Writing the History of the Future

My cousin Trevor Dines was in town from New York City last week, and naturally, he got the full Savannah Sideways treatment, which means traipsing all over downtown while stuffing as many historical tidbits and to-go cocktails as possible into one afternoon, along with a few dozen camellias into our tote bags.

It was an absolute delight but also exhausting. Distilling down this town’s complicated charms for anyone is a huge responsibility, let alone for an erudite Gen Zer with an Ivy League degree. There’s just so much ground to cover and so many juxtapositions—downtown’s opulent architecture and its imminent demolition of Yamacraw Village public housing, for example, and also, peeling shrimp with one’s fingers at a white tablecloth restaurant. Maybe you’ve had a similar experience of hyperventilating while trying to *explain* Savannah over Bloody Marys at Vic’s on the River.  

In the interest of at least hewing to an accurate timeline, we started out by kicking down the 18th-century cobblestones on River Street, where a gaggle of friendly gutter punks had set up shop to beg from unwary tourists. One of these enterprising hucksters—do they still call themselves train kids?—called out to the African-American couple walking in front of us, “Happy Black History Month! Got any spare change?”

The man handed over a couple of dollars and said, “Thanks, son, but every month is Black History month.”

The kid nodded solemnly. “Yep, that’s right. Got any more for my dog?”

The gent laughed at the brazenness and kept walking. The punk’s socially-targeted sales pitch hadn’t caused any harm, and he wouldn’t be the first to use February’s centering of Black heritage as a marketing scheme. However, surrounded as he was by used to-go cups and cigarette butts, I wondered if he realized he was literally squatting at ground zero.    

In Savannah, where Black History is integral to *all of the history*, it was good to be reminded not to juxtapose it as separate from some other, mainstream narrative—even as Black History Month’s essential education and glorious celebration elevate the stories and voices previously excluded from the city’s story. 

While Trevor would have been better served with a tour with African American-led Footprints of Savannah or Day Clean Journeys, time crunches and family obligations meant he got my clumsy interpretations of the tribulations and contributions of Savannah’s Black citizens over the centuries (with lots of recommended reading for the plane ride home.) 

As we walked and talked, I found that it’s not always obvious how it connects to the whole. Not so much on River Street, where men, women, and children were once bought and sold and now alcoholic slushies and flashy dinosaurs preside over a sanitized homage to slavery and the only monument to (and just gonna say it, not a great likeness of) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the entire city, just installed a few weeks ago.  

Anyone else think this doesn’t look much like Dr. King?

Lacking other physical references, I pointed upriver to the Port, where the archeological remains of villages of Creek and Gullah Geechee lay beneath the behemoth cranes, and also in the general direction of The Weeping Time marker on the way west side of town, where the largest slave auction in history took place in 1859. Black history is all around us, I tried to explain, but like so many of its contributors, not always visible.

Up on the bluff, there were more tangible touchpoints. While Trevor didn’t get a chance to witness the hidden Underground Railroad chambers of First African Baptist Church, he saw secrets hidden in plain sight on the brick red facade of The Old Cotton Exchange. The moons, flowers, and other designs may look like frilly decor, but they are actually West African adinkra symbols, shown to me by Sistah Patt Gunn of Underground Tours a few years ago. 

How many Adinkra symbols do you see?

Lording over the view was the Talmadge Bridge, carrying the name of one of Georgia’s most insidious racists. I opined that a better option for the future would be the W.W. Law Bridge to honor the local legend whose historical preservation and cultural contributions continue to reverberate throughout the city, or at least another Civil Rights leader. But ya know, politics. 

Attempting to present *all the history* and its paradoxes was making my head spin and my dogs bark, and after surreptitiously snatching a gorgeous fuschia c.japonica from Oglethorpe Square, it was a relief to abdicate to the professionals at the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters. If you haven’t visited lately, the sumptuous Regency-style mansion museum was re-interpreted in 2018 to co-present the lifestyle of one white, wealthy family along with the names of the enslaved people who served the fancy dinners, cleaned the linens, and drew the baths. These slave quarters, with their haint blue ceilings right smack in the middle of the city, remind that the histories we’ve been taught to hold separate have always been intertwined. 

Contained within the OTH’s storybook staircases and satin window treatments is the artful admonition that “it’s never too late to become an abolitionist.” This hit me in the gut, realizing that abolition is still a relevant term long after Emancipation as we continue to advocate for equal representation of people of color in government, economy, courts, schools, art, and yes, our shared history. 

It feels more true than ever as Black History programming around the country comes under fire from smarmy idiots who’ve perverted the concept of freedom to mean eradicating anything other than their whitewashed version of nationalistic hero worship bullshit that holds up America’s founding slaveholders and present-day baby tyrants as ersatz deities whose power grabs and financial interests should never be questioned. And they’re lawyering up.

Among the egregious legislation is Georgia Assembly House Bill 888, which would limit any kind of teaching about race and would levy a whopping 20% withholding of public funding for any schools found in violation. There’s also Senate Bill 226, a resolution calling for an easier way to ban “offensive” books from school libraries. Gross. And that’s only a couple of the many nauseating ways this state’s white supremacists (call ‘em what they are) are burdening this GA session; the strong-stomached can follow what education advocates are tracking here. 

In the face of these bald-faced attempts to quash the past’s truth, there are those working to write the history of the future: Sistah Patt’s joyful determination to replace (yet another) racist’s name on one of Savannah’s beloved squares with Civil War nurse and teacher Susie King Taylor continues to gain ground. Activist Julia Pearce and the Tybee Island MLK Human Rights Organization keep the island’s Justice and Equality front and center, standing up to the Dept. of Transportation as it fights to shine light on the enslaved Africans buried at Lazaretto Creek. And while renaming that damned bridge didn’t make it to this session’s state docket, there’s always next year. 

I known I wasn’t the Black History tour guide anyone deserves, but I hope I showed my young cousin a multi-dimensional and inclusive Savannah. In any case, it was more than the perfunctory peel ‘n’ eat shrimp tour. 

And while I hope the gutter punk kid improves his pitch, Black History Month in Savannah is an excellent time to:

*Log in to the Savannah Black Heritage Festival for amazing virtual performances, lectures, and community learning

*Book a bona fide Black History tour with Underground Tours, Footprints of Savannah or Day Clean Journeys   

*Call and email your state rep as many times as possible to tell them you do not support HB 888, SB 226 or any legislation that sanitizes public education of the past’s very real facts.

*Most importantly, let’s remember that this month and every month, WE are the ones writing history.  

Dang, these dogs are STILL barking ~ JLL

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