Source: Leon Bennett / Getty
Celebrity stylist Tameka Foster is on a mission. The mother of five boys lost one of them to Atlanta’s dangerous recreation area, Lake Lanier. Her son Kile Glover died July 16, 2012, two weeks after a boating accident on the lake. He was 11.
But he’s not the first or the only person to lose his life on Lake Lanier. There have been 500 deaths on the man-made lake since its creation in 1956. Victims included Lisa Lopes’ 18-year-old stepbrother Parron Monroe Deas, who drowned in an accident there in 1997. She got a tattoo in his honor.
Some people believe the man-made lake is haunted as it was built over an African American community named Oscarville. Oscarville, a Black community in Georgia’s famously racist Forsyth County, was intentionally flooded to make way for Lake Lanier.
It had already been decimated by years of racism including involuntary land transfers that had dwindled its population to 250 families. Up to 700 families in total were relocated from the area, along with 20 cemeteries. Debris from the communities that Lake Lanier was built over has surfaced, including stadium seating from Gainesville Speedway, which was revealed during a 2007 drought.
That is why Foster wants to see the lake drained, cleaned and restored along with additional safety measures put in place. She started a Change.org petition to make it happen. But it’s an uphill battle as the lake was created, in part, to provide drinking water and power to some Atlanta residents as well as to stem flooding.
“There was a town called Oscarville, amongst other towns,” Foster told NewsOne’s Bilal Morris. “Lake Lanier is 26 miles. I’ve heard there’s a church in a steeple under there. There’s a gas station. There are gas pumps, old fences with barbed wire that were in place, farms and stuff that were all flooded. It wasn’t properly cleared.”
Foster’s petition seeks 5,000 signatures and already has 4200. Despite naysayers in her comments after posting the petition, she says she simply wants to prevent other parents from having to deal with the grief she and her family experienced.
“I’m getting comments on Instagram that are not nice. They’re like, ‘None of this will bring your son back.’ I said, you’re absolutely right, but it’ll prevent another person’s son from being in that position. You know what I mean? I don’t think it’s going to bring him back. I’m not in denial. I don’t think some magical clearing of a lake is going to bring my son back. But it will prevent the trauma of another tragedy for another family. It could possibly be the saving grace for someone else.”
Once the petition meets its goal, Foster’s hope is that she can meet with lawmakers and stakeholders in Lake Lanier to try to find solutions.
“My idea is not to drain the lake and close it up. I don’t want the homeowners to lose their lakefront land or the property values or whatever, but they do need to take some measures to really make sure it’s safe.”
