Skip to main content

Author: Odessa Rooks

Introduction

This month we look at the economics that affected island African Americans and the small businesses and jobs that independent islanders created.

The Freedman’s Savings Bank (1865-1874)

On March 3, 1865 Congress chartered the Freedman’s Savings Bank. This “benevolent” banking institution would provide black soldiers with a safe place to deposit their Union Army back pay and bounty payments and to encourage “thrift and industry” in the African American community. In short it was a simple savings institution created primarily for former slaves and their descendants who previously lacked business experience.

The vast majority of the deposits were “poignantly small” ranging from $5 and $50 but these small deposits were “emblematic of the historic rise of the class of black property owners.” Soldiers deposited back pay and bounties. Schoolchildren were encouraged to make deposits and were routinely preached to about importance of work and saving. African American churches, private businesses, and benevolent societies also maintained accounts at the Freedman’s Bank. These institutions often took the lead in making deposits and were the driving force behind getting many individual depositors to open accounts.

A board of fifty trustees was authorized to manage the assets which were to be invested in stocks, bonds, Treasury notes or other securities of the United States. Between 1865 and 1871 the Freedman’s Bank opened 37 branches in 17 states and the District of Columbia. In less than a decade an estimated 70,000 depositors had opened and closed accounts with bank deposits totaling more than $57 million dollars.

A preliminary look at the accounts at the Savannah branch reveal details about many coastal island Georgia residents who opened accounts. Rev. Tunis Campbell, “Missionary and formally agent of Freedman’s Bureau” opened an account on July 24, 1866. Several St. Catherine Island residents followed his lead. Anthony Bell who worked for Thomas Spalding on Sapelo and Abrahm Bell opened accounts. Darien residents James Bailey, Samuel Hazard, and Edward Gerard age 14 who lived “on the Ridge 5 miles from Darien,” opened accounts. Rev. Andrew Nagle deposited the funds from St. Simons Island Baptist Church in July 1873. On May, 19,1873 Rev. Nagle also signed deposits for St. Simons Island residents Polly Shepard age 50 and Samuel Shepard age 30. On the same day Rev. Nagle signed up six depositors who worked for Mr. Corbin-Mr. Couper Agent at Altama, Glynn County – James B. Fraser, Morris Johnson, Jacob Berrian, Gabriel Palmer, Scott Denegal, and Sukie Maxwell. St. Simons Island residents Susan Abbott (at Frederica) and SSI resident James Proctor age 17 who “works for Mrs. Stephens” opened accounts. Lena Quarterman, cook, who worked for Brunswick City Treasurer John Johnson opened her account in August 1873.

Less than ten years later, in June 1874, the bank closed, leaving over 61,000 depositors with losses over $3 million. The financial panic of 1873, inexperienced branch workers, and, in some cases, officers using their financial cunning to use bank assets for personal use led ultimately to liabilities outpacing assets. Over the years, some depositors were able to get a small percentage of their deposits but confidence and trust in the central bank system was never recovered.

Sources: More information about deposits can be found at www.ancestry.com, under African American Collections, and Freedman’s Savings Records.

Savannah Morning News, July 3, 1874 reporters “The Bubble Burst: Suspension of the Freedman’s Savings Bank and Trust Company;” “How the Negroes Have been Swindled;’ “Collapse of a Big Swindle – $35,000 said to be Swamped in Savannah”

“The Freedman’s Savings Bank: Good Intentions Were Not Enough: A Noble Experiment Goes Awry.” www.occ.treas.gov (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency)

“The Freedman’s Savings &amp Trust, Co. and Africa American Genealogical Record” by Regina Washington, Federal records &amp African American History www.archives.gov “New Data traces rise, fall of the Freedman Bank”, by Merritt Melancon (UGA Prof of Finance) Feb. 25, 2021. https://news.uga.edu

Continue reading

“to many, Brown v. Board of Education — handed down May 17, 1954 – was …a dirge for something precious and irreplaceable: a network of black schools almost sacred to those they served and wholly devoted in their belief in black ability and pursuit of black advancement.”

Tilove

“Brown was turned against us. We lost our schools,” says Elias Black Jr., who graduated in 1947 from Risley High School in Brunswick Ga and credits it with transforming him from an indifferent student with sights set no higher than a job at a local hotel, into someone who became valedictorian of his college class, and ultimately President of Clark College in Atlanta. (Tilove)

Risley alumna Thomas summarized it in her interview with Dr. Montford: 

I have known about Risley (all my life). All of my family graduated from Risley…All your life you dreamed about attending Risley. Graduating from Risley and that was the way of life we knew. All the extra curricula and appreciate the activities. All the social life.

