Celebrities including Snoop Dogg and Tyler Perry pledge support to 93-year-old Josephine Wright in the Black matriarch's battle over her home, which has been in her husband's family since the end of the Civil War.
Josephine Wright is a 93-year-old great-great grandmother who says she just wants to live out her final days in peace, on a piece of land given to her husband's family more than 150 years ago.
Her modest South Carolina home sits on 1.8 acres awarded by Union soldiers to newly freed Black residents on Hilton Head Island after the Civil War ended.
But the Black matriarch is now embroiled in a land battle with a developer that wants to push her out, she says, and celebrities including Snoop Dogg and Dallas Mavericks star Kyrie Irving have sided with her.
Irving has given $40,000 to Wright's GoFundMe campaign, which so far has raised more than $300,000 for her legal expenses.
Wright has been sued by Georgia-based developer Bailey Point Investment LLC, which is building a 29-acre neighborhood with 147 housing units. The woman has countersued, claiming she is surrounded by the new development and is being harassed and intimidated so she'll leave her home.
Wright says the company offered her $39,000 five years ago for her home on an island that is now a renowned tourist destination with expensive luxury hotels.
She laughed and refused the offer, which she found insulting.
"I said, 'You've got to be kidding me,'" Wright recalls.
"They want to buy the property. And I don't want to sell. That should have been the end of the story," Wright tells Inside Edition Digital.
Wright has seven children, 40 grandchildren, 50 great-grandchildren and 16 great-great-grandchildren. Her property, she says, is a gathering place for family events.
"We want to make sure that this property stays within my family, from generation to generation," she says.
The developer filed a lawsuit against Wright in February, claiming she was encroaching on its property. The company said that a satellite dish, a shed and a screened porch trespassed on its land and “significantly delayed and hindered” construction.
The satellite dish and shed issues were resolved by Wright paying for the removal of both, at her own expense, she and her family says. The porch is part of her house, and is on her land, she says.
The developer has built a road for the housing project that is just 22 feet from her small porch, her family says.
Construction trucks rumbling by make her house shake, Wright says. Workers have trespassed on her property and kicked up dust and dirt that covered her car, Wright says.
The family property will be engulfed by the planned housing development, and some of the units will stand three stories tall, Wright's granddaughter, Charise Graves, says.
A woman who answered the phone Monday at Bailey Point Investment LLC's office in Peachtree Corners, Georgia, said "I don't think we'd be interested at this time," when asked for comment by Inside Edition Digital. The woman then hung up.
The company's attorney did not answer a request for comment from Inside Edition Digital.
Last week, after receiving multiple media requests about the planned housing development, the town of Hilton Head Island announced it would issue no building permits until the developer reached a resolution with Wright and her family.
"We're still waiting for some results," Wright says.
Black family land ownership has been a longstanding issue on Hilton Head Island. Some of its initial families were African people who were enslaved and worked on rice and cotton plantations. Their progeny, called the Gullah Geechee, populated communities in Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina.
Wright and her husband moved into their island home more than 30 years ago, she says, after ownership of the property passed to her husband, who died in 1998. The deed was then put in her name, she says.
"Most of the people that were here, and had owned the property, were children of former slaves," Wright says. "They were given the properties by the government."
After local media started covering Wright's David-versus-Goliath land battle, national news organizations began doing stories as well. Director Tyler Perry weighed in on social media after seeing a local TV report about Wright's plight.
“I’ve pretty much been a fighter all my life,” she told the station.
"Well, that makes two of us. Ms. Wright, please tell where to show up and what you need to help you fight," the famous filmmaker wrote on his Instagram account.
Not long after, rap star Snoop Dogg donated $10,000 to Wright's GoFundMe campaign.
"Josephine Wright we stand with u !!" he wrote on social media.
The outpouring of support has warmed her heart.
"I am beyond blessed," she says.
And she will continue to fight, buoyed by her family and her faith.
"I just have the feeling that God is working his spirit, and moving us on," she says. "I just have this feeling that everything is going to be fine."
Her fight, she says, isn't just about her.
"We have a community (that) has been walked on for their property, and they didn't know how to respond," she says. "This is going to be for the people who come after me."
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