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Exhibit Introduction

 

Savannah’s black community has an unbroken history of struggle against prejudice and racial discrimination. Scholars, like Michael Thurmond and Martha Keber, have documented this struggle. This photograph exhibit, selected from the vast personal collection of Westley Wallace “W. W.” Law, documents the role of the Savannah Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) during one of the most consequential periods of the struggle for freedom, justice, and equality.

    

W. W. Law was a protégé of the Rev. Dr. Ralph Mark Gilbert, a native Savannahian who returned from a pastorate in Detroit to become pastor of First African Baptist Church in 1939. He led the revival of the Savannah NAACP in 1942 and was elected president. Mr. Law joined the NAACP Youth Council during his high school years. After graduating from Cuyler/Beach High School in 1942, Law enrolled at Georgia State College (now Savannah State University), but was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943 to serve in World War II. After the war, he returned to Savannah State University and to the NAACP Youth Council. Law became president of the Youth Council and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1948. Due to his affiliation with the NAACP, he was unable to secure a teaching job with the local school district, but gained employment with the U.S. Postal Service, where he worked for more than forty years. Because of failing health, Dr. Gilbert resigned as president of the Savannah Branch of the NAACP in 1950 and was succeed by Mr. Law who remained president for twenty-six years (1950-1976).

   

These photographs document 1960-1965, five of the most turbulent years of the Civil Rights Movement in Savannah, Georgia. High school and college students in Savannah were not going to be outdone by the students in Greensboro, North Carolina, who started the sit-in movement in February 1960. The Savannah NAACP Youth Council would be the vanguard of what would evolve into an all out challenge to racial segregation in Savannah beginning on March 16, 1960. Desegregating lunch counters was only the tip of the iceberg. The goal quickly became the total dismantling of the “Jim Crow” system in Savannah. The NAACP formed a “Boycott Committee” and began picketing stores on Broughton Street demanding jobs in retail. As customers, they wanted to be addressed respectfully as “Mr.” and “Mrs.” instead of by their first names; they wanted to use rest rooms, water fountains, and dressing rooms in stores; and they wanted the same access to restaurants, movie theaters, and hotels as whites. The merchants, after eighteen months of financial losses, finally agreed to the demands of the NAACP in October 1961. Stephen G. N. Tuck in Beyond Atlanta: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Georgia, 1940-1980 writes that “By October there were “kneel-ins” in segregated churches, “wade-ins” at the beach, and “ride-ins” on the busses.”

    

1963 would be the apex of the Civil Rights Movement in Savannah. On May 1, 1963, six black men were hired as firemen by the City of Savannah. They would join the “Original Nine” blacks who had desegregated the Savannah Police Department in 1947. The Savannah Branch of the NAACP had petitioned the Savannah-Chatham County Board of Public Education to desegregate the public schools in 1955 and 1959 without success. In January 1962, the Rev. L. Scott Stell and thirty-five other African American parents filed suit in Federal Court to force the Board of Education to desegregate the public schools. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the desegregation of the twelfth grade in the fall of 1963. Nineteen students were recruited to attend Savannah High School and Groves High School in September. Otis Samuel Johnson was admitted as a transfer student from Savannah State College to become the first African American to attend Armstrong State Junior College in June 1963. He graduated in 1964, and then also became the first black Savannahian to attend and graduate from the University of Georgia in Athens in 1967. A comprehensive racial desegregation of public and private facilities agreement was reached between the white business community, church, and social leaders, and supported by the City government. This landmark agreement was signed eight months ahead of the national Civil Rights Act of 1964. Mr. Law’s photographs document the activities of this period of history, and include pictures of a march in solidarity with the Selma to Montgomery marchers in 1965.

    

A final tribute is paid to Rev. James M. Floyd who was murdered in the office of the Savannah Branch NAACP in 1970, City Alderman Robert “Robbie” Robinson who was assassinated by a mail bomb mailed to his law office in 1988, and State Representative Atty. Bobby L. Hill, the first African American State Representative elected from Chatham County since Reconstruction. An African Proverb says that “As long as you speak my name I shall live forever.” We speak the names of these men so they will be remembered.

 

-Otis Samuel Johnson, Ph.D., Mayor of Savannah (2004-2011)

Guest Curator