Everything about Risley was appealing to everybody and folk wanted to be a part of it. When they told us in 1969 that they were closing the door, it was a sad day. We wanted to stay here and graduate (last class 1970). I lived directly across the street from the school…We saw all the activities. You knew about life at Risley. Once the high school life was over it devastated the community because we wanted to be there.

These were schools of unstinting discipline, order and respect. Of committed teachers and the most keen and caring mentorship. Of high and unyielding expectations… “People assumed you were first rate.” And then the schools closed.

Sources:

Richard R. Wright, 1894,

“A Brief Historical Sketch of Negro Education in Georgia” to the State Teachers of Georgia. which organization has Done so Much to Encourage the Cause of Education in the State. Entered according to Act of Congress, 1894, by Richard R. Wright, A.M. [President of Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth] in the office of the Librarian, Washington, D.C.

Black America Series “Glynn County Georgia’ by Benjamin Allen, Arcadia, 2003

Shoundra Lee, Brunswick News, May 8, 2001, updated Oct. 27, 2014

Jonathan Tilove, “In Black Schools Before Brown, Keys to Success” April 28, 2004 published at www. jonathantilovee.com

Anna Alexander, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Alexander and

www.Deaconessalexander.georgiaepiscopal.com

1900 Census, Sea Island, Georgia  in www.ancestry.com

Brandee A. Thomas, Two men hold ‘firsts’ in their fields, Brunswick News, Mar 3, 2008

Dr. Hector Montford https://risleyhigh.omeka.net/

Oral history interviews by students focused on the African American experience in Brunswick in the 1950s and 1960s and a photo digitization project for the Risley Alumni Association. 

Dr. Hector Montford, Assistant Professor of History Program Coordinator, American Studies BA Program, History and Political Science Concentration, College of Coastal Georgia

Savannah Tribune, Three articles “In Observance of American Education Week, November 12, 1953:

William A. Early, Supt. Of Schools, “Public Schools are the Yardstick for Community’s Strength and Progress.”

Ortha Douglas, Principal, Beach High School [Savannah] “School and Home Must Cooperate”

J.S. Wilkerson, [Principal, Risley High School] “Good Schools are Your Responsibility”

Dr. Melanie Pavich

Oral history interviews by Mercer University students Jocelyn King (Berthenia Gibson), Tammy Wages (Rosalind Venita Sheppard, March 8, 2014), and Tammy Wages (Levi Baisden, Ralph Baisden III (Junior?) March 14, 2015.

Continue reading

Our public schools are the yardstick or the community strength and progress. The philosophy and character of the parent is reflected in the classroom – from these reflections are molded great or small images.

Otha Douglas, Principal, Beach High School, 1953.

Historically, the pervasive opinion in the white community was that black schools were inferior, black teachers lacked training, and black students could only learn the most basic subjects. Time and again white political leaders did not comprehend the setting and missed the easy answers: “The answers are straightforward”, Jonathon Tilove wrote in his article In Black Schools Before Brown, Keys to Success: “Dedicated teachers. Strong principals. Order. Discipline. High expectations. Community and parental support.”

Elias Blake, Jr. Risley High School graduate and President of Clark Atlanta College recalls how Risley High School students built their own gymnasium. It was an act of self-help, he says, but also cunning. What the white superintendent and school board would see in that handmade gym were young blacks bring trained for manual labor. But, Blake says, ‘They were never brought into the main building where the laboratories were and where Mrs. Mollette was teaching Shakespeare, Thoreau, Emerson, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen.” Risley High School teachers, Blake says, were “doing college prep undercover.”

In the 1950s black teachers were better educated than white teachers because Southern states paid for the graduate education of black students who went north to school, rather than admit them to their state universities. Many black educators returned home with Ivy League degrees. In the profiles published in Benjamin Allen’s book Black America Series: Glynn County Georgia Glynn teachers at Risley had advanced degrees from over 25 national universities. Five Risley graduates went on to be Presidents of leading Historic Black Colleges (years served):

Cornelius V. Troup, Ft. Valley State College (1945-1965)
Elias Baker, Jr., Clark College Atlanta (1977-1987)
William H. Dennis, Jr. Morehouse College (1953-1965)
Rufus Patterson Perry, Johnson C Small University (1957-1968)
Timothy C. Meyers, Savannah State (Interim President, 1949).

