The Good Land

​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.

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