The Savannah Tribune, July 30, 1960. On Page 1 is an article titled “Negroes Petition For Desegregated Recreational Facilities.”
Savannah maintained separate and unequal public park systems for black and white people from the end of the Civil War until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Black Savannahians were barred by custom from entering the largest and finest parks due to Jim Crow segregation.
As a graduate student in public history at Georgia Southern University, I wanted to learn how the City of Savannah enforced park segregation through a combination of social customs and administrative actions.
I interned at the City of Savannah Municipal Archives and continued researching this topic alongside archives director Luciana M. Spracher.
This resulted in the curation and creation of a digital exhibit, “Jim Crow in Savannah’s Parks,” using official documents to detail how racism openly guided decisions by the City of Savannah’s Park and Tree Commission, and by the Mayor and City Council, who decided where and when to build and improve parks and recreation facilities.
The resources of the Digital Library of Georgia were critical to my research.
A digitization subgrant from DLG that was awarded recently to the City of Savannah Municipal Archives paid to digitize the minutes of the Park and Tree Commission from its founding in 1896 through 1972.
I read through sixty years of meeting minutes, a task made possible during the COVID-19 pandemic only because these records were digitized and freely available online, which made it possible for me to access them from home.
The Digital Library of Georgia also has digitized copies of the speech books of Malcolm R. Maclean, the mayor who guided Savannah toward agreements desegregating restaurants, hotels, theaters, and other public accommodations even before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Black-owned newspapers chronicled Jim Crow in Savannah, while the “white” press largely ignored it until the 1950s. The Georgia Historic Newspapers website, maintained by the Digital Library of Georgia, gave me access to decades of the Savannah Tribune, Savannah’s leading black newspaper, which I also used in the exhibit.
The digital exhibit, “Jim Crow in Savannah’s Parks,” is hosted by Georgia Southern University, with links from the City of Savannah website. You can view the exhibit at georgiasouthern.libguides.com/savannahparks
Miners Recorder and Spy In The West. (Auraria, Lumpkin County, Georgia) March 29, 1834, Page 1
by Donnie Summerlin and Mandy Mastrovita
As part of a $17,980 grant from the R. J. Taylor, Jr. Foundation, the Digital Library of Georgia has digitized over 77,000 pages of Georgia newspaper titles in partnership with the Atlanta History Center.
The newly-released collection includes rare nineteenth-century titles from north Georgia and previously unavailable titles from larger cities across the state.
The project creates full-text searchable versions of the newspapers. It presents them online for free in its Georgia Historic Newspapers database.
Users will be able to search the database for geographic, corporate, family, and personal names.
142 titles have been digitized from the following Georgia cities:
Paul Crater, vice president of collections and research at the Atlanta History Center, emphasizes the impact that the digitization of these newspapers will have on researchers of Georgia history:
“Composed of over 4,600 newspapers, the collection was assembled by William Grisham, a North Georgia resident who served as clerk of court for Cherokee county and postmaster for his community.
The collection was donated to the Atlanta History Center in 2001 by Nell Galt Magruder, a descendant of Mr. Grisham.
The collection includes essential regional publications from Atlanta, Milledgeville, Marietta, Rome, and Augusta.
The collection is a valuable source for those interested in pre-Civil War Georgia, the Cherokee Removal, the North Georgia gold rush, the Civil War, Southern agriculture, and genealogy.”
About the R. J. Taylor, Jr. Foundation
The purpose of the R. J. Taylor, Jr. Foundation Trust is to promote genealogical research and study in Georgia in conjunction with the Georgia Genealogical Society and the Georgia Archives. Grants are made to individuals and organizations to defray the expense of publishing (print or digital) records of a genealogical nature from public and private sources. The primary emphasis is on preserving and making available to the public genealogical data concerning citizens of Georgia who were residents prior to 1851. Visit the R. J. Taylor, Jr. Foundation at http://taylorfoundation.org/
About the Atlanta History Center
The Atlanta History Center through its collections, facilities, programs, exhibitions, and publications preserves and interprets historical subjects pertaining to Atlanta and its environs and presents subjects of interest to Atlanta’s diverse audiences. Visit the Atlanta History Center at atlantahistorycenter.com
