and facilitate their full participation in the zoning process, says SPLC senior staff attorney Miriam Gutman.
“To our clients and the community on Sapelo Island, the value of retaining their land and retaining their history and the control of their community is paramount,” Gutman says.
Land justice matters beyond Sapelo
Sapelo’s zoning issues lead to broader conversations on injustice and inequity, especially where property ownership is concerned. The Gullah-Geechee’s ability to hold on to their land in a nation where Black Americans have long been deprived of property, whether through zoning or eminent domain or redlining, is central to their ability to thrive.
“Property ownership has been, if not the primary driver, one of the primary drivers of creating and maintaining intergenerational wealth in this country,” says SPLC senior supervising attorney Malissa Williams.
The systemic issues present on Sapelo aren’t confined to the island. Watts says outsiders should try to see themselves in Sapelo’s struggle.
“I always say to people, ‘What happens to us happens to you,’” he says. “The impact, whether it’s on our environment or whether it’s on our infrastructure, goes far past the borders of the island that we live on.”
Listen to “Protect Sapelo. Defend Our Legacy” — streaming now on all major podcast platforms.
Kali Robinson is a copy editor for the Southern Poverty Law Center and an associate producer for the Apathy Is Not an Option podcast.
