In this blog entry we continue to examine Savannah State University (SSU) as part of Savannah’s intellectual capital. In the last two blogs we have studied two remarkable men who taught at SSU. Now it is about time we discuss a woman. The woman is Charity Adams Earley (5 December 1918 – 13 January 2002) the first African-American woman to be an officer in the Women’s Auxiliary Corps (WACS). She served in World War II as the commanding officer of the first battalion of African-American women to serve overseas.
Charity Adams Earley was born on December 5, 1918 and grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. Her parents were well educated and encouraged her reading and education from an early age. Because of this early encouragement she entered school as a second-grader and graduated high school two years early as valedictorian of her class. 
After her graduation from college, she taught math and science in a junior high school in Columbia, South Carolina. In the summers she continued her education at Ohio State University. World War II would change the trajectory of her life and make her the leader she would come. She enlisted in the Women Army Corps (WACS).
After time spent in training and later as a trainer in March 1945 she was assigned as the Commanding Officer of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. The battalion was stationed at Rouen and Paris, France. They delivered mail to over seven million soldiers during the course of their time in France during World War II.
When asked about her efforts Adams responded simply, "I just wanted to do my job".  Although, discrimination was everywhere in the Army she was not afraid to speak up and fight for desegregation in the Army. When the Army proposed segregating the training regiments, even though she was told she would head one of the segregated regiments, she refused. This stand was influential in the Army deciding against creating separate regiments.
On one occasion, a general suggested, "I'm going to send a white first lieutenant down here to show you how to run this unit". Not yet a colonel, Major Adams responded, "Over my dead body, sir." The general shocked by her attitude threatened to court-martial her for disobeying orders. She filed charges against him for using "language stressing racial segregation" and ignoring a directive from Allied headquarters. The General seeing she was unwilling to bow to his ‘illegal’ command dropped the matter.
 She decided to leave the service in 1946 when she was called to serve at the Pentagon. Continuing her education she earned a master's degree in psychology from Ohio State University. She taught at Miller Academy of Fine Arts, was the director of student personnel at Tennessee A&I College. She became the director of student personnel and assistant professor of education at Georgia State College (later Savannah State University).
She left Savannah State University after getting married to Stanley A. Early who lived in Zurich, Switzerland training to be a doctor. She moved to Zurich to be with him and to study. She learned German at the Minerva Institute this allowed her to attend for University of Zurich. Earley also studied at the Jungian Institute of Analytical Psychology, but she did not pursue a degree.
She returned with her husband to the United States. They lived in Dayton, Ohio. She was the founder of the Black Leadership Development Program (BLDP) which seeks to educate and train African Americans to be leaders in their communities. She later formed Parity Inc. to facilitate the BLDP’s training program.
Adams received many honors and awards, including a Woman of the Year from the National Council of Negro Women in 1946, a Service to the Community Award from the Ohio State Senate in 1989. In 1987, Adams was listed on the Smithsonian Institution's 110 most important historical Black women, was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 1979 and the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame in 1993. She was also inducted into the South Carolina Black Hall of Fame and named citizen of the year by The Montgomery County Board of Commissioners in 1991. In 1997, Adams was included in the BellSouth African-American History Calendar.
She received honorary doctorates from Wilberforce University and the University of Dayton in 1991.
Before her death on January 13, 2002, the Smithsonian National Postal Museum honored Earley for her work with the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. In a ceremony held in Washington, D.C. in 1996, the institution recognized Earley’s achievements in World War II.
Adams never stopped her education or her role as an educator. One can only imagine in her short time at Savannah State University how she influenced and encouraged many of the women students of their own power to change themselves for better and to change the world.
In my next blog we will conclude series on Savannah State University’s contributions through the years as a citadel for Savannah’s intellectual capital.

The following two articles are some of the research I used in writing this article:
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MLA - Spring, Kelly. "Charity Earley." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2017. Date accessed.
Chicago - Spring, Kelly. "Charity Earley" National Women's History Museum. 2017. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies

Savannah as other cities has intellectual centers that work as a brain trust for the city. Savannah of course has several of these Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia Historical Society, Telfair Museums, and Skidaway Island Institute of Oceanography to name a few. One of the oldest and most important centers is Savannah State University (SSU). A historical black university SSU was established in 1890. Since, it has provided not only the African American Community but the City of Savannah as a source for leadership and academic expertise.

SSU has given us two mayors: Edna Jackson,our current mayor Van R. Johnson and one of our most prominent civil rights leader and preservationists W. W. Law. SSU has also brought to Savannah renown professors who taught and brought change to the academic and other worlds. In this blog and several following blogs I will be looking at some of these men and women who taught if not their whole teaching careers at least spent significant years at SSU providing students and the city of Savannah with their intellectual gifts.

The first such person was Hanes Walton Jr. who taught at SSU for five years in the late sixties. He was to become an American political science and professor of African American Studies who pioneered the study of race in American politics. It is quite remarkable that such a prominent leader, the predecessor to the now ‘radical’ Critical Race Theory received his early teaching chops here in Savannah. He earned a PhD in Government at Howard University (the same place our current Vice President Kamala Harris graduated), graduating in 1967, the first person to ever receive a PhD in Government from Howard University.

With these credentials he would stress the need for the creation of African American politics as a necessary category of political science. Until his advocacy AfAm politics had not been studied as varied from general view of the majority (think white) issues in political science. But through his steady scientific study he is credited with the serious study of Black politics.

He was a prolific writer. He wrote at least twenty-five academic books. Some of his books on black politics included: "Invisible Politics: Black Political Behavior, American Political Parties," "The Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King. Jr.," "When the Marching Stopped: The Politics of Civil Rights Regulatory Agencies," "Presidential Elections, 1789-2008," and the two-volume work, "The African American Electorate: A Statistical History."  His work began to push his fellow academics and educational institutions to accept the need for more work in Black studies in political science as well as other academic disciplines.

