Bill Sizemore, Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk), April 5, 2009
Sandy Tabb didn’t set out to be a pioneer. She was just homesick.
The single mother of five had been living near Charlottesville, but she and her kids missed the Chesapeake Bay environs of her native Gloucester County.
In 2006 she saw an ad in the Gloucester newspaper for a rental property on Gwynn’s Island, in neighboring Mathews County. A spacious, four-bedroom brick house with a water view, it seemed perfect. Tabb says she called the rental agent and rented it over the phone, sight unseen.
Gwynn’s Island is, indeed, an idyllic place. A marshy triangle of sand and towering pines at the mouth of the Piankatank River, it has been beckoning mainlanders for eons. Native Americans used it as a hunting preserve and place of worship as long ago as 10,000 years.
Its first European settler, a Welshman from the Jamestown colony named Hugh Gwynn, arrived around 1635. “Gwynn” is Welsh for “white.”
Tabb didn’t know much about the island’s history. She just wanted a nice place near home with lots of room for the kids.
When she showed up to see the house in person, the rental agent was “visibly shocked, surprised and disturbed” to discover that Tabb is African American, according to a fair-housing lawsuit filed last month in federal court.
What followed, according to the lawsuit, was an ultimately successful 18-month campaign of racial harassment and intimidation calculated to drive Tabb, 39, and her children—Gwynn’s Island’s only black family—off the island.
Tabb’s allegations paint Gwynn’s Island as a place seemingly left behind by modernity, stuck in a time warp where overt racism still rears its head.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages from Bay Country Inc., the real estate firm that handled the rental, along with the rental agent and the owner of the property.
Shortly after showing the house, the rental agent, Michelle Bell, called Tabb and told her the owner had increased the rent from $950 to $1,100 because she had so many children, according to the lawsuit.
By that time, Tabb said in an interview, she had already terminated her old lease and it was too late to back out. So she agreed to the higher rent and moved in.
Bell then began routinely driving by the house and watching the new tenants’ activities, according to the lawsuit. Tabb said Bell asked her more than once who cared for her children while Tabb worked as a deputy sheriff in Richmond and attended college classes at night. Tabb also said Bell once asked whose car was in the driveway and told her “she was not to have any boyfriends” while living there.
Tabb said that on several occasions the family heard gunshots at night and awoke to find liquor bottles and trash strewn over the lawn. Once, she said, there was a cereal box near the front door with feces in it.
When she complained to Gene Jarvis, a representative of the Gwynn’s Island Civic League, Tabb said, Jarvis told her he didn’t want any “troublemakers” in the neighborhood.
“I told him I was thinking about contacting the NAACP,” Tabb said. “He said he didn’t like that organization. He asked would I like it if he called the KKK to have a little chat with me.”
{snip}
The last straw, Tabb said, came when Bell—who is also a Mathews County school bus driver—began interrogating her sons Nick, then 8, and Don, 6, at Lee-Jackson Elementary School.
Tabb said Nick told her that Bell asked him, “Does your mother have a boyfriend? Who’s sleeping with her? Is she beating you?”
Finally Bell took each boy aside in a school restroom and performed a strip search to look for evidence of child abuse, Tabb said. In Don’s case, Tabb said, she pulled the boy’s pants down and, when she found no signs of injury, angrily walked away, leaving him alone in the restroom with his pants down.
The lack of evidence notwithstanding, the Mathews County Department of Social Services received two complaints that Tabb’s sons had been abused. An investigation ensued, and the complaints were ruled unfounded.
Tabb has filed a separate lawsuit seeking to learn who made the complaints. So far, the social services department has refused to say.
{snip}
In April 2008, Tabb surrendered. She and her children left their island home with the water view and moved to Gloucester County.
Gwynn’s Island has not always been lily-white. To the contrary, it has a rich black history.
Historians citing court proceedings from the 1640s have identified one John Punch, a field hand on Hugh Gwynn’s estate, as the first African enslaved for life by law in Virginia.
