Supporters of the Livsey family and the Promised Land community had a simple message for Gwinnett County commissioners on Tuesday night: “Hands Off.”
Several supporters spoke at the commission’s meeting on Tuesday. At one point, the commissioners were set to vote on taking more than 10 acres of property from the Livsey family, a prominent Black family in south Gwinnett that has owned the land for more than 100 years, through eminent domain for a historical park.
That effort was removed from the meeting agenda after a public backlash, but supporters of the Livseys and the broader promised land community fear the county is not done.
Those supporters, some of whom held up signs saying “Hands Off The Promised Land,” said they are willing to fight for the land.
“One of the things I heard last week or a few weeks ago was, ‘If you’re not at the table, you’re probably on the menu,'” Karen Anderson Archer, who grew up in the Promised Land, told commissioners. “We’re here to let you all know tonight that we are at the table, we’re not on the menu and we too know how to play chess.”
Opponents of the effort to use eminent domain to take the land from the Livseys are bluntly calling it theft by county leaders.
Although the county retreated from using eminent domain to take the land, Promised Land supporters see the effort as a symptom of an ongoing series of Black families being treated as less than equal to white families.
“Historic African–American communities are being erased,” Gwinnett County NAACP President Penny Poole said. “Elimination of historic African–American communities is not only happening to the Promised Land, but offers by government entities to (minority) home owners are below market value to purchase land when they say it’s needed for community expansion.
“Eminent domain, just taking it when they won’t agree, is a tool.”
The…
Read the full article here