Patty Durand…Commissioners taking land owned by Black people

I normally stay in my lane in these newsletters and my lane is energy. But I’m going to depart in this instance because of a vote by PSC Commissioners on September 15th that was so egregious that it’s important everyone knows what happened.

In addition to electricity, gas and telecom, the PSC regulates railroads. In fact, railroads are why most state commissions were formed. In 1879, the Georgia General Assembly established the Railroad Commission of Georgia for the purpose of regulating railroad passenger and freight rates and operations, and added utilities later. In 1922, the Legislature changed the name of the Railroad Commission to the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) “to reflect the increasing variety of services and utilities included under the Commission’s jurisdiction.” according to the PSC website.

Approximately two years ago the Sandersville Railroad Company filed a petition with the PSC to seize land through eminent domain. Eminent domain refers to the process by which governments or an authorized private entity may expropriate property “for public benefit without the owner’s consent but with compensation”.

The taking of this land is definitely without the owner’s consent.

What makes this case egregious is that it violates the purpose of eminent domain, which is when the government or authorized entity takes land for public benefit. For example, if a town needs water and the only way to get it is through a private landowner’s property, the government can use eminent domain to acquire the land. Most people know what eminent domain is so I won’t go into that further.

In this case, it’s time for some context. Sparta, Georgia, is in Hancock County. Sparta  is a poor majority Black community of 1,300 people located a hundred miles southeast of Atlanta. Residents include descendants of James Blair Smith, a Black man who – against all odds – obtained and farmed for almost a century, an amazing story in its own right. That’s because Black farmers in Georgia, as with all deep south states, usually lost whatever land they were able to acquire after slavery through violence and terrorism. This period of state sanctioned violence lasted from reconstruction in 1879 through the end of Jim Crow in 1965 when civil rights laws were passed. The KKK operated with impunity for nearly 100 years, in rare cases of arrest all white juries acquitted defendants and Sheriffs were often members of the KKK themselves.

The violence and terrorism was extensive and brutal. The Equal Justice Initiative has documented over 4,000 lynchings in the South, including 600 in Georgia. Sometimes the lynching was done alone in the woods and sometimes they were civic events.

So being a Black man who dared to rise above his station to own land was risky business.