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Breaking News Black Excellence: 19 Black families buy over 90 acres of land

Inori

Inori

NAWF
Did a search but didn't see anything on this. homie sent this to me the other day and I thought it was dope as hell!

Some of the article

The Freedom Georgia Initiative aims to plant the seeds of a potential new Black Wall Street in Toomsboro, Georgia.

A group of 19 Black families purchased almost 97 acres of land in Toomsboro, Georgia, to plant the seeds for a thriving new city. Georgia-based realtor Ashley Scott launched The Freedom Georgia Initiative with her friend — entrepreneur and investor — Renee Walters to spearhead the purchase. In an op-ed published on Blavity, Scott said it was the tragic death of Ahmaud Arbery — a young Black man who was killed while out for a jog — that inspired her to seek therapy and eventually establish a community in Georgia where Black people can feel safe.
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After launching their Freedom Georgia Initiative, Scott and Walters attended local city council and zoning meetings. Then, she and 19 other families came together to purchase the large amount of land in Toomsboro.

“We figured we could try to fix a broken system, or we could start fresh,” she wrote. “Start a city that could be a shining example of being the change you want to see. We wanted to be more involved in creating the lives we really want for our Black families, and maybe, just maybe, create some generational wealth for ourselves by investing in the land. Investing in creating a community that is built around our core values and beliefs.”
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Scott plans to equip their newly owned land with Black farmers, vendors, suppliers and contractors. On Freedom Georgia’s Facebook page, it notes that it “hopes to be an innovative model for self-sufficiency, environmental sustainability, and cooperative economics among BIPOC communities across the African Diaspora globally.”

“Amass land, develop affordable housing for yourself, build your own food systems, build manufacturing and supply chains, build your own home school communities, build your own banks and credit unions, build your own cities, build your own police departments, tax yourselves and vote in a mayor and a city council you can trust,” Scott concluded in her op-ed. “Build it from scratch! Then go get all the money the United States of America has available for government entities and get them bonds. This is how we build our new Black Wall Streets.”
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Sources:
www.revolt.tv

19 Black families buy over 90 acres of land to create a safe city for Black people

The Freedom Georgia Initiative aims to plant the seeds of a potential new Black Wall Street in Toomsboro, Georgia.
www.revolt.tv www.revolt.tv

blavity.com

Why 19 Black Families Purchased 96.71 Acres Of Land In The Midst Of Protests And A Pandemic - Blavity

If you’re interested in sharing your opinion on any cultural, political or personal topic, create an account here and check out our how-to post to learn more. ____ Watching the video of George Floyd being murdered, after having just watched the video of Ahmaud Arbery being murdered...
blavity.com blavity.com

www.becauseofthemwecan.com

19 Families Purchased Over 90 Acres of Land In GA To Create A City Safe For Black People - Because of Them We Can

Cooperative economics at work! In Toomsboro, Georgia, a group of 19 Black families banded together to create what has the potential to be the next Black Wall Steet. Black people are resilient, we’ve had to be to thrive under systems that weren’t built for us. This resiliency has created...
www.becauseofthemwecan.com www.becauseofthemwecan.com
 
A lil bit outside of the Dallas it’s 10 acre lots all over for sale for 40K

Just land. Not stores or anything out there
 
19 Black families purchase 96 acres of land to create a 'safe haven' for Black people
Kamilah Newton and Marquise Francis

www.yahoo.com

19 Black families purchase 96 acres of land to create a 'safe haven' for Black people

Nineteen Black families purchased more than 96 acres of land in Georgia to create a safe space free of oppression. Eventually, they hope to grow the area into an incorporated, self-sustaining community.
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com


Kamilah Newton and Marquise Francis
September 3, 2020, 5:51 PM EDT·7 mins read




19 Black families purchase 96 acres of land in Ga. to develop a safe haven for Black people

We are literally the
answer to our own problem,
In the face of a pandemic that has hit Black Americans harder than almost any other group, while the nation continues to confront the toxic legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, two Georgia women have come together to build a community that will be a place free of oppression, “a tight-knit community for our people to just come and breathe.”

