The
attempted state takeover of a Mason, Tenn., town is a reminder that
America has a long history of taking over Black towns.
In
what was described as “akin
to a hostile takeover,”
Tennessee Comptroller Jason Mumpower ordered the town of Mason to
forfeit its charter or face a state takeover. The predominantly Black
town had been under white control for over a century until 2016 when
its white officials resigned due to financial mismanagement and Black
elected officials stepped in. Now that the town is controlled by
Black people, Mumpower has pointed to 20 years of fiscal
mismanagement as a reason for the threatened takeover, as Tennessee
Lookout reports.
A takeover would provide Mumpower with veto power over any town
expense greater than $100, and block local officials from spending to
improve their community.
While
the state comptroller has backtracked from
his takeover plans, Black residents believe his attempted oversight
move was racially motivated. “It definitely has to do with that
because nothing was done when it was all whites running the town. It
was just during the Black administration,” Mason Vice Mayor
Virginia Rivers told theGrio.
Making
matters worse, and more to the point, Mason sits on prime real
estate. And the white Republicans running Tennessee must see a
goldmine. After all, Ford Motor Company is building a
$5.6 billion electric truck and battery facility a
few miles from Mason, a huge investment for the state. “In my
opinion, it most definitely relates to the Ford company coming to our
area,” Rivers added.
What
almost happened in Mason smacks of the colonization move that took
place in Michigan a
decade ago, when a law allowed then-Governor Rick Snyder to appoint
emergency managers to run financially troubled towns, cities and
school districts with almost absolute authority. It was no accident
that all of the cities targeted under the law—which stripped
local officials of their power, city
workers of
their benefits and local Black citizens of their democracy—were
majority-Black municipalities. Remember the Flint
water crisis,
when a decision to change that city’s water supply led to the
mass poisoning of its children? That was the result of an emergency
manager, and that was
not by chance.
These
more recent events are part of a centuries-old tactic of land grabs
and power moves to remove Black people from their land—in a
nation built on stolen land.
Have
you heard of the drowned
towns?
These are the historically Black towns that were destroyed
and flooded to
make way for parks, lakes and reservoirs (Viewers of Atlanta’s
season 3 premiere last week heard about a such a town in the
episode’s opening minutes). There are Black communities—where
our ancestors were buried in cemeteries—that are now buried
under a lake, like a lost city of Atlantis.
In
New York, an entire thriving Black community was destroyed to make
way for Central Park. Established in 1825, Seneca
Village had
50 homes, three Black churches and a school, and half of the Black
people there owned their property—five times higher than the
average rate of homeownership in New York City at the time. But in
1857, it was all torn down. While some residents fought the decision,
it was all for naught, as the city put its full weight behind the
park. Through eminent domain, Seneca Village landowners were
paid $700 on
average, all of their memories erased.
When
Black people own prime real estate, white society has found a way to
steal it. When a Black family owned a prime beachfront property in
Southern California known as Bruce’s
Beach,
the first
Black resort on
the west coast, the Manhattan Beach city council seized the land
after the family suffered harassment and arson attempts from the Ku
Klux Klan. That land was returned to the descendants of that family
only recently but think of the damage that was already done in the
meantime—the loss of intergenerational wealth.
Throughout
history, an effective means of taking over Black communities was
genocide. The massacres of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Okla., and
Rosewood, Fla., are but two examples of prosperous Black communities
burned down to the ground. People were lynched and forced to flee the
angry, jealous
white mobs who
thought Black folks should not own pianos.
And let’s not forget the white
business elites who
benefited from the genocide, pillaging and plundering, and were able
to expand their business into the Black side of town, unimpeded.
Over
the past century, Black families lost 12
million acres of
land, through greedy business practices and the legal system, through
racism and white domestic terrorism. The millions of Black people who
fled the South to the North were like African refugees in America
escaping racial violence and white supremacy. Most dispossessed Black
rural landowners were stripped of their land through deed
of title.
White developers and speculators have taken advantage of the communal
land ownership of Black communities (such as the Gullah-Geechee
people, where land is passed down through heirs property with no
written documents and no clear
title or will)
and have simply stolen land from under their feet.
And
in cities, vibrant Black communities were decimated and Black
homes seized by
eminent domain when the interstate highways were built.
Meanwhile,
Mason, Tenn., must use $227,000 in American
Rescue Plan funds
to eliminate the debt that white officials created years ago, with no
assistance from the comptroller’s office or anyone else, as
Vice Mayor Rivers noted.
“These
funds could’ve been used to help the city of Mason move forward
in other areas. I hear that the
Ford company is concerned about
Mason but I have seen nothing from them to help Mason,” Rivers
said. “They are receiving billions of free dollars for that
industry. They could easily have donated Mason $600,000 or more to
help us so we can also enjoy the benefits of them being our neighbor.
Don’t tell me you are concerned about your neighbors and you
are not being neighborly.”
Mason
may have dodged the bullet, but other Black towns in America will
surely come under fire because they always have.
This
commentary is also posted on The
Grio.