Risley alumni Richard Perry and Marie Broadsdale pointed out that today students who attended Risley are well informed on black history because in the 9th grade “we had a course on Negro history [based on a] book written by Carter G. Woodson. Taught by the late CV Troup.”

I remember vividly … Negro History. It was not just a book, it was a part of our studies. It was included in our studies and we had to study that book just like we studied geography, just like we studied math, English, science, all of these were part of our curriculum. It was not just something you just took if you wanted. You had to study Negro history.

Did the teachers make Risley what it was? “Of course!” answered alumnus CA Lee.

Alumni recalled, “We really knew our teachers and they knew us. Teachers were part of our culture. We saw them at church, we saw them at the grocery store. Our parents knew them.” One alumna recalled that “It was a must that the teachers had to visit each student’s home before the year was out.” When Risley’s principal Mr. Wilkerson visited homes in Dixville, he sat on a front porch, chatted with parents, and acknowledged the student who rode by on their bikes. At school “When he walked down the hall, you knew his presence. He wasn’t cruel or unkind and sometimes he didn’t have to say word. You knew you better be ready to account for your whereabouts, especially if you did have a hall pass.“

There was a mantra the Risley alumni repeated, “This is our school, these are our kids, they’re going to learn above and beyond what that book says and they are going to learn what that books doesn’t say.” In other words, “We are a community and everybody is going to get the benefits of what we have to teach you.” (CA Lee, Montford)

Continue reading

Two one room schoolhouses on St. Simons Island provided educational foundation for African American children from the mid 1920s until 1954 when Glynn County consolidated the public schools and forced the island’s black students to go to segregated schools on the mainland. Emory Rooks recalls that the students at his new school thought the island children were “rich kids.” We weren’t, he replied. However, they were more well-off academically thanks to their teachers: Mr. and Mrs. Johnson at Harrington and Mr. Baisden at South End.

Harrington

Adrian Johnson and Louetta Johnson lived in the South End. Both had graduated from Claflin College in SC. and took jobs as teachers at the Harrington School. Mrs. Johnson taught the younger students; Mr. Johnson taught the older students. Lessons included English, reading, writing, diagramming sentences, cursive writing, math, and current affairs. “Our teachers always made sure we were aware of what was going on outside our small island. They really worked hard to actually expose their students to an education that was going to help them in the future.“ So anytime, anything would happen, nationally [Pearl Harbor] or President dying or big event politically he [Mr. Johnson] would expose us to it. Because we were small and isolated didn’t mean we were not exposed to things of the world… They tried to bring the best in of us. They really did.” Harrington students went on to be nurses, air force colonels, teachers and principals, and small business owners. In whatever profession, Mrs. Gibson pointed out Harrington students tried to be good citizens because “we were taught, to be good citizens.“

South End

Ralph Baisden, Senior, and his wife Alethia Buckley Baisden both taught at the South End School, now demolished, near Lotson Avenue and Mallory Street. Ralph Baisden Senior was a man of many trades – a carpenter, a house painter, and a notary public, but “if someone had asked, why did God create Ralph Baisden…it would be to be an educator “said his son Ralph Jr. Born in 1894 in Townsend, GA Baisden Senior attended school in McIntosh County, then college in Savannah, and graduate school at Columbia University in New York. He was a WWI veteran. His son described his father as “diligent and persistent.” Mr. Baisden taught it all – reading, writing, arithmetic and social. At this time period, South End student Rosalind Sheppard, observed,

The teacher had the lead way on how he was going to teach us and train us. But he made sure that we were taught…..I knew how to read. I knew my time tables… but we were allowed to us our imagination. We spent a lot of time outside looking at nature, growing and learning how to develop, and how to do things.

Mr. Baisden was the first person to start an oratorical contest for black students. His son proudly described the course:

{It} was a phenomenal achievement for that period in the [early, mid and late] fifties because black students were in segregated schools and supposedly unequal schools. So this was really an unparalled event….to enrich the backgrounds of the students… public speaking, knowing how to speak, and being comfortable inside your body, your skin, so to speak…Even today that would be great exposure.

