Word: tama
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After a dozen years of island life on Maui, Tama Starr decided to return to New York City in 1982 to join the family business, which her grandfather had founded: Artkraft Strauss, known for its innovative Times Square signs--and the giant ball it lowered each New Year's Eve. She hoped to help her father, who had suffered a heart attack shortly after inheriting the business, to develop the company so it could thrive in the coming century. She knew it wouldn't be easy: her dad was irascible, and the place was "crawling with relatives...
...scoop up believers. The believers have been making quite a spectacle in the tiny town of Eatonton, Ga. (pop. 5,000), seat of the not much larger Putnam County (pop. 17,000). There, the man born Dwight York, of Sullivan County, N.Y., decreed the founding of Tama-Re, Egypt of the West, a 19-acre evocation of the ancient land, complete with 40-ft. pyramids, obelisks, gods, goddesses and a giant sphinx. It is the holy see of the Nuwaubians...
...fast, say officials in Putnam County. They have just emerged from a long wrangle with York over building-code violations in Tama-Re. And prominent citizens are smarting from the words of a leaflet campaign the "fraternal organization" inflicted on them. Among those criticized was county commissioner Sandra Adams, whom the Nuwaubians called a "house n_____." "They feel because I am black and they are black I should be in their corner," says Adams. "But I have to obey the law, and so do they...
...being held against their will. "No one in Georgia has ever dealt with anything like this," he says. "You only draw parallels to Waco, and I don't want a Waco. This is a cult." A Nuwaubian spokesman scoffs at the idea: "There is no one being held on Tama-Re against their will. No one is allowed to move to Tama-Re that is under 18. The children that are here belong to grown adults who have made the choice to be Nuwaubians. Nuwaubians are insulted when they are confronted with accusations that they are brainwashed or are being...
...Nuwaubians speak to the press on the record. Those who do are proud of the group. "You are here on the land," a Nuwaubian man said pointedly to a reporter in Tama-Re. "Do you see a cult or a compound? We are just people who have come together in love and peace." Still, the Nuwaubians, who now call themselves the Yamassee Native American Moors of the Creek Nation, are increasingly high profile in local politics. They have enrolled their children in public schools, registered to vote and joined local branches of civil rights organizations en masse. About...