A Black Georgia community uprooted in 1942 still fights to go home

US descendants of Harris Neck’s Gullah Geechee families seek the return of ancestral land seized for a wartime airfield

A once thriving Black community along the Georgia coast called Harris Neck is now covered with greenery. During its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the area boasted a school house, general store, firehouse and seafood processing plants, and supported 75 Black households on 2,687 acres. The inhabitants were Gullah Geechee people, the descendants of formerly enslaved west Africans, who remained on the Sea Islands along the south-east US where they retained their distinct creole language and culture following the civil war.

In 1942, though, the community was leveled to the ground when the federal government kicked the families off of the land using eminent domain to build an army airfield. For nearly 50 years, the descendants of the Harris Neck community have fought to regain their ancestral land through peaceful protests and lobbying local and federal governments to no avail.