Mr. Baisden viewed each of his students as he viewed his own five children. Sharing a photo with the Mercer U interviewer, his son emphasized “look at the way he is looking at his students…He’s just not some distant person. These (38) are his students. Those are his family. Just as his own five children are his family. He would have kept up with each one of them as they progressed throughout lives.”

Mrs. Baisden, also a native of McIntosh County, used to take very young Ralph (“in swaddling clothes” he joked) to school when she taught. She was “A very strong mother, a very strong reader at a time where women would tend to be in the background. She was out front in teaching school…being a leader in church. I was blessed to have two parents of that caliber.” Baisden remembers family tradition of dinner table together when parents and children discuss their day. When presidential elections were broadcast on the radio, “we knew all the candidates. We knew all the positions.“

What is “Normal?”

Finding trained teachers for Negro schools was difficult in late 1880s – 1930s. A “normal” school offered training to be teachers and skills to have jobs.

As early as 1892 the Blacks of Brunswick, Georgia were discussing the need for a normal school.  Through the efforts of Miss Carrie E. Bemus, a white teacher from Pennsylvania, and Reverend H. L. Bleach, the school became a reality.  Its aim, according to an ad in the Macon Telegraph, was to prepare students “not only to teach successfully, but to become true leaders among their race.”  Classes opened on October 6, 1903.   The school later became Selden Normal and Industrial Institute, named for Dr. Charles Selden.  After the death of Miss Bemus in 1909, Selden Institute came under the care of the Presbyterian Church.

Among the courses of study were cooking, domestic science, sewing, millenary, farming, gardening, carpentry, and shoemaking.  Later Selden added nurse training, teacher training, and business. The school published a paper called “The Work,” and did print jobs in the Black community. Even with the industrial bias, Selden had a school choral society, a dramatics club, and a school quartet that toured in 1917 to raise funds. In 1933 Selden merged with a similar Presbyterian school, the Gillespie Normal Institute in Cordele, Georgia. The Gillespie-Selden Institute continued in Cordele until 1956 when a city-wide school reorganization ended the school. (Source:www.lostcolleges.com)

Several RIsley High School teachers attended Selden Institute.

Continue reading

“…on October 13, 1870, [the Georgia legislature] adopted Georgia’s present system of public instruction, granting by legislation equal school privileges to all children regardless of race of color. It is a singular coincidence, that the passage of this Act was on the hundredth anniversary of a previous Act passed by the Georgia Legislature making it penal to teach a Negro to write or to read any writing. This was a great day for Georgia.”

Richard R. Wright, 1894, President of Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth A Brief Historical Sketch of Negro Education in Georgia” presented to the State Teachers of GA

Clandestine schools taught by free coloreds; humane masters “who winked at the violation of the law and permitted their children to instruct a favorite slave to read and sometimes to write”; ministers such as Rev. C.C. Jones who dispensed Christian instruction, or “some aged impecunious white lady {who} would agree to teach the children of free colored people and the children of such slaves as had hired their time.” While on Butler Island in 1838-1839 Fanny Kemble taught her husband Pierce Butler’s personal household slave Aleck to read. Aleck’s daughter Anna would go on to teach at St. Cyprian in Darien, St. Athanasius in Brunswick, and the Church of the Good Shepherd in Pennick. Anna Alexander became the first and only African American consecrated deaconess in the Episcopal Church. With Union troops on St. Simons Island In 1862 Susie Taylor King taught forty children, adults and soldiers of Company E “all of them so eager to learn.” After emancipation the army, the Freedman’s Bureau, the Freedman’s Aid Society, and Christian associations such as the American Missionary Association, the Baptist Home Mission Society, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church Missionary set out to help educate colored families.

Census records on Georgia’s sea islands in the early 1900s noted parents who could not read or write but their children were “At School.” Their parents expected them to learn. Parents built the schools. Teachers made sure their students achieved the best education they could provide. Both parents and teachers expected the best from the students because Education meant Freedom.

This month we look at the role of teachers and community in schools before Brown v. Board of Education. Appreciation goes to Dr. Melanie Pavich (Mercer U) and Dr. Hector Montford (College of Coastal Ga) and their students for oral history interviews used for these articles. See Sources for more details. SSAAHC welcomes your education memories – contact us at harringtonschool@ssiheritagecoalition.org, or call 912-634-0330.