He became recognized by his peers as one of the foremost political scientists in the United States. Walton, served as the Vice President of the American Political Science Association. His work was recognized by several organizations. He was the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship 1971, the Rockefeller Foundation Research Fellowship for Minority-Group Scholars in 1979, and a Ford foundation fellowship in 1982. 

The American Political Science Association named its prominent award in the study of racial and ethnic politics the Hanes Walton Award.  More recently the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS) announced the establishment of the 2021 Hanes Walton, Jr. Award for Quantitative Methods Training. The award focuses on granting scholarships to the which provides scholarships to support participation in the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research. A study of which he could be called a pioneer in the field.

His advocacy for this change could be found in his helping establish the National Conference of Black Political Scientists in 1971. His writings sound much like the early days of critical race theory: “the relative paucity of disciplinary work that tends to support the struggle against racism, and the overwhelming influence of work that tends to support the maintenance of racism.” Imagine fifty years ago hearing his arguments that the academic disciplines themselves, with their pretense of objectivity and universality, constituted the very groundwork of racial violence and subordination. It was these norms and conventions that had to be upended in order to bring “a new self-loving, black presence into an old, white-created context” of the university.

Hanes Walton was arguably the most productive of the civil rights era generation of black political scientists. He was also incredibly humble. And he was open with his time – spending every Saturday laboring over the dozens of recommendation letters and tenure reviews he was routinely asked to write. Over the past 20 years, the University of Michigan has produced more black political scientists than any other institution. Almost all of those students bear his mark. — Lester Spence, Professor of Political Science and Africana studies at Johns Hopkins University. 
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One can only imagine how Walton’s teachings at SSU during the sixties helped shape the “Civil Rights Mind” of Savannah. He would move on to teach at Atlanta University and spend most of his career at Michigan University but at a significant moment he was here in Savannah where his students and colleagues were exposed to the beginnings of his pioneering work on Black Political Science.

​During the Civil Rights movement of the fifties and sixties there were many quiet but forceful women who led the way. Because they were not necessarily in your face they were assumed to be and remembered not to be radical. This presentation not only distorts who they were but allows a certain comfortability for whites with who they were. One of the prime examples of this (although recent books are trying to challenge this perception) was Rosa Parks. She is typically thought of as the woman who was too tired from a long hard day’s work who would not on this day move from her bus seat. This would be an act that started the Civil Rights Movement in the United States according to some.
It is often presented as a simple, unplanned, act. This of course is not true. She was a radicalized woman even in a short review of how she came to this decision. May be there is some truth that she was tired on this particular day. But not so much tired from a particular rough day at work but she was exhausted of the injustice that she and her race faced on everyday in America. She had only weeks before received non-violent training at one of America’s most notorious training center for the rights of humans the Highlands Folk Center in Tennessee. But even before that she had worked with the NAACP to investigate and observe ongoing trials for African Americans in her South. She was sent to investigate the case of a black woman who was gang raped in Abbeville and no arrest had been made, she wrote letters to the Federal Government protesting and documenting various lynchings in Alabama, although it took three different attempts and ignoring threats she was one of the only three percent of Blacks who had been able to successfully register to vote in Montgomery, through all this and more her rebellious life was on display (see the book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanee Theoharis).   The act of resistance on the bus was not out of the blue no matter how frightening this may be for the White Community. She was well aware of what she was doing and the consequences she might encounter.
Esther F. Garrison was one of Savannah’s ‘quiet women’ in the local Civil Rights Movement. Because of her unassuming manner she was never quite seen as the radical she was. She was the secretary of the local NAACP during Savannah’s Civil rights struggle of the sixties and seventies for twenty-eight years. She was a confidant and advisor to WW Law who many have called Savannah’s Gandhi. Her children remember W.W. Law stopping by almost every morning to strategize with her. Others talk about various meetings at her home to organize NAACP youth council meetings.
After the Stell v. Savannah-Chatham County Board of Education 255 F. Supp. 88 (S.D. Ga. 1966), decision against the board and for segregating the schools, Garrison was appointed to the Board of Education to monitor the activities to ensure they were abiding by the court rulings. This made Garrison the first black woman appointed on the school board. After four years at this position she ran for the Board and would serve as elected member for sixteen more years.
She served as a general office manager of the international Longshoremen’s Association for many years. The NAACP and ILA would work on many efforts together during this time. One would have to conclude that she was one of the chief coordinators of these efforts. While at the ILA she would see members sign their name with an X. So, she started a literacy program for these men.
She was a “pillar” of Mount Zion Baptist Church where she served in almost every capacity. This church was part of the ‘corridor’ of churches on the formerly (now MLK Boulevard”) West Broad Street that would serve as the meeting places for the mass civil rights meetings to organize. She served as the Youth Choir Director at the Church. She would insist that the church include money in the church budget to hire musical tutors so that the youth of the church and community would have the chance to advance their musical talents.   
She was known for her copious notes and professional demeanor. It was said although she was a quiet person, she could be quite vocal when the occasion called for it. Savannah’s first African American Mayor, Edna Jackson, would say,’ She would always be the one to say what needed to be said.”.
Because she became one of the key voices in the early Savannah Civil Rights Movement and her position as Youth Choir Director and one of the founders of the NAACP Youth Council she was a mentor for many. Although not a youth when he met her Dr. Alphonso Dandy a newcomer to Savannah said she functioned as his mentor. He would later create the Dandy Youth Development Program to mentor black youth in the community. Because of her influence on him and the community he named the Tutoring room Esther F. Garrison Room.
Because of her long stint and prominence in the Black and Savannah community the new Esther F. Garrison Elementary School was named after her. It has at times appeared hard to keep her name associated with the school as it has become one of the more desired schools in Savannah. Her name was almost stricken from the School as it became the K-8th public performing arts School. After the suggested rebranding of the school there was a discussion of should her name remain, it was felt by some the name would be too onerous. Yet her name persisted. It was decided that it would be known as Esther F. Garrison School of Arts. Later her portrait which had been relegated to the back offices was moved to the front lobby where everyone could see it.
Today, the School is one of the best in the state of Georgia. It emphasizes the arts for which we are sure the former Youth Choir Director would be proud. It has one of the best stages for performance in the city. As she help accomplished in her life the school too has added to the musical and integrated education of children throughout the community.
Esther F. Garrison (as Rosa Parks has been thought as) was the not so quiet and polite lady but the persistent agitator for the education and human rights of all.
 