Punch was one of three indentured servants who were caught after running away from the Gwynn plantation. The other two escapees, a Dutchman and a Scotsman, got 30 lashes and had their indentures extended by four years. Punch’s indenture was extended for life.
Over the ensuing decades, African Americans multiplied and contributed in myriad ways to the Gwynn’s Island economy—clearing land; planting, tilling and harvesting crops; building houses and boats; plying the bay and its tributaries for fish, crabs and oysters.
By the late 1700s, blacks accounted for more than half of the island’s population. Their numbers began a gradual decline after the Civil War, but they remained a well-established community at the dawn of the 20th century. By then, many were property owners. They built their own church and school.
Then something happened. Exactly what, remains shrouded in the mists of history, but this much is certain: Between 1910 and 1920, the island’s entire African American population vanished.
{snip}
Original article
Email
Bill Sizemore
at bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com .
(Posted on April 7, 2009)
Comments
I don’t believe her story. If the realtor didn’t want her in the house she wouldn’t have got it. He could have been polite and asked her to put in a bid and then tell her the owners rejected and made a counter offer. He could have then said there was more than one client making a bid on the house and their bid was higher. There are alot of ways to get around those pesky equal housing laws.
Right at the beginning of the article it says “she rented the property over the phone sight unseen” That’s the first lie as no property agent does rental agreements “over the phone sight unseen”
Then it says when she went to view the property the agent was “visibly shocked” that she was black. This is a third hand account of the plaintiffs perception of events.
This whole incident is just another episode of race hustling, whining complaining frivilous lawsuit nonsense.
The real story which is obvious to anyone with half a brain is - She called up an ad for property. She went to view property, did not qualify for whatever reason and is now out for a payoff.
What troubles me is not so much what this black woman did. What troubles me is the blatant lies the author of this article presents as fact. This is beyond spin.
It is presented that a black female rented a place, was a lawful sitting tenant, and was subsequently kicked out when they found she was black. Then the facts in the article wipe all that out.
I know the MSM never had very high standards, but even in recent times they had a basic standard. What is this supposed to be?
“Then something happened. Exactly what, remains shrouded in the mists of history, but this much is certain: Between 1910 and 1920, the island’s entire African American population vanished.”
WHAAAT?? C’mon, is this an actual news story from an actual newspaper or an urban legend folk myth from a comic book?
Get a grip and grow up. No wonder newspapers are going down the toilet when columnist are allowed to get away with such juvenile unsubstantiated tripe.
Never rent out a house to a prospective tennant sight-unseen! Show them the place, and if you don’t like their looks, behavior, mannerisms, or anything else about them, simply tell them that you have promised to show the unit to several more people, and that you’ll let them know yay or nay in a few days by telephone.
That the landlord was concerned about boyfriends moving in suggests it might well have been a Section 8 unit. Could there really be waterfront Section 8 rentals?
There’s an organization in western New York called Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME)
http://www.homeny.org/
They troll for people like Ms. Tabb and then run sting operations. I’ve met people who would like to rent apartments in their two story homes but they don’t because they’re afraid of being set up.
This story, based on the comments of the “homesick” single mother of five, is not reporting; it’s propaganda.
“Growing up, I always heard if you were black, you had to be off the island by sundown,”
Be indoors at sundown? Sounds about what every white person, in the ‘wrong neighborhood’, in every big city in the country must do. The paper has a lot of nerve going on about blacks possibly being chased off the island in 1920 while ignoring whites being chased out of their neighborhoods, before, after, and all during this time in every major population center throughout the country.
I don’t know if this is true or not but I do know where Miss Tabb got the story. When blacks get mad at you in their new neighborhoods, they express this by dumping their trash in your yard.
I suppose all that might have happened, but let’s see…. Tawana Brawley. Crystal Magnum. Anita Hill.
Black women don’t have a great track record when it comes to telling the truth, do they..?
This isn’t right.
