人兽性交

When she first heard the clatter outside her house in Royal, Florida, Etta Johnson Huff didn鈥檛 think much of it.聽At 70, the proud woman who lives on the same land acquired by her ancestors after the Civil War is not easily ruffled.

But when she looked out her window that morning this past February, what Huff saw sent her outside in a hurry. Workers hired by the Sumter County government were pulling up the signs that she and more than 150 other residents of the historic Black homesteading community, one of only two still in existence, had put up as part of their efforts to save their heritage. The signs, reading 鈥淐ommunity of Royal 鈥� Preserve History, Not Industry!鈥� were rapidly filling the bed of a motorized cart, the workers wrenching them out of the ground and flinging them one atop another.

Seconds later Huff, still strong for her years, was running. Overtaking the workers, she grabbed as many signs from the cart as she could, fiercely chastising them all the while.

The workers said they had been told to move the signs because they were in the county right of way, essentially on public property. Huff and other residents 鈥� while noting that dozens of other signs advertising real estate and various services in the right of way had been left untouched 鈥� hammered their signs back into the ground, slightly farther back from the roadway.

The frustration of that morning was emblematic of the tense push and pull the residents of Royal have been engaged in over the past two years, as they have raced to stave off one threat after another to the history and character of their beloved community, founded by newly emancipated Black homesteaders after the Civil War. Historians say Royal, today home to approximately 1,200 Black residents, may be the only such rural community in the country to survive with its landscape largely unchanged and the original plots overwhelmingly in the hands of descendants of the founding homesteaders.

Huff鈥檚 story is just one of several collected in an oral history project as part of the community鈥檚 efforts to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The project was spearheaded by , Ph.D., an assistant professor at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, who is the author of the original nomination to the National Register. The Southern Poverty Law Center provided support to this project by producing a series of videos featuring the residents telling their stories.

The videos add texture to what is already a rich historical record of Royal, characterized in the National Register nomination by Gonz谩lez-Tennant as 鈥渙ne of the most compelling examples of a rural, historically African American community in Florida.鈥�

In the video: Members of the unincorporated community of approximately 1,200 Black residents in Royal, Florida, discuss how they have sought to preserve the history of Royal from development.

In a sign of its resilience, Black homesteaders and their descendants in Royal were able to hold on to their land even as the Black community in , just 50 miles away, was wiped out in 1920 by a white mob, and when Rosewood, another Black community 77 miles away, was burned to the ground by a white mob three years later.

Fighting development pressure

The development pressure has been unrelenting. Royal is just 60 miles south of Gainesville. The Villages, among the largest retirement communities in the country, is just 6 miles away and expanding fast.

First, there was a turnpike extension the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) wanted to route right through Royal. Although that project was eventually abandoned, FDOT is now working on widening parts of I-75 that go through Royal. Then there was the rezoning by county officials 鈥� who do not recognize Royal, an unincorporated area, as a historic resource 鈥� to accommodate planned industrial, high-density residential, and commercial development in the tranquil farming community.聽

White landowners, many of whom do not live in Royal, have objected to the inclusion of their property in the historic district.

Apparently acquiescing to the concerns of those landholders, the Florida state preservation office redrew the proposed boundaries of the Royal Rural Historic District in ways that also exclude properties owned historically by Black families descended from the original homesteaders who made Royal distinctive.

Last year, the community turned to the 人兽性交 for help. Since then, the 人兽性交 has been providing legal representation, policy guidance and communications support to uplift the Royal community鈥檚 efforts to preserve their history and land. The 人兽性交 represents (YPAs), a nonprofit founded by Royal resident Beverly Steele that originally led the effort to have the community added to the Register.

On behalf of YPAs, the 人兽性交 submitted two petitions to the National Park Service contesting procedural and substantive deficiencies in the state of Florida鈥檚 treatment of the nomination. The National Park Service, which administers the Register, has agreed with the 人兽性交 twice, most recently in April, finding that the state failed to adequately justify why it excludes certain Black-owned properties from the historic district despite evidence showing they have long been a part of the community of Royal.

鈥淭he residents of this community recognize the importance of these historic boundaries in any listing of Royal on the National Register,鈥� said Malissa Williams, a senior staff attorney with the 人兽性交鈥檚 Economic Justice litigation team. 鈥淎nd that鈥檚 why they鈥檙e fighting so hard to make sure that they are historically accurate and that they are well documented. The oral histories collected by Dr. Gonz谩lez-Tennant provide further support to the historic boundaries. It is our hope that the state will finally get this right, after having the nomination sent back twice by the National Park Service.鈥