“Amara, you could get a significant amount of money,” she said. “You have every right to it.”
“I know,” I said. “File it.”
She did. Six months later, Pell County’s insurance carrier settled my claim for $425,000.
I retained na settlement.
I gave $200,000 to establish the Hattie Mae Greene Scholarship at Fort Valley State, for students from Pell County who want to study law or criminal justice. I gave $125,000 to the Georgia Legal Services Program, earmarked for heirs’ property cases in rural Georgia. That’s land passed down without a will through generations, the sort of property that’s easiest to steal because nobody holds clear title.
And I gave the last $100,000 to the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Halvorsen Springs. Aunt Lorraine and Hattie Greene had taught Sunday school there together for sixty years. The deacons used it to fix the roof, build a ramp so people with walkers and wheelchairs could get in, and start a small legal clinic in the fellowship hall on the first Saturday of every month.
