Photo Credit: Gilbert Flores for Variety
Tyler Perry has pledged to help an elderly South Carolina woman save her home from overzealous developers. 93-year-old Hilton Head, South Carolina native Josephine Wright is dealing with harassment and a lawsuit from Bailey Point Investment Group. Wright, however, is undaunted as she told WSAV: “I’ve pretty much been a fighter all my life…I guess they figured I would become so unnerved with the harassment that I would say take it. But they don’t know me. I am here to fight for what I have.” Perry caught wind of Wright’s plight due to a video that has circulated on Instagram, prompting the philanthropist, actor, and director to share it while asking Bailey to let him know what she needs from him.
Wright alleges that the development company has slashed her tires, thrown trash on her property, and had a snake hung from one of her windows after she refused their offers to buy her land. According to Kelly LeBlanc of the Jonesville Preservation Society, the city seems to have accepted the contract without letting the community know about its effect on them “Once we did some investigation, we found out this 147-unit development was going in and it had already been approved before anyone even knew about it…The town is looking very closely at the permitting, at the approval phase. The town is making sure it is done to the letter of the law.”
In addition to Perry, former South Carolina State Representative Bakari Sellers has joined forces with Wright’s lawyers. Representative Sellers has been asking folks to call the developer and lawmakers in an effort to help her keep her property. Wright’s family has also set up a Go Fund Me to assist with lawyer fees and NBA star Kyrie Irving has donated a generous $40,000. At the time of publication, the fundraiser has accrued a little over $150,000. Sellers draws a direct line to the very American practice of land being taken away from Black people as he explained to WSAV: “We are very big on generational wealth, or trying to accrue it…When you talk about poverty in our communities it’s because we don’t have land, and when we do, people want to take it away.”