They are calling it Freedom, Georgia, and draw their inspiration from Wakanda, the fictional comic-book country that was the setting for the movie “Black Panther.”
Ashley Scott, a realtor from Stonecrest, Ga., who was driven to seek therapy by her reaction to the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, a young Black man jogging in a white neighborhood, said that after several sessions she realized that her problem was 400 years of racial oppression and trauma dating back to the establishment of slavery in North America.


“We are dealing with systemic racism,” she wrote in an op-ed for Blavity last month. “We are dealing with deep-rooted issues that will require more than protesting in the streets.”
With her friend Renee Walters, an entrepreneur and investor, she founded the Freedom Georgia Initiative, a group of 19 Black families who collectively purchased 96.71 acres of rural land in Toomsboro, a town of a few hundred people in central Georgia, with the intention of developing a self-contained Black community. The space will have small homes for vacation use and will host weddings, retreats and recreational functions, and may eventually evolve into an incorporated, self-sustaining community.
“It’s now time for us to get our friends and family together and build for ourselves,” said Walters, who serves as the president of the organization, in an interview with Yahoo News. “That's the only way we’ll be safe. And that’s the only way that this will work. We have to start bringing each other together.”
Familes from the Freedom Georgia Initiative on their newly purchased land in Toomsboro, Ga. (Freedom Georgia Initiative)

Familes from the Freedom Georgia Initiative on their newly purchased land in Toomsboro, Ga. (Freedom Georgia Initiative)

“We really just want you to come and hang out and feel safe,” she explained. “You don’t have to worry about the Karens of the world and anything like that. You just come in and have fun. We’ll have a sportsman area, like a Black sportsman area with fishing, hunting, shooting range, ATV trails. We really just want to build a tight-knit community for our people to just come and breathe.”

(“Karen” is a derisive nickname for white women who assert racial privilege in an offensive manner.)

Walters acknowledges the challenges ahead, as history hasn’t always been kind to Black Americans’ aspirations to own property.
America’s first Black town dates back to 1738, near what is now known as St. Augustine, Fla. Thirty-eight fugitive slaves seeking refuge formed a town named Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose. Historian Jane Landers explained, “As news of the foundation of Mose spread through the South Carolina plantations, groups of slaves broke loose and tried to make for Florida,” causing some to call it their “first Promised Land.”


In response to numerous slave revolts, the English enacted a yearlong siege of Florida 一 finally capturing Fort Mose in 1740.
More than a century after the establishment of Fort Mose, and two years after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, in direct response to the Ebenezer Creek Massacre, Union General William T. Sherman attempted to create more Black towns with his promise of 40 acres and a mule. Ultimately, Abraham Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, a Democrat considered sympathetic to former slave states, overturned Sherman’s orders by returning the land to colonizers 一 inspiring freedmen to begin buying their own land.

By 1910, Black Americans owned more than 14 million acres of land 一 more than ever before in the history of the United States — but due to the Great Migration and the racist policies that accompanied it, 90 percent of that land was lost by the 21st century.


According to ProPublica, “the leading cause of Black involuntary land loss” has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as “heirs' property.” Heirs' property is land that has been inherited without a will, making the owners “vulnerable to laws and loopholes that allow speculators and developers to acquire their property.” It makes up “more than a third of Southern black-owned land — 3.5 million acres, worth more than $28 billion.”
Families on the land they purchased in Toomsboro, Ga. as part of the the Freedom Georgia Initiative. (Freedom Georgia Initiative)

Families on the land they purchased in Toomsboro, Ga. as part of the the Freedom Georgia Initiative. (Freedom Georgia Initiative)More

In order to begin reclaiming Black-owned land and generational wealth, Scott believes Black Americans must create their own social, political and economic institutions. “Amass land, develop affordable housing for yourself, build your own food systems, build manufacturing and supply chains, build your own home school communities, build your own banks and credit unions, build your own cities, build your own police departments, tax yourselves and vote in a mayor and a city council you can trust,” she wrote. “Build it from scratch! Then go get all the money the United States of America has available for government entities and get them bonds. This is how we build our new Black Wall Streets. We can do this. We can have Wakanda! We just have to build it for ourselves!”