​White Supremacists and their close allies harken back to the days of the Confederacy and the grand era of the antebellum to emphasize what they have lost. Yet heaven forbid African Americans hearken back to the age of slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow to emphasize what they have lost. It is with these thoughts I begin to look at Blacks and the Reconstruction era in Savannah.

General Sherman had arrived in Savannah and famously presented Savannah as a Christmas gift to President Lincoln. The March to the Sea had been successful. Yet, he had a problem what to do with the newly freed slaves of Savannah. What were they to do? Where were they to go? What could help them to sustain themselves in the hostile South? To determine what the slaves needed he invited the black leadership to his headquarters at what is now known as the Green-Meldrim house on Bull Street. The leadership that came were twenty black ministers. The Church was the only institution that the Black community was allowed unhindered.

When asked what they wanted they expressed what all the early colonists had come to America for; to own land. This would give them the ability to feed their households and build their wealth. They had come through the Middle Passage from Africa to America not on the Anne (the ship Gen. Oglethorpe brought the first British colonists to Savannah). Unlike the colonists they were not given land when they came they were given unpaid labor to do. Now over a century later as they now saw freedom, they wanted land. Strangely, the same dream as all of the European immigrants had envisioned was at the heart of the former enslaved. Along with General Sherman that day was the Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. He would later deliver a transcript of the conversation to the great abolitionist minister of Boston Henry Ward Beecher. He read it to his congregation. A conversation that Secretary Stanton had told Beecher ““for the first time in the history of this nation, the representatives of the government had gone to these poor debased people to ask them what they wanted for themselves.”

One of the ministers a Rev. Frazier stated, “The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor … and we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare … We want to be placed on land until we are able to buy it and make it our own.” And when asked next where the freed slaves “would rather live — whether scattered among the whites or in colonies by themselves,” without missing a beat, Brother Frazier (as the transcript calls him) replied that “I would prefer to live by ourselves, for there is a prejudice against us in the South that will take years to get over … ”. It was this meeting that would be the impetus for the historic Special Field Order No. 15 that would come. This order known colloquially as the Forty Acres and a Mule was a Reconstruction promise to the newly franchised Blacks.

The freed slaves immediately took advantage of this opportunity. A Baptist minister, Ulysses L. Houston (see previous blog Walking the Talk 4/10/2019), led 1,000 blacks to Skidaway Island on the outskirts of Savannah. It was here they established a self-governing community. Eventually, 40,000 freedmen would be settled on 400,000 acres. Other formerly enslaved people were quick to take advantage of this new promise. They organized communities on the coastal islands of Georgia and South Carolina. They knew how to farm and run farms. Freedom had given them a new vigor to work the land and make new beginnings. They were successful. But the promise of land would be short lived.
 
President Andrew Johnson annulled proclamations such as Special Field Orders No. 15. The emphasis of Reconstruction would not be a redistribution of land but an emphasis on wage labor. The land would return to pre-war white owners. Several black communities did manage to maintain control of their land, and some families obtained new land by homesteading on property that was not claimed by former plantation owners. One of these was Pin Point which I have written about in another blog: The Story of Pin Point 5/05/2018.

The Freedman’s Bureau which was created to aid the former slaves in the Reconstruction Era was responsible for informing the freedmen and women that they could either sign labor contracts with planters or be evicted from the land they had occupied. Those who refused or resisted were eventually forced out by army troops. This displacement was the Black Trail of Tears. The Freedman’s Bureau was to help the formerly enslaved to work on plantations again but with pay. The idea was they would be paid a wage and indeed were but never as much as they were worth.

It was from this ground that sharecropping was initiated. You can stay on the land but you must pay for it by giving so much of your crops to the landowner. Many were forced by poverty or the threat of violence to sign unfair and exploitative sharecropping or labor contracts that left them little hope of improving their situation. Thus, Sharecropping often resulted in sharecroppers owing more to the landowner (for the use of tools and other supplies, for example) than they were able to repay. 

Also, new vagrancy laws were initiated to commandeer blacks who refused to work or sharecrop on the plantations they formerly worked as slaves. The vagrancy laws stated if blacks seem to be or were ‘loitering’ they could be arrested and forced to work on the land. The point or result was to keep blacks from owning their own land. Despite this some blacks managed to acquire enough money to move from sharecropping to renting or owning land by the end of the 1860s. But not many.
This would be the history of blacks throughout the history of the United States. The original cry of the former enslaved people for land to build a new life by ownership of land was challenged again and again.  Jim crow enforced by the KKK allowed whites to riot against different black neighborhoods and business districts as they became successful, or the land was ‘needed’ by members of the white community. Farmland and others were ‘relinquished’ as blacks fled white violence to friendlier climates up north. This happened often in the late !9th and 20th century.

In the 20th century other means were used to disadvantage blacks ownership of land. Urban renewal and gentrification acted against the black community.There were many areas blacks could not go. Tybee Island, Squares, Parks (state and local). There was primarily one Square that was for Black use, Crawford Square(I have written a blog about this Square A Square as Reminder of Jim Crow Days 1/10/19) In the state of Georgia segregation came to a head in the 1950s, inspiring the state to establish a number of parks for black citizens only. The first of these was the George Washington Carver Park on Lake Altoona. Some described the park as "a black recreational Mecca," citing performances there by Little Richard and Ray Charles. There were other means to limit or hamper Black land ownership. Blacks were about twice as likely as whites to be denied a loan in Savannah.  The first wave of historic preservation in Savannah displaced many African-American homeowners, while the second was hailed as a model of preservation without displacement.

