The title is not meant to imply that African Americans are being disposed of. The truth is that, regardless of the fact that the forty acres and a mule were never delivered, what possessions the descendants of African slaves managed to acquire continue to be removed. The strategies are multiple. Now, in the monetary age, money is a primary tool. If money has to be paid for public services, which may or may not be delivered, and money is not forthcoming, then assets are liable to be sold away.
That the gradual deprivation of property is affecting the heirs of Sapelo Island is fairly well recognized. That the former residents of what is now the Harris Neck Wildlife Refuge have been dispossessed since the Second World War is something of which I’ve just become aware.
I've been to the Harris Neck Wildlife refuge. There's no reason why people can't live there in harmony with nature. I would note that the reason for the military "abandoning" the airfield because of the "soils" is not entirely without merit. Georgia's coastal soils, having been built up over a long time out of vegetative matter, sand and silt, is corrosive to steel and concrete, as builders of roads and shopping centers and modern residences are discovering. A century of draining the land to promote the growth of pine trees, instead of the native bamboo and other grasses, has not changed the character of the soils. As the water table rises, they go right back to corroding as they did before. And no, the engineers probably didn't know any better sixty years ago than they do now.