A 93-year-old woman in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, has reached a massive fundraising goal as she fights to keep her land on Jonesville Road out of a developer’s hands, the Island Packet reported Friday.
The family of Josephine Wright initially set the fundraising goal at $350,000, but as of Monday morning, the amount was $361,810, according to the GoFundMe page.
Imagine your family has owned land since the end of enslavement, where your 93-year-old grandmother lives. Generations of family history is there.
Now imagine an investment company is bullying your grandmother. This is happening right now to the family of Josephine Wright. A pic.twitter.com/s4KY3la7qQ
— Whitney Alese (@TheReclaimed) June 28, 2023
The Packet article continued:
Wright reached the milestone after another large donation from NBA point guard Kyrie Irving, this time of $24,240. Irving became the largest contributor to the fundraiser this summer after donating $40,000 to help pay the Wright family’s legal fees in the ongoing lawsuit levied against them by Bailey Point Development LLC.
In August, rapper Snoop Dogg and fellow celebrities also lent a hand to help the senior citizen during her time of need, according to Breitbart News:
NBA star Kyrie Irving is helping 93-year-old Josephine Wright who is fighting to keep her land in Hilton Head, South Carolina. For 30 years, Wright has lived at the property, a 1.8-acre piece of land that they are trying to bully her into selling to developers. pic.twitter.com/Z1NnhJ8buk
— Black Millionaires ® (@Blackmillions_) July 19, 2023
“I’ve just never seen a multimillion-dollar company handle themselves like this,” granddaughter Charise Graves said during an interview in July.
“The harassment was very stressful,” Wright added:
The lawsuit that has been ordered to enter mediation was filed in February and the developer wants to build a 147-unit neighborhood on the road. The 29 acres it bought “envelopes the Wright family’s 1.8-acre parcel, which has been in the family since shortly after the Civil War,” according to the Packet.
Wright’s attorneys have alleged the company has been harassing, intimidating, and trespassing on the elderly woman’s land while trying to bully her into selling, the Breitbart News article detailed.
The lawsuit claims the woman’s porch encroaches on the company’s property, according to the Packet.
“Leave me alone and let me live in peace. That is my theme,” Wright stated during an interview in August:
The woman’s family has said that after the lawsuit is resolved, they want to use the leftover funds to create a nonprofit with a mission to assist other Gullah landowners in keeping their property.
According to the Visit Beaufort website, “The Gullah are African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and Georgia, which includes both the coastal plain and the Beaufort Sea Islands.”
“The Gullah are known for preserving more of their African linguistic and cultural heritage than any other African-American community in the United States,” the site read, adding that in recent years the Gullah people group has worked hard to retain control of their traditional lands.
According to the Packet, the family has yet to receive a settlement or mediation offer from the developer. However, local officials said construction on the site cannot move forward until the legal issue has been resolved.
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