Wakanda is both a fictitious nation whose magic remains undisturbed by colonization and a cinematic embodiment of the benefits of separation, as opposed to segregation.
Walters said Chadwick Boseman, who died last week from colon cancer and played Black Panther in the film, “passed the torch” to the Freedom Georgia Initiative.

In order to begin reclaiming Black-owned land and generational wealth, Scott believes Black Americans must create their own social, political and economic institutions. “Amass land, develop affordable housing for yourself, build your own food systems, build manufacturing and supply chains, build your own home school communities, build your own banks and credit unions, build your own cities, build your own police departments, tax yourselves and vote in a mayor and a city council you can trust,” she wrote. “Build it from scratch! Then go get all the money the United States of America has available for government entities and get them bonds. This is how we build our new Black Wall Streets. We can do this. We can have Wakanda! We just have to build it for ourselves!”
 
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Continued

Wakanda is both a fictitious nation whose magic remains undisturbed by colonization and a cinematic embodiment of the benefits of separation, as opposed to segregation.
Walters said Chadwick Boseman, who died last week from colon cancer and played Black Panther in the film, “passed the torch” to the Freedom Georgia Initiative.

“I feel like now it’s up to us more now than ever that we can achieve this, because we saw it in the movie and why not just create that,” she said. “I feel like that’s where he would want us to do.”
Keeping money within the Black community is also a big part of the Freedom Georgia Initiative’s push.


“Just like for Black Wall Street, their dollars circulated around 11 times before it left the community,” Walters said. “That’s just something we want to bring back. We want to encourage businesses to come and we want to circulate our dollar within the community before it leaves out to someone else. We want to make everybody in our areas wealthy.”
The aftermath of the Tulsa Race Massacre, during which mobs of white residents attacked Black residents and businesses of the Greenwood district in Tulsa, Okla., in 1921. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

The aftermath of the Tulsa Race Massacre, during which mobs of white residents attacked Black residents and businesses of the Greenwood district in Tulsa, Okla., in 1921. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)More


Black Wall Street was the nickname for the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Okla., a prosperous Black neighborhood and commercial district that was terrorized and burned in the notorious race riot of 1921.


Overall, Walters says, the Freedom Georgia Initiative has been well received and embraced by others in the town. “Every time we go to the land and in the actual city, we haven’t received any backlash,” she said. “Everyone is really nice and welcoming.”

But she adds there are a host of “internet trolls” who have nothing good to say and claim segregation on the group’s behalf, which she vehemently disagrees with.

“We’re building where we can come and be safe,” she explains. “Chinatown has these areas. ... Why is it that when we build we’re considered racist or we’re segregating ourselves? Why can’t we have our own safe haven? Every community has them.”
She added: “Everyone is welcome in Freedom, but it’s based on seeing Black people flourish.”
Just over 150 years removed from slavery, Black Americans continue to push for equity and equality within the country. The Freedom Georgia Initiative is looking to spark change.
“Every time we tried to [flourish in history], somebody tried to burn it down ... and I’m just tired of that,” Walters said. “It’s time for us to build our own.”[/b]
 
Is there an IG accou t to keep up w their progress?

Soundz interesting but ALOT of work to go
 
Glad to see it made Yahoo amongst other news outlets. Can we get these threads merged?

Breaking News - Black Excellence: 19 Black families buy over 90 acres of land

Did a search but didn't see anything on this. homie sent this to me the other day and I thought it was dope as hell! Some of the article The Freedom Georgia Initiative aims to plant the seeds of a potential new Black Wall Street in Toomsboro, Georgia. A group of 19 Black families purchased...
ablackweb.com ablackweb.com
 
Maaan,before a single slab of cement is laid

or a single seed is planted they better have a

military in place for defense !
 
I get it, I really do... But 90 acres ain't even close to a square mile. (1 square mile = 640 acres)

You can buy plots of land in Michigan 2000+ acres for less than a mil sittin on rivers or with a lake with mad wild game on deck plus timber. Wanna start something, do it where the resources are plentiful.
 
Beautiful. Hope they locked and loaded self preservation is key. Are they black Americans or nah?

 
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This is great and inspiring... Shows you don't need the help of black celebs and athletes to make a change in the life of yours and others, bring in too much money as a collective for that.
 
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