It’s tough to imagine now, but for decades during segregation – and before the urban renewal projects of the 1960s — the pride of Savannah’s black movers and shakers was West Broad Street now called MLK Jr. Boulevard. West Broad was, in the 1940s, a thriving commercial and social hub with restaurants, the Union Station train depot and nearly 200 businesses, including Wage Earners Savings and Loan Bank, Savannah Pharmacy and the Star and Dunbar theaters. The sixties brought urban renewal and Highway 16 exit that was built in the middle of the Black business district.  Urban renewal nationwide supported more than 1,200 projects, displaced a minimum of 300,000 families—perhaps some 1.2 million Americans. While Black Americans were just 13 percent of the total population in 1960, they comprised at least 55 percent of those displaced Businesses that were struggling from desegregation as Blacks took it as a badge of honor to shop in the newly opened to them white businesses were now seeing a drop in their business. (By Sara E. Murphy/For the Savannah Morning News Posted Jul 3, 2019 at 2:18 PM Updated Jul 3, 2019 at 2:18 PM).
 
Gentrification is occurring all around Savannah, including in the west side community of Cuyler-Brownsville. The area’s streets lined with tidy wooden homes – styles range from Craftsman to Italianate – once housed Savannah’s black movers and shakers. Among its residents was Ralph Mark Gilbert, known as the father of Savannah’s modern civil rights movement, who lived at 611 West 36th Street and hosted such leaders as Martin Luther King Jr., Marian Anderson and Thurgood Marshall during his years as head of the local N.A.A.C.P. and pastor of First African Baptist Church. Another home of historic significance in this area was Kiah House/Museum. It was the home of Virginia Kiah (see blog entry Savannah’s Innovative Educator: Virginia Kiah 9/22/2016)  who was one of Savannah’s leading artist and curator of the African American Museum she opened in her home. A place now dilapidated and threatened to be demolished.

The practice of redlining was also used here in Savannah. The practice was realtors would show Black owners only certain areas of Savannah. This kept blacks from moving to or buying property that was more valuable. This would influence inequality in access to education, job opportunities, transportation, and health care. (By Sara E. Murphy/For the Savannah Morning News Posted Jul 3, 2019 at 2:18 PM Updated Jul 3, 2019 at 2:18 PM).

In this historical climate it is all the more amazing that the Black community was the first in Savannah to have a Carnegie Library, Community bank, oldest black church in the United States, the first college in Savannah, and recently the oldest black funeral home in United States.
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The Black Community has had to overcome many obstacles to own homes, land, and develop institutions in Savannah and the whole of the nation. Yet somehow, they were able to forge ahead but the ground they lost trying to overcome racial oppression to obtain and maintain land has set their trajectory of wealth back generations. So when Whites mourn about the Lost Cause and the grandeur of the Antebellum Period they need a healthy dose of the Black reality.

Savannah continues to promote and develop its reputation as A Gothic City exemplar. We are consistently voted as one of the most haunted cities in the United States. Ghost tours are found everywhere. An annual Flannery O'Connor celebration is held in Lafayette Square in front of her childhood home. People dress up as O'Connor short story characters, chicken shit bingo is played, a march around the square with a brass band of sorts playing.  Forrest Gump jumps on tour buses and his bench is in the History museum.

The once neglected gothic architecture grows grander with restoration each passing day. The trees still hang with moss throughout the downtown and beyond. The Book (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) still brings fans to see the landmarks of the book. The Bird Girl sits in the Telfair Academy in an exhibit which tells the story of Bonaventure Cemetery. The Savannahian artists' Jack Leigh and Augusta Oeschlig whose work has been noted as having gothic themes are often exhibited in museums. The city continues to define itself as having  and being  proud of its Southern gothic heritage.

Lest you think the Gothic is a thing of the past Savannah continues to develop its Gothic Nature. The first opera about Savannah was commissioned by the Voice Festival in 2015. It is called Alice Ryley. And of course it reeks with Southern Gothic atmosphere and themes.  Michael Ching, the American composer and librettist who  was commissioned and penned the opera, said he was inspired by the heroic nature of Riley’s character. Sherrill Milnes the famed opera baritone singer of the Metropolitan Opera of New York plays the tour guide in a cameo appearance. It tells the story of Alice Ryley a historical character and now a ghost that haunts Wright Square where she was hung for murder. Alice Ryley is an indenture servant from Ireland who falls in love with a man who eventually kills their wicked overlord. She is brought to trial and even though she did not do the killing she is convicted and because of prejudice against her Catholic faith her appeal to General Oglethorpe is destroyed. It is discovered that she is pregnant and she is allowed to give birth but is hung the day after the child is born becoming the first woman to be hung in Georgia.  And today her ghost can be found in Wright Square once known as hanging square looking for her baby.

Yet another nod to all things Gothic is the new Graveface Museum recently opened on Factor's Walk. One floor has, the history of sideshow attractions explored through one of a kind photos and videos. All are dedicated to the memories of the traveling circus. Another exhibit down the hall  leads to the  the true-crime room. Inside, are exhibits dedicated to some of the country’s most infamous criminals and crimes. These include things as Jim Jones’s sunglasses and Charlie Manson’s sweatpants. One of the largest collections of John Wayne Gacy paintings and, various doodles from  other serial killers can be viewed.

The museum centers around the macabre and strange. The museum is also home to a room that contains well-over 15 pinball machines, Of course, all horror-themed featuring classic horror characters such as Elvira, Swamp Thing, Adams Family, and others. 

