March through Georgia state ties history, culture and place together for locals

Karen Michelson

Published Saturday, August 30, 2008

So why would a Yankee gal from Fergus Falls spend a hot and humid week in mid-July marching through Georgia? Encouraged by my dean, Dr. Gary Henrickson, I applied for — and was awarded — a National Endowment for the Humanities workshop in Savannah.

The workshop's title: “African American History and Culture in the Georgia Lowcountry: Savannah and the Coastal Islands, 1750-1950.”

In preparation, I read more than 1,800 pages about the following: plantation life, from both the perspectives — slaves and owners; life on Sapelo and Ossabaw islands; the architecture of plantations and what it reveals about slave life; and a thick collection of articles covering work and culture, women's work and men's work, economics of slavery, rice plantations, indigo cultivation and more.

The mission of the workshop was to tie history, culture and place together. For me, this mission was accomplished.

Little did the advance reading prepare me for the emotional journey ahead. Arriving two days before the workshop began, my traveling companions (husband, Ron, and good friend, Jim Daly) and I began by spending hours at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum, well worth a visit.

The Wall of Honor was especially moving; the stories of the airmen were the stuff of legends. We owe them such a debt.

We then visited Fort Pulaski, a Civil War-era outpost. Our focus was on the armaments: both Ron and Jim knew plenty about artillery having served in Vietnam — Ron as an infantry platoon leader and Jim as a trajectory plotter for artillery.

The men seemed to enjoy the noon cannon firing exhibition.

Sunday afternoon, I trekked over to the Georgia Historical Society for the workshop's opening session.There I met 24 other college instructors from 13 states and from many disciplines.

Over the next week, we bonded on our field trips, tours and art collection excursions. The team from the historical society — Stan, Christy and Charles — did a marvelous job of putting all the pieces together for us: from the readings to the field trips to the bus tours to the art exhibits, all these pieces coalesced into a wonderful and moving experience.

Some of the authors of the books we read gave lectures and led discussions: Erskine Clarke (The Dwelling Place) and John Michael Vlach (Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery).

Later, Cornelia Walker Bailey, author of “God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man,” spoke to us from a lawn chair in front of her house on Sapelo Island, home of her ancestors.

Several of the instructors at the workshop plan to use her book — a history of the island and her family, folk lore, myths — as a common reader in their classes. This effort will connect instructors and students across America. I may be joining this bandwagon when I next teach our American Ethnic Literature course here in Fergus Falls.

We were invited into private homes in Savannah to explore African art exhibits; we also had a guided tour of a modern African American art collection at a local art gallery. One of the themes of Bailey's book is the abiding ties that still exist between Africa and America. This tie continues to manifest itself in arts and crafts, in cooking, in textiles, in colors, in language. Today's African Americans who travel to Africa find much that is familiar.

Even the word “Gullah,” used to identify a certain group of African Americans who still live in the Lowcountry along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia, may have evolved from “Angola,” a region in African from which hundreds of thousands of slaves were harvested — by both black and white captors — and transported to the colonies and the Caribbean islands.

Today's Gullahs are proud of their heritage and I am now the proud owner of two Gullah cookbooks, filled with recipes using local produce from land and sea. I plan to prepare some traditional Lowcountry food and serve it on campus during African American history week.

Our pontoon trip to Ossabaw Island, a hauntingly beautiful and silent place, was very moving. Bouncing along the island's few sandy roads, we heard about the Native American sites, hidden under the thick canopy of palm trees.

We learned about the Africans who planted Sea Island cotton and who sweated over vats of blue indigo, a feathery shrub-like plant. The resulting blue dye was often used by the slaves to paint the ceilings of their slave quarters to keep the “haints,” or ghosts out.

The slave cottages that remain on Ossabaw are being restored; they are made of “tabby,” a mixture of oyster shells and a cement-like substance.

Jim, our guide on Ossabaw, seems to love his isolated life. The island is also home to a big house, and in it lives Eleanor, a.k.a. Sandy, daughter of a man who married money.

Her family came to the island in the early 1900s and built a lovely home, still standing but in ill-repair. Sandy didn't want to leave the mainland but once on Ossabaw, she fell in love with the island and is still there, in her 90s.

Through her efforts, the island has been turned over to the state of Georgia and should be safe from over-development such as has occurred on Hilton Head.

The heat on Ossabaw was incredible that day — over 102 degrees. I constantly thought about those slaves who had limited drinking water, who worked from dawn to dark, who went home to a bucket of tepid water in the corner of a tiny cabin filled with many others. Just to survive that climate was an amazing feat.

Those who endured and whose families are still on the islands are a testament to the power of the human spirit. I felt humbled as I whined about not getting my second bottle of chilled water, when I returned to my hotel room for a cool shower and fresh clothes.

We also took walking tours of Savannah and bus tours highlighting important places in African American neighborhoods. One such place was a large African American church; the architecture of the church proper looks much like an upside down boat's keel.

This is because the African American men who built it were carpenters from the waterfront; they built in the style they knew — they built ships — and then a church.

The religious community that developed in Savannah and other southern regions was central to African Americans. The churches became the heartbeat of the black communities.

In the evenings, the men and I often went to a nearby British pub for dinner. The staff was sprightly and professional. I indulged one night and ordered a beer called “Old Peculiar.” I don't know why I did this; I'm not a beer drinker — I simply liked the name. Perhaps it resonated with me since I'm getting older and am a bit peculiar.

It was awful and the husband, frugal to a fault, had to drink it for me. We also visited the waterfront area; sadly it was shop after shop of imported souvenirs and tee-shirts. I had little time for any real shopping in Savannah, but I did purchase pounds and pounds of books about the islands and about the mainland areas that we read about and visited. These will all serve as resources as I work to infiltrate my teaching with what I learned on the trip.

On our last day, we each presented a brief bit on what we'd learned or what had affected us the most. I presented a rough draft of a narrative piece that seamed together the people I'd read about and met, what I'd learned from the lectures, what I saw in the art exhibits, what I'd experienced on the islands.

Later, at home, I worked to refine this piece and I'm proud to say that it will eventually appear on the Georgia Historical Society's Web page.

In looking at the broad tapestry of this wonderful workshop, it comes down to this: I've used Paul Lawrence Dunbar's (son of slaves) poem, “We Wear the Mask,” many times in class.

In it he writes about the mask that slaves and later freed men wore to protect themselves. This mask shielded them from the white world; it also, of course, separated them from the larger community.

In minstrel show fashion, they acted a certain way to survive. What the workshop did for me was reveal the faces behind the masks.

They now have names and homes and histories and families. Cornelia Walker Bailey is their heir-apparent, and I'm proud to have met her and broken bread with her.

Many thanks to the following: My dean, Dr. Henrickson, for his encouragement and support, our local college foundation for financial support, the wonderful staff at the Georgia Historical Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Karen Michelson is an English instructor at Minnesota State Community and Technical College-Fergus Falls campus.