1) It’s not right that in America, communities are prohibited by federal law from choosing their own memberships.
I do not believe this story either. There is no way that a property owner would rent to someone “sight unseen”, the applicant would have to fill out a rental application, provide references, pay a deposit, ect. Having rented out a mother in law apartment on my property several times, if someone whom you do not like the looks of shows up to look at an apartment or house you politely take their application and tell them that you will get back to them later. This has happened to me before, young people (white) dressed in hip hop style with “music” blaring from car stereos get a pass.
**What followed, according to the lawsuit, was an ultimately successful 18-month campaign of racial harassment and intimidation calculated to drive Tabb, 39, and her children—Gwynn’s Island’s only black family—off the island.**
—smells like a fraud to me
This story just doesn’t SOUND quite right to me. For starters I can’t imagine any real estate agent agreeing to rent out the place “sight unseen”. It just isn’t done.
This writer shows all of the signs of being a braiwashed graduate from one of our fine “journalism” schools. It is filled with leftist anti white tripe. All you need to know about this writer can be gleaned from this one sentence:
To this “journalist” an area filled with white folks is lily white (and we all know what she means by lily white), but when blacks lived in the same area, it has a rich black history.
“When she showed up to see the house in person, the rental agent was “visibly shocked, surprised and disturbed” to discover that Tabb is African American…”
How many black women who are deputy sherrifs do you know who have a standard “white” accent?
He should easily have been able to tell over the phone that she was black.
I used to live in Norfolk for several years and know full well the VA Pilot’s antics. A few years ago several blacks went on a typical pack-animal night of attacks on Whites. One of the victims was an off-duty VA Pilot employee (a photographer if I remember right.) They beat him badly and, he later testified, yelled racial insults at him while doing so. But the sanctimonious editors at the VA Pilot absolutely refused to call the attacks hate crimes. Of course we all know what the editorial response would’ve been if the races were reversed. The only thing more contemptible than a violent black is an idiot White lib. So don’t believe anything you read in the Pilot. I’m just surprised this fish-wrap is still around.
I agreed with buffalonative immediately upon reading this flimsy story.
STING OPERATION
Expect to see more as Obama is hell bent on enforcing the Fair Housing Act. He just said the other day in Turkey I belive it was, that U.S. is too segregated.
And Acorn is getting billions. They run the sting ops.
What an eye-opener! Pre-historic “Americans” had hunting preserves, and this was one of them. Until whites came along, with black, Dutch, and Scot slaves, made the black one - who managed to multiply while under the slave-driving heel of whitey- build the place up in every way, and then made them all suddenly disappear, without anybody knowing exactly how…
This is amazing in so many ways! I would like to hear more about those “Americans” of 10,000 years ago. Particularly their urban development, which is presumably what makes preservation of a hunting area necessary.
Perhaps the same thing happened to those old “American” cities as happened to the black half of the island’s population between 1910 & 1920.
I have never before heard of any place that, having been 50% black, ever became “lily-white” after that. I have heard of many places where there numbers & percentages of blacks have increased to a point that the place becomes openly declared to be black territory. Others are not welcome, and risk every gruesome danger imaginable should they defy the borders of black territory.
In fact, I am from such a place myself (Detroit). Which brings me to the repetition of the indescribably outrageous claim that blacks, under the heel of terrible whites, build things and create prosperity, which are then stolen by whites, who drive the blacks out. Infuriating! I don’t know about that island, but Detroit WAS lily-white once upon a time, and it was a great city then, with many good things.
Too bad this story is so clearly a poorly concocted fairy tale. If there has actually been someplace that has changed from 50% black to “lily-white” as in this fable, I would truly like to know a lot more about how that happened.
She saw a lawsuit before she moved to the island. A background check will rear the truth about her. Who’s next on her list.
This sounds like a nice place to live. Maybe I’ll move there.