Closing:
But what does it mean to be a southern gothic city. It means you celebrate differences and the odd characters of the world. It means you are aware of the injustices of the world. We are aware that history is to be preserved not lived. That living in the past leaves us open to stagnation and decay. It means that we are aware of the poverty in our city and we know it must be ended or it will end our dreams of a great city. It means the South is our pride and we will rise again not to past glories but to a new justice filled city that celebrates differences and builds wealth for all.  So as we close this series know that Savannah is the city that defines southern gothic.

             Robert De Niro in Cape Fear

t is not only writers but other art forms that would be influenced by the culture and climate of Savannah. Augusta Oelschig, a Savannah artist,  lived from 1918-2000 and Flannery lived from 1925 -1964. Oelschig was called a Southern gothic painter. Oelschig would travel and live in New York and travel to see and learn from the muralists of Mexico before she returns to Savannah. Oelschig was only eight years Flannery’s senior. Art Historians say her penchant to paint scenes of injustice and the lives of southern blacks was influenced by the Mexican muralists but I have an idea the Southern Gothic bug had hold of her too. We see this in her paintings of old abandoned Carousels. The once glorious carousels are now decaying and but a memory of what they once were. She did her series of carousels it is said while grieving for her brother after his death. A review of a career-spanning exhibition of Oelschig’s work that opened just weeks after the artist’s death described her aesthetic as having “a distinctive style that is both steeped in the Southern Gothic tradition and remarkably unique.” 
 Robert Taylor Arms one of the great printmakers of the early 20th century went all through Europe making meticulously detailed prints of Gothic cathedrals and buildings calling Gothic architecture the pinnacle of Humanity’s creative mind.  In 1933 he came to the Telfair Academy to teach printmaking. John Taylor Arms in his brief sojourn here continued to communicate his love for all things Gothic in his year residency here in Savannah. 

In most list of the top ten southern gothic movies two were made here in Savannah. One features a novel written by Flannery and with native Savannahian Leopold Stratton making an appearance in it: Wiseblood . The other movie was Cape Fear original had Robert Mitchum, Gregory Peck, and Polly Bergen. The remake had Robert Deniro, Nick Nolte, Juliette Lewis, Jessica Lange. The film tells the story of how a convicted rapist who, using his newfound knowledge of the law and its numerous loopholes, seeks vengeance against a former public defender whom he blames for his 14-year imprisonment. He felt unfair courtroom tactics were used.  Many of the outdoor scenes were filmed on location in Savannah. The indoor scenes were done at Universal Studios Soundstage. Mitchum had a real-life aversion to Savannah, where as a teenager, he had been charged with vagrancy and put on a chain gang.

But probably many people's favorite movie with Savannah as the setting is Forrest Gump made in 1994. Director Robert Zemekis said about the South: "There is something about the Gothic South that we depict in the movie. In a strange way, it's sort of the most patriotic part of America in the way it is slow to change. The South was always in the script. It's where these characters came from. The one constant that we had in the movie is that the characters kept coming home (to the South). It (the South) is that one place that seems to never change, when the rest of the world does."
The Savannah scene is central to the movie. The protagonist Forrest Gump, who is a mentally challenged innocent, reveals that he is waiting at the bus stop bench to anyone who will listen because he received a letter from Jenny his childhood sweetheart. Despite their divergent paths in life he has never lost the fire of his love for her. His famous quote ‘Life is like a box of chocolates’ originates here. Jenny is now living in Savannah and had seen him on TV during his run across America and invited him to visit. Jenny reveals Forrest to be the father of her child, also named Forrest, and that she is suffering from an unknown virus (presumably HIV/AIDS). Jenny proposes to Forrest, and he accepts. Forrest and Jenny return to Greenbow with Forrest Jr and are finally married. Jenny eventually dies of her illness and Forrest becomes a devoted father to Forrest Jr. Later, Gump is waiting with his son for the school bus to pick him up for his first day of school. As the bus departs, the feather from the beginning of the film floats off into the air. 
This film evokes the emotions and themes of Southern Gothic and it seems only natural that it centers on him in one of our historic squares. Today the bench is in our history museum and some tour buses are lucky enough to encounter an actor who portrays Forrest with a brief case in hand.

Of course Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is yet another example of a movie that accentuates some of the themes of Southern Gothic. Savannah's own Lady Chablis plays herself and Clint Eastwood directs. These are but a few of the movies made in Savannah but they are the more obvious shows with a gothic feel. Next blog we will finish the series on Savannah: The Gothic City.
 