Our Parents Sent Us to Learn

“…the superior education that many black schools provided is a source of fierce pride for alumni …It is a remarkable tale of how black communities, under the thumb and under the radar of oppression, created schools that imbued black children with a sense of confidence and possibility in the midst of a system determined to limit them.”

Jonathon Tilove, “In Black Schools Before Brown, Keys to Success” 2004.

Adults today in their 70s and 80s recall that there was no need for a PTA. “The teachers knew us and they knew our parents.“ Mr. and Mrs. Johnson at Harrington were neighbors and members of the local church. Mr. Baisden at South End was also a neighbor. Mr. Wilkerson, principal at Risley regularly visited students’ homes and sat on the front porch with their parents. Parents expected students to learn and to be respectful of their teachers. If not, alumni recalled, the teachers reminded them with Big Boy or Big Patty straps and “a whooping when we got home.” As one student put it, “Every night was parent teacher night because if you did something wrong…the teachers would tell your parents. They would sure tell.”

But going to school wasn’t a fearful thing. Studies in reading, writing, and math were interspersed with music and outside recess playing ball, tag, or dodgeball. Isadora Hunter loved school when she attended Harrington in 1928. She always regretted having to drop out to tend to her younger siblings when her mother died. Many, like Berthenia Gibson, went on to be teachers themselves emulating her teachers Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. “Our teachers wanted us to succeed, too. They prepared us for the outside world.”

Up until the 1960s black children only attended schools for black students. There were some benefits to segregated schools – they were located in your neighborhood so you could walk or bike to school and you attended with your friends. There was a sense of community, and growing pride for students, family and community. There were plenty of downsides too. “Five times“ hand-me down books, dusty interiors, poor lighting and outside toilets. Public school officials believed you were not as well educated as white students. But when island black students were bused to Brunswick or enrolled in private African American schools, they often skipped a grade or two because in their one room schoolhouses separated by a partition, they had heard and learned the older students’ lessons too.

Continue reading

The Harrington School celebrates its hundredth anniversary this year, and the St. Simons African American Heritage Coalition celebrates its twenty-fourth! The Coalition was founded in October 2000 at the First African Baptist Church of St. Simons Island, bringing together property owners and citizens who wished to protect St. Simons’s African American history and community from new development on the island. Today, the Coalition continues with a related mission “to educate, preserve, and revitalize African American history and culture” through three goals: land loss prevention, historic preservation, and economic development.

The SSAAHC preserves African American history on St. Simons through a variety of initiatives, including programming like the annual Taste of Gullah event and historic tours of the island’s communities. Through this programming and other outreach, the SSAAHC serves an important function as both a resource for members of the existing community and a gateway for others to learn about its importance to St. Simons Island. The Mercer University Coastal Georgia Research Initiative specifically states that its work “effectively showcases the efforts of students and faculty focused on aiding the St. Simons African American Heritage Coalition in preserving African-American history and historic sites on the Georgia coast.”

All of the previous elements discussed in this month’s weekly facts—oral histories, photos of structures from the Harrington Project, and Amy Roberts’s collection of African American funeral programs—contribute to the success of the St. Simons African American Heritage Coalition. The SSAAHC has hosted researchers and their students, restored the Harrington School, and continues to serve as a vital resource for the promotion of our community’s African American history. To learn how you can become more involved with the work of the Coalition, visit this page to find information on becoming a member, volunteering, or donating.

Sources: “About Us,” Saint Simons African American Heritage Coalition, https://ssiheritagecoalition.org/about-us/; “Coastal Georgia Research Initiative,” Mercer University, https://professionaladvancement.mercer.edu/coastal-georgia-research-initiative/

Continue reading

While photographs preserve a visual window into our past, oral histories have an almost magical quality: they transport listeners not only into a specific time and place, but also into the individual life and of the person recounting their own experience. In recent years, local historians have placed special importance upon oral histories as sources for African American history in coastal Georgia. Several initiatives, like the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Center at Georgia Southern, highlight storytelling and oral tradition’s importance among Gullah Geechee people. Oral history interviews present a chance to carry on that tradition and to learn about events and changes in our community from those who lived them.

