A 93-year-old South Carolina woman is fighting to keep the home that has been in her family since before the Civil War, with support from both herself and her family members standing behind her.
Pearl Graham has become known as "The Tulip Lady" among her Wheatland neighbors and she continues to inspire. Each spring she plants beautiful tulips which bring joy and admiration from everyone in Wheatland.
Josephine Wright
Josephine Wright's diminutive frame and gentle voice bely her fiery Gullah character. For decades since shortly after the Civil War, this property had been passed down through her family until recently when construction work on Jonesville Road near Hilton Head Island South Carolina started near it threatening its ownership and rights to protect. Now though, that struggle must continue even harder as construction begins close by that could completely transform its surroundings and disrupt Josephine Wright's home on Hilton Head Island South Carolina.
Bailey Point Investment Group, the developer behind a 29-acre, 147-unit housing development that's going up next to Wright's 1.8-acre lot, claims she's infringing upon their land and impeding their progress, according to WSAV reports. As part of their lawsuit against Wright and her granddaughter Charise as well as Delores Wright (former daughter-in-law and property co-owner). Their complaint alleges Wright's shed and screened back porch are located on their land; these claims reportedly came after she refused an offer of $7,000 compensation by Bailey Point Investment Group to sell her grandmother's property at auction instead. Wright believes they may sell her grandmother's land off as part of an attempt at financial pressure put upon them from Bailey Point Investment Group who claim they claim.
Bakari Sellers--an former state legislator and civil rights attorney--has come forward to assist Wright. After calling out on Twitter to his 400,000 followers asking for any lead, he now provides his services pro bono; an account on GoFundMe has raised over $7,000. Furthermore, Wright's extended family have rallied together around her cause.
As soon as Wright's family heard she would have the chance to address Hilton Head officials on Thursday, they rushed to book plane tickets from as far away as New Jersey and Maryland in order to attend. All arrived for the event despite power tools clattering and construction trucks arriving. While they understand Hilton Head is an attractive location for developers who wish to build, their grandmother has experienced harassment and intimidation that goes beyond legal rights.
Bailey Point Investment Group
Josephine Wright, 93, has been sued by developers who want her to sell land her family has lived on since after the Civil War ended. But this Hilton Head Island, South Carolina resident has no plans of leaving anytime soon: she told WCSC Thursday she plans on staying until her final breath. Bailey Point Investment Group filed suit last month against Wright for interfering with their 29-acre development project by using Wright's back porch and shed on her property as building sites; Wright's granddaughter says her family paid thousands in an attempt to remove items but even this did not stop harassment from Bailey Point Investment Group.
In this case, Bailey is accused of violating fiduciary duty when he attempted to secure new clients for Concierge Investments with services different than what had been offered through Eagle Asset Management (EAM). According to reports, Bailey made contact with some existing EAM clients to lure them away for his new firm - with each offering more services that were not currently provided through Eagle Asset Management (EAM).
As one example, Bailey allegedly recruited clients with financial and investment planning skills into his firm and invited them to dinners where he presented seminars and recruited new clients. Although Bailey claimed only to contact EAM clients for legal work, Anne Graham King, Margaret Schuler, Jack Huff, and Susan Schuler filed affidavits saying otherwise.
Bailey may also have breached his fiduciary duty when selling an annuity to David McWilliams for more than $28,000 despite knowing the annuity was tied to an insurance policy owned by a trust containing EAM stock. Under Idaho law, when selling unequal terms of stock to minority shareholders a majority shareholder owes an fiduciary duty toward all involved.
As well as his experience in finance, Bailey also boasts an exceptional record in recruiting senior executives for public and private equity-backed companies. According to his LinkedIn profile, he has recruited senior-level talent across sales, marketing, operations, finance, supply chain and strategy roles at public and private equity-backed firms like Manpower (NYSE:MAN), Addison Planet Group Eliassen PSI WilsonHCG among others. Furthermore he has worked on numerous public/private debt/equity capital raisings, such as CDI Corp's take-private acquisition in 2009.
Wright’s Family
Josephine Wright stood a full head shorter than those around her at a press conference held June 22. However, her diminutive frame and soft-spoken voice belied her determination to protect land that had been in her family since just after the Civil War's conclusion - something necessitated by developers seeking to develop it for development purposes.
Wright was born in 1903 and studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin before working his apprenticeship under Joseph Lyman Silsbee at Adler & Sullivan before going on to start his own successful engineering firm in Oak Park, Illinois upon graduation.
Wright always desired writing and began submitting short stories and articles to magazines such as Left Front, New Masses and Black Boy at 28 years old. By this point he had earned enough money to rent his own apartment in Paris - which he described as being like living "on an island in a sea of manuscripts". Wright would spend at least five hours every day typing away on his Underwood typewriter.
Native Son, published by Wright in 1940, earned him national acclaim and creative freedom to write. The novel told of Bigger Thomas, a 20-year-old black man at 20 who became a regular on bestseller lists and even featured by Book-of-the-Month Club selections. Wright focused on writing as his literary career flourished while beginning a relationship with Dhima Rose Meadman, an attractive white modern dance teacher from Detroit.
At 40, Wright had become one of America's most celebrated Black authors. Having completed the Great Migration from Memphis to Chicago at age 14, where he dropped out of high school early to make money by sorting mail at the post office and caring for medical research animals at Michael Reese Hospital; selling insurance policies door-to-door; writing fiction; and sorting mail in post offices both places - and eventually writing fiction as well - Wright became America's foremost Black writer.
His novels, essays and short stories warned of Blacks awakening to an oppressive society which wasn't ready to include them. He was interested in psychoanalysis and signed a petition supporting America's entry into World War II published in New Masses magazine.
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