In my last post I wrote about Flannery O'Connor who won three O’Henry awards for her short stories and the National Book Award for a collection of her short stories. But Savannah also has two Pulitzer Prize winners for poetry and short stories: Conrad Aiken and James Alan MacPherson both native Savannahians have elements of Southern Gothic in their writing, although neither would be classified as Southern gothic.
Yet the early and late life story of Pulitzer Prize writer Conrad Aiken captures the essence of the gothic nature of the world, reflecting the themes of a Southern gothic. At a young age he found his mother shot by his physician father and his father dead of a self- inflicted wound. Conrad  at the age of ---walked to the police station to inform them of what had happened. After this he was taken to live with relatives in New England. But Aiken would say in an interview Oh, Poe, yes. I was reading Poe when I was in Savannah, when I was ten, and scaring myself to death. Scaring my brothers and sisters to death, too. So I was already soaked in him, especially the stories.
He would say about his being a southern writer "Not at all. I’m not in the least Southern; I’m entirely New England. Of course, the Savannah ambiente made a profound impression on me. It was a beautiful city and so wholly different from New England that going from South to North every year, as we did in the summers, provided an extraordinary counterpoint of experience, of sensuous adventure. The change was so violent, from Savannah to New Bedford or Savannah to Cambridge, that it was extraordinarily useful. But no, I never was connected with any of the Southern writers."
INTERVIEWER
In what way was the change from Savannah to New England “useful” to you?
AIKEN
Shock treatment, I suppose: the milieu so wholly different, and the social customs, and the mere transplantation; as well as having to change one’s accent twice a year—all this quite apart from the astonishing change of landscape. From swamps and Spanish moss to New England rocks.
Aiken was by no means a writer of Southern gothic. yet in his vaudeville poems he tells of the sordid lives of the performers whose passions and violence catch the tonal quality of his own terrified childhood recollections. The sad, wry music of Aiken’s poetry seems to ask, To what purpose the passion and the violence? Natural death is enough to contend with, without the horror of passion and murder.
In his poetry Aiken has characters ranging from the would-be type of Christ,  middle-class “monarchs of all they survey,” a Faustian puppet, a master demon and a vampire. These poems all talk of death, resurrection, and what one person has described as the cycles of death.
Remarkably, although he considered himself a New Englander Aiken chose to live out his final days here in Savannah in a house adjoined to where his mother and father died. In fact one person would recount Aiken telling him one day in his second story office that beyond the west wall of the room was the exact room where he found his mother and father dead. Aiken, it is reported,  often loved to walk to Colonial Cemetery and have martinis there. That sounds about as Southern gothic as you can get. (Notably his wife Mary Aiken Hoover, a painter has a self portrait that hangs in the Telfair Academy of herself as a fortune teller).
Our other Pulitzer Prize writer was James Alan McPherson who grew up in Savannah. His celebrated first published short story The Gold Coast reflects familiar themes of Southern Gothic Literature. Robert, a young, black aspiring writer, supports himself by working as a janitor in a Cambridge, Massachusetts, apartment building. In “the days of the Gold Coast,” the old building near Harvard Square had been a haven for the rich; Conrad Aiken had lived there; now, it the building was in decay. The Irish janitor before him lives in the building with his half-mad wife, and their smelly, barking dog. He is Robert’s supervisor and the story is about their relationship. In 1968 McPherson published his first volume of short fiction, Hue and Cry. In addition to “Gold Coast,” the stories in the book include themes of interracial relationships; the decline of an elderly waiter; the inconsistencies of the justice system when dealing with the outcast; and racial prejudice. All of these characters and themes could have been found in a Southern Gothic story. But Macpherson was not a Southern Gothic writer but Savannah’s spirit had a hold on him. MacPherson, whose father abused him physically, eventually left Savannah. 

There is one other significant writer who sojourned in Savannah and discovered its undercurrents:
writer John Berendt. He would write a book called locally The Book. His pen would write a book that would tell tale of a Southern Gothic crime\travel non-fiction book. This book holds the record for most time on the New York Times bestseller list for 216 weeks! It is a tale with a voodoo queen, drag queen, piano playing con man, and a whole list of odd characters set in Savannah. The story centers around a wealthy man (Jim Williams) who kills a drifter and has four trials in which he is acquitted each time.  The international sensation of the book put Savannah on the tourist map and the tourists started coming and have not stopped since. The jacket of the book introduced the iconic statue of the Bird Girl and its photographer Jack Leigh. Savannahian photographer Jack Leigh is known for his black and white photos to document the disappearing South. It is important to note that he adjusts his photographs playing with different shades of light. He is creating an atmosphere and often evokes the mystery, decay, of a south that was once. His photographs are southern gothic temples of black and white stained glass of a South that in a generation could be gone.  

Of course there are other writers that reflect the sense of Gothic Spirituality. The classic graphic novel that was later made into a film The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys by Chris Furhman. My next entry will continue the study of Savannah as the City that defines Gothic. Stay tuned.

The People:
 Another thing to consider before we look further at Savannah as Southern Gothic is its particular history. Maybe because Savannah unlike its neighbor to the North was not the elites from the Caribbean plantations but the poor and middle class settlers who were to act as a military buffer for the Carolinas from the Spanish in Florida. These were people that tragedy and the injustice of society would be self evident. They are those waiting for wealth or at least a better life. They are the protagonists of Dicken’s gothic infused novels of Bleak House and Great Expectations. Yet they have great expectations that the new world offers them new chances to a better life. Their struggles are the stuff of gothic legend. Trying to succeed in a land full of the mysterious Indians and unknown land and to work essentially for the wealthy northern colonies as security guards. Later they too will create generations of wealth only to be decimated by the Civil War, boll weevil, disease, fires, and the Great Depression. This would leave a city where once was wealth sometimes faced with decay and a lost cause.
Not only would they be poorer financially they would have less education and thus be more inclined and more willing to try everything to see beyond the veil of this reality and see mysterious reasons behind unexplained events. It wouldn’t be until 1754 21 years later when Savannah becomes a royal colony that the entrepreneurs and slaves would come. And you have what might be called the first struggles between new money and old money and class becomes even more important. And the slaves would bring their own mysteries of language and culture to this already strange land. Psychologically when you feel or do not have direct control of your lives you build myths to explain the world and you create ceremonies and rituals to keep the evils and unknown form your door. You want to have ways to erect justice in a society that the systems in place does not always treat your quote kind fairly. So the beginnings of our colony offer fertile ground for stories of the Gothic nature.
But it is not only the people but the land itself. We have parks downtown which are filled with moss covered gigantic monuments of nature: oak trees. You have places where we gather to people watch and share. You have a side of town for the free blacks and Irish. You have a city surrounded by marshes that change with the tides and seasons, winding rivers, creeks with these ancient creatures of another time: alligators. The atmosphere of coastal south as do the bayous lend themselves very well to the gothic mentality.
And then all the wealth comes crashing down and those who once had great wealth are left as beggars or pretenders as fate would allot to them. This story of economic cycles fortunes and misfortunes is more pronounced in the more undeveloped South. And then the Civil War the South’s economy is decimated.
 
