Why is South Carolina still building roads on top of Black communities?

‘They are destroying everything that was given to us [...] by our parents and foreparents.’ Photograph: gguy44/Getty Images/iStockphoto

For decades, Bobbie Anne Hemingway Jordan lived on the same property, in the house where she was born. Her backyard was often filled with the sound of her two dozen grandkids as they ran to and from the park next door. For generations, Hemingway Jordan’s family lived and farmed on the land, and the 82-year-old believed it would be passed down to future generations as well. “I thought it would be left to my children, and they could leave it to their children,” she said.

Then, in 2021, appraisers offered to buy the land and her house. The sum she received for her three-bedroom, two-bath house was just enough money to purchase a one-bedroom apartment in a nearby community.