Dr. Melanie Pavich serves as the Project Director for the Coastal Georgia Research Initiative at Mercer University. This initiative, run through the University’s College of Professional Advancement, allows students to learn about historical and cultural issues in coastal Georgia “by interviewing members of African-American communities in the coastal Georgia region.” After conducting interviews, students create public presentations and digital stories that are archived for later access. Recently, the Initiative has received grants from Georgia Humanities and has presented public programs including a 2019 presentation “based on oral history interviews of African American residents of [St. Simons Island] whose families date back to the time of enslavement.”

The Coastal Georgia Research Initiative is not the only organization collecting oral histories in Glynn County. Dr. Hector Montford at the College of Coastal Georgia leads the Historic Risley School Archives Digitization Project, aided by students and faculty from the College’s American Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies programs. Their online collections include photographs, scrapbooks, and PTA materials from the Risley School, as well as valuable oral histories from former Risley students and faculty, recorded as part of a Brunswick African American Cultural Center project. Oral histories are also integral to the presentation of history in museums on both St. Simons and Jekyll islands. Mosaic, the Jekyll Island Museum, has recorded oral history interviews with individuals including Sandra Martin Mungin, the daughter of Genoa Martin, the former manager of Brunswick’s Selden Park. At the World War II Home Front Museum on St. Simons, visitors can listen to oral histories that illuminate Glynn County’s wartime efforts, including interviews with members of the Mungin family, several of whom served in World War II. 

Sources: “Georgia Southern’s Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Center opens, bridges connection between past and present,” Georgia Southern University, https://www.georgiasouthern.edu/news/2021/09/29/georgia-southerns-gullah-geechee-cultural-heritage-center-opens-bridges-connections-between-past-and-present/; “Coastal Georgia Research Initiative,” Mercer University, https://professionaladvancement.mercer.edu/coastal-georgia-research-initiative/; Historic Risley School Digital Archives, https://risleyhigh.omeka.net/; “Genoa Martin, Jekyll Island Trailblazer,” Jekyll Island Foundation, https://jekyllislandfoundation.org/about/for-the-record/martin/; “Homefront connection highlighted at Historical Society event,” The Brunswick News, https://thebrunswicknews.com/news/local_news/homefront-connection-highlighted-at-historical-society-event/article_61976f6b-d6af-553f-8fb5-5c2f8e4e64fc.html

Continue reading

A handwritten and typewritten document in the archives of the Coastal Georgia Historical Society, dated April 2001, gives a list of attendees and a list of photograph descriptions for a new initiative: the Harrington Project. Officially founded in 2002, the project identified the importance of the Harrington neighborhood and sought to record the history of its residents through oral histories and images. Photographs were taken of buildings throughout the area—some still in use, and some not—and were recorded along with names of people who lived in, worked in, or were otherwise associated with them. This collection of photographs in the collections of the Coastal Georgia Historical Society includes such structures as Tony Cuyler’s general store, the St. Andrew Church of God in Christ, and the Harrington School itself. Participants also photographed vacant spaces where buildings had once stood and new residential developments in the area. Although the entire collection of more than thirty images has not yet been entered into the Society’s Online Collections Search, a sample of the images may be viewed here.

Information from the Harrington Project’s documents identify some of its members as Kaye Horton, Pecolia Baisden, Isadora Hunter, and Ginger Miya. Their work helped to present an image of the Harrington neighborhood and its historic places as they appeared in 2002—an appearance that has since sustained much change. Many structures, especially those that were not in use when they were photographed, are now gone. The Harrington School was also slated for demolition, but through an enormous fundraising and restoration effort, today the building is a museum and celebrates its hundredth anniversary. In February, “before and after” photographs of the school building were featured in Elegant Island Living magazine, showcasing the immense amount of work and dedication that brought the building to its current state.

Sources: Coastal Georgia Historical Society collections; “Harrington: A Neighborhood, A School, A Legacy,” Elegant Island Living, https://www.elegantislandliving.net/history/harrington-a-neighborhood-a-school-a-legacy/.

Continue reading

Heritage research often requires a variety of sources—sometimes from unexpected places. The Coastal Georgia Historical Society received a donation from Amy Roberts that provides a vital look at our area’s African American history. The collection of more than two hundred funeral programs, spanning the 1960s to the 2010s, comes from funerals on St. Simons and in Brunswick, as well as in nearby McIntosh County. Recently, the Historical Society has begun to digitize the collection. By following this link to the Society’s Online Collections Database, searchers may browse descriptions and images of each of the 224 programs. Many of the records also include information about interment and about the service’s officiant.