The advent of Flannery:
Flannery comes into this world where the demise of the South is here and the wealthy’s pretensions of wealth has been destroyed. And a community where ever block she travels has the Gothic churches reaching to the skies in the hopes and aspirations of their people who at the same time are experiencing the reverse of their fortunes once again after their rise. Flannery was born in the middle of the roaring twenties but would spend her growing up years here in Savannah and elsewhere in the depression. Old fortunes are seen in lost buildings that are abandoned and survival is hard. Her short stories and novels become some of America’s greatest literature and leads the way in the new literary genre southern Gothic. In a sense Flannery had no choice in the shadow of St. John’s Cathedral on the Irish side of town but to write in this new Southern Gothic style. The environs of Savannah did not promote romantic novels or historical fiction it was fertile ground for a young mind to write Southern Gothic tales.

Gothic literature of which Southern gothic is a subset is found in such books in Europe as Wuthering Heights, Dracula and Frankenstein. The movement crosses the Atlantic Ocean to America and is found in the House of Seven Gables and Edgar Allan Poes’ writings to name two.
Poe and Hawthorne were New Englanders so the South will share themes they explore but in the context of the South. Thus you have the exploring of madness, decay and despair, cause by the pressures of the past upon the present, particularly with the lost ideals of a dispossessed Southern aristocracy and how they are challenged by the new realities of race. The Gothic castles and cathedrals are replaced in Southern Gothic by the decay of the plantation in the post-Civil War South. Or they are told of in old slave quarters or broken downtowns. Southern elements including dialect, habits and personalities are used. The history of the South is the backdrop of the stories.
The characters are usually complex, and many of them are mentally unstable. Many of the characters are broken in spirit and struggling to find a place in society once again. The morality of characters is often questioned. There are also many characters that are seen as innocent, such as the mentally handicapped, and there is a struggle for their place in the world. Whether mentally unstable, dark or innocent, the characters try to make sense of the world around them and the New South in which they live.
The plots of Southern Gothic stories can be disturbing and some do include supernatural elements. Irony is used to throw the reader off balance. In a broken society naturally the events in the stories contain racism, violence and poverty.
Not only will we see evidence of this new Southern Gothic in other writers and artists in Savannah  in the past but in the present it is still evident. So stay tuned for the next blog entry where we will see these themes continued.

Mickve Israel Synagogue

​A while back I gave a lecture at the Flannery O’Connor home about the Gothic nature of Savannah. I will be sharing slightly revised editions of that lecture in the next few historical ruminations blog entries. I hope everyone enjoys.
 
“What is in a name” is a question asked in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Names are important but the images they bring forth are as equally important. And that is the subject I wish to address today. When one hears the name Charleston we think old south, plantation mansions, and the antebellum period. When one hears the name New Orleans you think of the mixing of cultures that has brought us Jazz,  Blues, and Zydeco music. We think of Cajun and Creole cooking. A living experiment of what can happen in multicultural society. But when I say Savannah what do we see? Hostess City, Tree City as our marketing of the city is [unclear] gone. I think not. I propose that when one thinks of Savannah they think knowingly or not about the Southern Gothic world. Certainly, both New Orleans and Savannah have a touch of antebellum in their images but I propose not like Charleston. Savannah and Charleston have a touch of multicultural fever as port cities, Gullah and Geechee cultures, early Jewish settlers but not like New Orleans. Now New Orleans and Charleston have a touch of Southern Gothic but neither is mainly identified with it and I propose Savannah is. 
Maybe because Savannah, unlike its neighbor to the North, was not founded by elite island plantation sons and daughters but the poor and middle-class settlers that you find a more Gothic nature and less antebellum emphasis. These were people who knew injustices and were more comfortable with the spirit world. They were the protagonists of the Dickens’ gothic novels of Bleak House and Great Expectations. The stories of success would be of the Horatio Alger’s rags to riches variety in Savannah. Thus, Savannah would need a few generations to have the stories of moral and economic decay. And then the ultimate demise of the Savannah wealthy in the Civil War before its truest Gothic nature might be found.
Savannah was a leader of spreading Gothic architecture in the South and the nation as a whole. So for a brief moment let us look at where and what Gothic architecture is.
Gothic architecture (beginning in @1130 A.D.) is a break from the classical period of the past. The Greek’ and Roman’s dominance of culture was gone. They were with each passing decade more like the Old South a memory of the golden days of antebellum grandeur. In fact, the term Gothic is pejorative and comes from those uneducated, uncivilized, bringers of the Dark Ages people called the Goths. [carpet baggers] The Goths who had sacked Rome. The term was from of course an Italian critic and he so convinced the Italians of its inferior heritage that Gothic Architecture did not make great headway in Italy. What were the offensive trademarks of this new Gothic architecture? Tall buildings reaching upward to the sky with flying buttresses and vaulted ceilings. Light coming from the outside into the interior of the building. With taller buildings came larger stain-glass windows. And instead of corners of darkness and dampness as found in the shorter and squatter classical buildings of the Romans and Greeks you now had beautiful buttressed vaulted ceilings with huge rose windows working as wonderful prisms to the sunlight. And there were also the adornments with even gargoyles to ward off evil. It was a totally different aesthetic. One that spoke of aspirations to reach the heavens or god or the best that humanity could be. This was important as Gothic Architecture comes at the end of the Dark Ages and right before the Enlightenment. It was expressive of Europe’s hope that was beginning to develop after a long period when European humanity had seemed to have lost its way.   
For whatever reasons Savannah was a leader, especially in the South, in bringing Gothic Architecture to their city. The Gothic Revival in the US was popular in the post-Civil War years until about the early 1900s. Which seems very déjà vu to its origin in Europe, especially for the south. The colonial/federal plantation style would be the predominant style pre-Civil War. But with the devastating ‘sacking’ of the South, the colonial/ federal especially in Savannah is replaced with an architecture of a new aspirated style of Gothic Revival. A, shall we say, “shining the light in our inner souls” to examine what went wrong and how we might somehow rise from our grotesque nature of slavery and classism and move to higher ground. Yet as in Europe there was a clinging to the long decayed Roman civilization. We call it here in the South the Lost Cause.    
 
