Black Owned Savannah, Georgia.
Savannah’s oak trees lined streets with swaying Spanish moss is something out of a movie. No wonder Hollywood blockbusters are shot there, the backdrop adds texture to cinematography. It’s even more beautiful in real life. The city has been on my staycation list since I moved to Georgia. A four-hour drive from Atlanta, Savannah is dripping in history. It is one of the oldest port cities in America, and today, it is the third busiest, behind Long Beach and New York.
The Old Savannah Cotton Exchange. Photo by Diana O’Gilvie.
During its heyday, Savannah was known as a major trading post for cotton and slaves. However, I noticed a very sanitized version of Black history on my excursions. On a long walk around the riverfront section, plaques extolled historical buildings and sites like Washington’s Guns and Old Cotton Exchange. When I read the plaque in front of the Old Cotton Exchange, it reported that two million bales of cotton were moved annually from that very building since 1887. My mind immediately went to the hands that picked the cotton, the fingers that separated the seeds, twigs, and shoulders that loaded them onto ships bound for Europe. Where were the ancestors?
Over the next few days, I sought to answer this question.
Day Clean Tours
Dr. Jamal Toure leaning on a 100-year-old pew inside the First African Baptist Church in Savannah. Photo by Diana O’Gilvie.
Expertly led by Dr Jamal Toure, Day Clean Tours is a walk through Savannah’s history over cobbled stones, and well-manicured squares that hide atrocities in plain sight. We met Dr. Toure in front of the Haitian monument in Franklin Square. The Haitian Monument commemorates the contributions of the Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue, a French regiment of free men of African descent, from present-day Haiti during the American Revolution. The work depicts five uniformed and armed soldiers, rifles pointed at the ready. The young drummer boy, who stands just to the left of the armed group, is Henri Christophe an important leader in the Haitian Revolution and the only monarch of the Kingdom of Haiti.
The Haitian Monument in Franklin Square. Photo by Diana O’Gilvie.
It was during this tour that I learned a new to me term, slave mart. Dr. Toure pointed to a three-story red brick building adjacent to the First African Baptist Church.
“That used to be one of the busiest slave marts outside of Jackson Square,” he said.
“I’ve heard and read about slave auctions, is that the same?” I queried.
This building sits right in the heart of City Market, a once thriving enclave for Black business owners, now a bustling commercial strip lined with bars and restaurants, typical tourist fare. Less than 200 years ago, captured Africans were stored in this building. Here they were inspected and bought and sold as enslaved people. From the 1850s until well after the Emancipation Proclamation, the building owner, John S. Montmollin, and his third-floor tenant, Alexander Bryan, used the building to hold and sell captured Africans and their enslaved descendants. Today, it’s a variety store for pets.
Dr. Toure then took us to the riverfront by Factor’s Walk and I walked into a large structure with an arched entryway that immediately transported me back to the slave dungeons in Cape Coast, Ghana. Upon entering the feelings of dread, horror, and deep sorrow moved me to tears in Cape Coast, washed over me. As I slowly spun around, I saw the same structure that held millions of captured Africans with little light, ventilation, and no areas to relieve oneself. The same narrow pathway snaked along the sides, carved into the ground so excrement and menses would flow into the streets.
One of the storage rooms for cotton and the enslaved. Photo by Diana O’Gilvie.
After enduring capture, and being piled on top of one another on slave ships and crossing the Atlantic, captured Africans reached ports like Birmingham, and Savannah and were stored in slave barracoons, cave-like dwellings.
The placard in front stated that those rooms were used for storing cotton and there was “no evidence” that Africans were stored there. I read that line over and over again and kept looking up into the room. Lies. They were here.
The Grey
The bar at The Grey. Photo by Diana O’Gilvie.
James Beard award-winning chef Mashama Bailey runs The Grey. The restaurant is in a building that she would have had to enter through the back door because of the color of her skin. The Grey is built inside a formerly segregated Greyhound bus station. Talk about a loaded history. Since opening in 2014, Bailey and her partner Johno Morisano have transformed the restaurant into an essential American dining institution. It was the first reservation I made when planning the itinerary for the trip.
After seeing Bailey’s story on the hit Netflix series, Chef’s Table, I felt drawn to her style of cooking, celebrating local ingredients that in a way that honored her culture. Born in the Bronx to a southern mother, she is a classically trained chef who effortlessly blends authentic soulful southern home cooking and technique. The menu varies on what is in season both from the land and the sea. I dived into perfectly cooked redfish filets caught earlier that day. The extensive menu of European wines had me salivating. I eventually settled on an Italian red wine flight that paired well with the fish. For dessert, I chose the towering chocolate and peanut butter parfait with candied nuts.
The Grey’s décor doesn’t shy away from its past, behind the bar the signage for boarding gates frames a now green space. It isn’t hard to imagine large Greyhound buses pulling up and people queuing to board.
History is not repeating itself at The Grey, just good food. See my video recap here.
Pin Point Museum
The crab shucking room. Photo by Diana O’Gilvie.
Pin Point Museum is a quick twenty-five-minute drive from the city center. The museum celebrates Gullah/Geechee culture in an open honest manner that’s heavy on pride. The museum is now a transformed educational center in the former A.S. Varn & Son Oyster and Crab Factory.
The admission fee is $10 and guests are welcome to discover unique lifeways of food, language, and religion. The museum is a self-guided tour with old factory machinery and fishing boats sprinkled throughout
There is a very moving short documentary that hones in on the close-knit community that was formed by freed slaves after the Civil War. According to the film, Pin Point is the only waterfront community in the Sea Islands that is still Black-owned. See my video recap here.
An old fishing boat on display. Photo by Diana O’Gilvie.
The Davenport House
Inside the basement of the Davenport House where twenty-three enslaved men and women live. Photo by Diana O’Gilvie.
Although not Black-owned, the Davenport House is an excellent example of Savannah’s historical preservation initiatives. Built in the 1800s by Isaiah Davenport, the house was slated for demolition in the 1950s to build a parking lot. A group of seven tenacious women raised the money to purchase it and there began a movement to save about 400 historical homes in Savannah.
The basement of the home was the living and working quarters of twenty-three enslaved people who served the Davenports. Stepping into the space was a time travel to another era. Tables, chairs, beds, crockery, utensils, and straw baskets were laid out in the fashion that they would have been back during those antebellum days.
Here, I learned that slavery wasn’t homogenous. Since Savannah is a planned city, there weren’t any plantations, thus urban slavery prevailed. Labor was divided among the genders. Women labored as domestics working around the clock with household duties like nanny, cooks, and washer. There were also a number of enslaved women who sold foodstuff in the city’s thriving markets. The men worked as draymen- driving goods like cotton down to the waterfront, stevedores-working on docks, waggoners and, cart men that transported goods from the countryside. Also, there was a sector of skilled laborers that included carpenters, masons, and blacksmiths.