” Lily-white ” ? Typicaaly liberal Marxist supposed ” put down “of the Caucasian race but in reality, it’s the only place to be in the minds of all ” diverse minority ” parasites, based on their constant invasion of Western Civilized countries since White politicians worldwide put in place genocidal, anti-White , anti-Christian , non-representative, radical, far-leftist immigrational policies!
Hey if there can be ‘African-Aermican ’ ‘historically black colleges’, why can’t there be ‘historically all-white neighborhoods’?
Sounds like heaven on Earth to me….and I should know!
But,oh yes, in the new Obamanation, we honkeys can’t have an existence apart from the ‘chosen few’- who seem to be multiplying like a dark cancer over this land….
This is all a set-up. This woman is trying to guilt-trip the whites. She figures she can sue and end up owning the property, or at least scam enough money to buy something else. Every word of her story reeks of black racist lies. I can imagine just how “angelic” her five kids really are in school. Typical black mother. Five children and no “baby-daddy” for even one of them in the picture. She is counting on using the NAACP and probably Morris Sleaze and the SPLC to get a load of money from “whitey”. These people NEVER fail to amaze me. And as usual, the newspapers are there to soak up her every word as gospel. I truly can’t wait to see every newspaper in Amerika go broke and out of business. Let the sleaze peddlers of Amerika get a real job, that is, if they haven’t all been sent off-shore.
“Gwynn’s Island has not always been lily-white. To the contrary, it has a rich black history”
Why is black history always “rich” and lily-white is used as a derogatory moniker. This is pure liberal propaganda.
It will be white lawyers, white judges, white juries, and white court reporters that will make the make the lives of the real estate agent and property owner a living hell.
All other white people will yawn and watch some more TV.
I’m not exactly sure when our implied Constitutional rights of “freedom of association” were lost. I think people should be allowed to rent and sell to whom they like. After all it is their property. If they only want to rent to red-headed people, as property owners they should have that right. I may not like it but it’s not my property.
The story does sound very suspicious.
The school was “interrogating” a 6 and 8 yeard old?
“It will be white lawyers, white judges, white juries, and white court reporters that will make the make the lives of the real estate agent and property owner a living hell.
You left out the words “guilt ridden whites” that are trying to prove they are not racists.
Also you have to realize that the white people in the jury have probably seen their own community trashed by minorities and immigrate groups. They now want the people of Gwynn’s Island to suffer they way they have. Whites can be their own worst enemies.
“Why is black history always “rich” and lily-white is used as a derogatory moniker. This is pure liberal propaganda.”
Anything else, as in any deviation, especially on a story like this, could very well have gotten the young reporter fired. Ease up on her.
I agree with the other posters. If this is what today passes for ‘objective journalism’, then newspapers can just go away….pass into oblivion like the ‘rich’ black mythical culture on Gwinn’s Island.
This creature’s story is so obviously a total fabrication. Do the newspapers not get the connection between their incessant lies and their ever-dwindling readership? Free newspapers land in my driveway every week or so. If I don’t kick them into the street, I throw them, unopened, into the trash. I have never subscribed to a newspaper. I bought a paper, once, when I’d run a rental ad for my apartment building. That’s it.
Which brings me to the rental agent thing. The level of fear and paranoaia among realtors, rental property owners, and rental agents is unreal. That fear has everything to do with our legal climate concerning ‘discrimination’. Not only can you not discriminate on a racial basis, you can’t discriminate against people with children: even when a unit is clearly not appropriate for children. No rental agent, no matter how inexperienced or otherwise below-par, would behave as Michelle Bell SUPPOSEDLY did. Fear and caution are the first things rental agents are taught, these days.
I finally sold all my rental properties. Was tired of not being able to use a rental agent (they’d bring in unsuitable people, because they were afraid to screen people)….was weary of having to rent units by word-of-mouth (today, you dare not run an ad)…was terrified of possible legal problems.
But back to the connection between newspapers’ lies and their falling circulation numbers. I grew up in Greenville Mississippi. Our local paper was a leader in pro-black, anti-discrimination propaganda. The editor and his progeny milked that racial cow for all manner of career and social objectives: even a Pulitzer Prize. As a kid, I’d hear nothing about the paper but bitter comments from my elders…all about its anti-white stance.
