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Georgia's African-American families to build 'safe haven for people of color', will welcome pro-Black Whites too

The organized Black cooperative town named Freedom will be built on purchased land just east of Macon, Georgia, in Wilkinson County, in August next year

A 97-acre tract of land in rural Georgia has been bought by African-American families with the intent of creating a city that will prove to be a safe haven for Black Americans.

The organized Black cooperative town named Freedom will be built on the purchased land just east of Macon, Georgia in Wilkinson County, in August next year. It is the brainchild of real estate agent Ashley Scott and her friend, Renee Walters, an investor and entrepreneur. "We figured we could try to fix a broken system or we could start fresh. 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," Scott said.

But the initiative did not intend to exclude the White population of the country altogether. White people who are "pro-Black people" can also apply to live there. Scott told CNN: "I'm hoping that it will be a thriving safe haven for people of color, for Black families in particular. It's impossible to have anything exclusively Black because our families are integrated. We are an integrated, tolerant and diverse community even as Black people, so we don't intend for it to be exclusively Black, but we do intend for it to be pro-Black in every way."

She continued, "So much land was stolen from Black people. So much land was stolen from indigenous peoples. So, to be able to come back and reclaim this land from whoever may have had it, because we don't know the story and that's the reality, we don't know so many of our stories, but we can make a new story and that's what we hope to do here."

The idea to build an exclusive city for the Black community came after Scott and Walters were moved by the calls for racial justice that began following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. 

The land in question will be developed in phases. Initially, the land will be cleared so that farming can begin. A man-made lake will be created for sustainable fishing. The two women also need to submit a request for a city charter after the completion of the initial phase. "Watching our people protesting in the streets, while it is important, and I want people to stay out in the streets, bringing attention to the injustices of Black people," Scott said.

"We needed to create a space and a place where we could be a village again, a tribe again. We wanted to create this safe space where we can address our own issues and concerns," she added.

After they voiced their initial plan to build a safe haven for Black Americans, the two women started to see a lot of interest among their friends and relatives to join in their efforts to start a pro-African-American city. "We both have Black husbands. We both have Black sons," Walters said.

"And I was starting to get overwhelmed and have a sense of anxiety when my husband will leave the house to go to work. So, it was like, 'OK, what can we do?' And once I saw the post of Toomsboro going viral, about a town being on sale, I was like, 'Oh, this is perfect'," she added.

Walters also said that she was wrong about thinking a new city can take decades to build as the pace of setting up the city has accelerated with the overwhelming help of supporters. “We thought it would be a five to 10-year process, but with the outpouring of support that we've gotten we can make this happen much faster," she said. "As soon as we can acquire the land, the people, the bodies we are going to be pushing this."

Check out more on their initiative on Instagram or on their official site.