Savannah has the first gothic structure in Georgia: St. John’s Episcopal Church. It was built even before the Civil War and the late nineteenth century Gothic revival movement. Alongside of it is the Green Meldrim house which has been called the finest example of residential Gothic Architecture in the South. It was built by John Norris. Norris was also the architect of the second Gothic church dwelling: the Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah. Which would become noted as the “Jingle Bells Church” because James Pierpont wrote Jingle Bells while he was the organist at this church.
These two churches were precursors of what was and is the most common church style of architecture in the Historic District. There are over eight churches designed in the Gothic style with another modifying itself to become more Gothic in its nature, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Ascension.  The list includes the Congregational Church. Beth Eden Baptist, Wesley Monumental Methodist Church, First Presbyterian Church until it burned and the congregation moved into Neo-Gothic building in Ardsley Park, and most prominent of them all St. John the Baptist Cathedral. The latter, if you catch at the right time of day, cast a literal shadow over Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home. The Cathedral is one of the most prominent buildings in Savannah. But when Flannery as a child walked through Savannah, she would have been engulfed not only by St. John’s Cathedral but also the preponderance of Gothic Architecture here. We also have the only Synagogue in the United States with Gothic Architecture.
To give you an idea of how the architecture look at the picture of the synagogue and First Presbyterian (before it burned)on Monterey Square (see below). Wesley Monumental Methodist Church is right behind the Synagogue and yet another example of Neo Gothic architecture. In the square just east of the Cathedral sits the Unitarian Universalist Church. It should be noted the first major Catholic church built in the southern part of Savannah was the Sacred Heart Catholic Church. And what style was it?  Gothic.
What we see is what we think. We know our surroundings influence our moods, attitudes, and stress levels among other things.  What we see effects our psychology and spirit. The high aspirations of Gothic Architecture would have been evident in people tired of the old and worn but looking forward to coming through the horrors of the past toward the possibilities of the future. But the darkness of our souls must have light shed on it to achieve our high aspirations. The tall vaulted roofs and large beautiful rose windows would reveal the ruptures in our own souls. It is all this and more that would be earmarks of Savannah’s Gothic rage.
Next blog we will look at the arts and how they further define Savannah as a city that defines Gothic.
 

​The Starland District is about to take off in exponential ways. It is becoming a unique and popular area with good food and the arts. But it has not always been on the cusp of being a hot new neighborhood. Since its beginnings in the early twentieth century it has had as most neighborhoods its ups and downs but today it has under gone a significant resurgence.

In 1888 two streetcar lines were built extending from downtown Savannah into what would be known as the Starland District today. At first development in the area was slow going. But in 1909 farmers from the Pooler area were frustrated with their ability to break into the downtown Savannah dairy market. In an effort, to combine their efforts they created a cooperative venture and milk processing plant. The plant covered two blocks and was called the Starland Dairy. They used a red star as their logo. Their milk was delivered by horse and milk carts into the 1950s. The milk bottles with the red star logo on their sides are now collector’s items.

The Starland Dairy became the needed anchor to start the growth of the new neighborhood. One of those businesses was David’s Supermarket in 1936. It was the first self-serviced grocery in Savannah. The grocery store would be opened for seventy-two years. Other dairies were started throughout the neighborhood. Businesses of all types started to serve the district. The neighborhood flourished until the middle of the twentieth century. One of its other distinctions was one of the areas that was used for auto races, like the International Grand Prize Automobile Race.
 
At this time as in many downtown districts throughout the United States people moved from the Starland Neighborhood into the quickly developing suburbs. This slow attrition of people from the neighborhood began to effect the businesses and leaving vacant homes throughout the district.

In the late 1980’s the Starland Dairy closed after several downsizes. The neighborhood was for all practical purposes dead or at least dying. As the twentieth century approached it remained a desolate place. The building with the RedStar once full of industry was empty and abandoned
.
In 2000 the resurrection of the Starland District began. Two Savannah College of Art and Design students from the historical preservation department John Deaderick and Greg Jacobs purchased the old abandoned Starland factory on Bull Street between West 40th and West 41st Streets. The plan was to restore/create a Starland District by creating a new art and design district. The new district would center around the two blocks of the restored Starland Dairy. Their logo for the new Starland District would be the red star the dairy had used.

This would be the beginnings of a new and popular district. They started one of Savannah’s favorite places to go to lunch the Starland Café. The district is now coming of age with significant Savannah favorites. In 2001 the Back in the Day Bakery opened and quickly earned national recognition for its owners Cheryl Day and Griff Day. In 2015 it was nominated for the James Beard Award.

From these two businesses have emerged Two Tides Brewery (a recent addition),Wormhole Bar, Sulfur Studios, House of Strut a vintage clothing store, Graveface a vinyl record store, Starlandia a used art supply store, and others. Most recently and probably a critical mass opening of Starland Yard. It is self-described as ‘SAVANNAH'S 25TH SQUARE. OFFERING A VARIETY OF FOOD TRUCK OPTIONS, VITTORIA PIZZERIA BY RENOWNED CHEF KYLE JACOVINO, and a FULLY STOCKED BAR.’ It also has games for family and friends to play and is pet-friendly. Most of its space is outdoors with some inside seating.

Being developed is a “live, work, play” community, Foram Group’s $40 million Starland Village development between 37th and 39th streets. The new development will consist of two five-story apartment complexes, an office building with a rooftop restaurant, new 900-person capacity event venue inside a former church, and other features. One can only assume with this new development the neighborhood will be totally vitalized.

The dream of two SCAD students who started a plan at the beginning of the 21st Century to see an old historic district revitalized is being achieved. Only time will tell if the Starland District will maintain its identity as the quirky art district but as we know from this story a neighborhood Dairy can become a catalyst that can create and shape a district for decades.