Now, these same (now elderly) relatives are amazed that I, my siblings, and my cousins do not read “the paper”. But in my generation, if the church, or the newspaper, or the cable TV, betray my interests, then we cut them off. Not one more cent. I don’t need some damn preacher lecturing me about ‘equalit’. I see no reason to support a paper that spews disinformation. And I sure as heck don’t wish to pay for cable shows that seem fawn over an endless lineup of rich blacks who subjugate their white girlfriends. I hear the Greenville paper is about to go under. Like I said, my generation isn’t into paying for lies…
I do find it interesting, though, that of the three escaped slaves in the ‘history’ segment of this article, two were white. The reason the blacks ‘multiplied’, is that, unlike the whites, the blacks were not deliberately worked to death in the fields. The ‘elites’, even back then, viewed other whites as potential competition, and thus gave blacks preferential treatment.
Lauren:
Are you talking about that ignoble paper in MS once edited and published by the ignoble Morris Dees lookalike soundalike Hodding Carter III? He went on to serve in the State Department under the ignoble supposed white Southerner President of the same surname.
My favorite line in this run-of-the-mill, endlessly tedious, ridiculous story:
“Gwynn” is Welsh for “white.”
Oh - the horror, the horror…
Question Diversity:
You know it, Baby! That’s the one. And I’m about to fall off my chair with glee, reading your description. The ‘Great Society’, which this noble family of journalists helped to promote and implement, ruined our farm economy, and bankrupted about half my family. Greenville dried up, because many people moved away, and those remaining had no money to spend in the stores. My Delta cousins spend every cent on private schools (thanks to integration due to liberal meddlers like the Kennedys and the Carters). Of course the Carters tended to send their kids to East Coast boarding schools, and, I think, summered in Maine, where I’m sure their racial crusader image helped them insinuate themselves into rareified circles. They were so far removed from us racist proles that I only remember meeting their matriarch. She was OK, although she may have overplayed her role as Dowager Empress just a bit.
Most of my generation moved away and prospered in whiter places. I’m glad I left. Greenville is now run by blacks. In a city once filled with chic boutiques (One had black walls, oiled wood, and a collection of Paul Klee paintings. Another was minimalist white, with a ceiling that was an inverted step pyramid), there are now no places to buy really basic items. The hardware stores have closed. The restaurants have closed. I won’t comment on the motels. The water supply, once listed in Town & Country as one of the nation’s best, has become iffy-at-best.
If this sounds like Johannesburg or Cape Town to you, then you’re getting the picture: despair and borderline anarchy, with whites as sitting ducks.
Thanks for the laugh, and please forgive all my typos.
Lily White …quiet, clean, no crime, cultured, rising property values, proper educations administered to the young.
Rich Black history…beat downs ,armed robberies, violent home invasion, noisy 24/7, Failed schools , children born out of wedlock , filthy streets , rodent and roach infestation, feral cat and wild dog populations, rape, murder, gunfights ,rampant drug abuse, property values approaching zero.
No wonder all the U.S. newspapers are going out of business. the reporters never leave the office.
The recent Time Magazine articles bemoaning the demise of the “old media” never mentioned the fact that their wild distortions and incessant propagandizing of gay this, black that, and Hispanic the other thing make them unreadable to anyone with an iota of common sense, the New York Times and its affiliates being some of the worst offenders.
The only newspaper I will read at all anymore is the Wall Street Journal.
I believe this story and Ms. Tabb. Mathews County (where Gwynn’s Island is located) is a racist county. The Mathews Volunteer Fire Department is ALL WHITE. No Blacks allowed. The Mathews Sheriff’s Department is All WHITE. No Blacks allowed. Mr. Sizemore should do a story on the racism that exists in the whole county. Only the Mathews Volunteer Rescue Squad allows Black members.
