MS Coast official should resign after ‘burnt down’ comment about homes in Black district, group says

A group of Ocean Springs residents is calling for a Historic Preservation Commission member to resign after he said that houses, occupied mostly by Black residents, in the downtown area should be “burnt down.”

Carlos Barbosa, who serves on the volunteer committee, said he was being sarcastic last week when he made the remark, caught on video after a commission meeting had ended. During the meeting, a resident proposed expanding the downtown historic district.

After the meeting, Barbosa was videotaped saying, “Now you’re going to sit there and put under the historic district those houses built in the 70s that need to be burnt down right now to begin with because they don’t fit in the town . . . Do we really want to do that?”

The video was uploaded to Facebook.

“That was a sarcastic comment,” Barbosa told the Sun Herald in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon. “Obviously, I’m not saying they should burn those houses down. That would be a disaster.”

Remark offends Ocean Springs residents

But some residents took offense, including members of a group called We Shall Not Be Moved, which is objecting to the city’s proposed Urban Renewal Plan. The plan would slate Black-owned homes and other properties around downtown for monitoring to prevent “blight” and, potentially, for purchase so they could be redeveloped for parking and other uses, the plan says.

Most of the homes in the city’s proposed downtown urban renewal Area 4 are owned by black residents.

The city is having a series of meetings about the plan, which includes six areas proposed for urban renewal. An urban renewal designation would free up government funding to help redevelop those areas.

Most of the homes in the city’s proposed downtown urban renewal Area 4 are owned by black residents. About 40 residents showed up at a city meeting Wednesday night to protest Barbosa’s remarks and call for him to resign.

They flanked Richard L. Jackson, first vice president of the Jackson County Branch of the NAACP and a Moss Point resident, during a news conference. He said the city is targeting black residents for relocation.

But Mayor Kenny Holloway told residents at a meeting Tuesday night that the city would not force residents to sell or move. Some residents have questioned why the city doesn’t use federal funds to help repair homes in the downtown area, but the city’s median income is too high to qualify for that money, officials say.

The city will hold a public hearing Oct. 2 at the Ocean Springs Civic Center on U.S. 90 on the Urban Renewal Plan.

Memories of racial violence sparked

Expanding the downtown historic district was the topic at the preservation commission meeting where Barbosa made his remarks.

“He does not need to be on that committee,” James Lewis, a deacon at Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church downtown, told the Sun Herald before the news conference Wednesday. “When he spoke, he spoke volumes with the words he said. His mouth was in gear before his brain had a process at all.”

Lewis said the remark about burning down houses owned by African-Americans recalls the days when the Ku Klux Klan was burning Black people out of their homes.

“He said what he said,” Lewis said. Lewis also is a member of We Shall Not Be Moved.