Funeral programs like these are recognized as good sources for both local history and genealogical research. The College of Coastal Georgia states that they are “especially [important] for African Americans whose obituaries were not traditionally published in newspapers until the 1960s and 1970s.” They include a wide range of biographical information about the deceased, and they help communities like ours to tell their local story. The College of Coastal Georgia also links to more than a dozen similar collections of funeral programs from around the southern United States. Another local resource, the Heritage Room at the Brunswick-Glynn County Library, contains cemetery records for many burial places throughout Glynn County and coastal Georgia. By combining these documents with information from funeral program collections, interested researchers may find out more about a person’s life through records of their burial.

Sources: “Heritage Room,” Marshes of Glynn Libraries, https://moglibraries.org/_books,_movies_and_more/heritage_room.php; “Funeral Programs and Obituaries: Guide,” College of Coastal Georgia, https://libguides.ccga.edu/obituaries; Coastal Georgia Historical Society Online Collections

Continue reading

Westley Wallace Law was born in Savannah in 1923, the eldest of three children and his parents’ only son. Law’s father died during his son’s childhood, and by age ten, Law had begun working to support his family. He continued his education and found time to serve as a member of the NAACP Youth Council during high school, later becoming president of the Youth Council during his years at Georgia State College (now Savannah State University). His work in civil rights, begun at an early age, was inspired by several figures: his mother Geneva, his grandmother Lillie Belle Wallace, his mentor Ralph Mark Gilbert (the pastor of Savannah’s First African Baptist Church), and his childhood scoutmaster John S. Delaware. Both Gilbert and Delaware also worked with the NAACP in Savannah.

In 1950, W. W. Law became the president of the Savannah chapter of the NAACP. Over the next twenty-six years, he advocated for change in Savannah and beyond—and his sphere of influence included Glynn County and the Golden Isles. Change had come to the area in the late 1950s and early 1960s, propelled by leaders like Reverend Julius Caesar Hope of Brunswick and by events like Maurice Ruddick’s visit to the Golden Isles. In 1963, Law and a group of civil rights leaders would focus their efforts on Jekyll Island, hoping to advance the cause of desegregation on state-owned land.

By 1955, Jekyll Island had designated St. Andrews Beach, at the island’s southern end, for use by African Americans. Local and tourist interest led to the construction of a beach pavilion and other facilities near St. Andrews Beach, eventually including the Dolphin Club Motel and Lounge as both lodging for visitors and a stop on the Chitlin Circuit, where black performers played for black audiences. Despite this progress, there were still many facilities on Jekyll which black visitors could not access. In 1963, W. W. Law, along with Julius Caesar Hope and a group of 25 others, visited Jekyll Island. The group used a picnic area and visited a drugstore, but were denied access to many other facilities, including motels, beach pavilions outside of St. Andrews, the island’s indoor swimming pool, its amusement park, and its golf courses. According to Law, “a cafeteria [on the island] shut its doors rather than serve his group.”

Law and his group, which was comprised of members of both Savannah’s and Brunswick’s chapters of the NAACP, quickly turned their findings into action. They filed a lawsuit, Law v. Jekyll Island State Park Authority. This led to a district court decision the very next year. In 1964, thanks to efforts by W. W. Law, Julius Caesar Hope, and other members of this group of civil rights pioneers, all facilities on Jekyll Island were officially integrated.

“W. W. Law,” New Georgia Encyclopedia, https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/w-w-law-1923-2002/;
“A look back at a segregated Jekyll Island,” Golden Isles Magazine, https://www.goldenislesmagazine.com/features/a-look-back-at-a-segregated-jekyll- island/article_c6509b0e-49a4-11eb-ad3b-637d6130408f.html;
“Segregation at Jekyll Island,” New Georgia Encyclopedia, https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/exhibition/seeing-georgia-changing- visions-of-tourism-in-the-modern-south/wsb-segregrated-jekyll_001/
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/exhibition/seeing-georgia-changing- visions-of-tourism-in-the-modern-south/wsb-segregrated-jekyll_001/;
“Open Water,” 3181, the Magazine of Jekyll Island, https://www.jekyllisland.com/magazine/open-water/;
“Negroes Seek to Integrate Jekyll Island,” Bristol Herald Courier, March 25, 1963,https://www.newspapers.com/article/bristol-herald-courier-bristol-tn-mar-2/42737019/

Continue reading