Savannah Square Named For Racist Renamed To Honor Black Woman Who Taught The Formerly Enslaved To Read

For the better part of two centuries, a downtown square in Savannah, Georgia’s oldest city, was named for a proud white supremacist. For the first time in 140 years, Savannah’s city council has succeeded in voting to rename the square, and it did so in honor of a Black woman who taught formerly enslaved people to read and write.

According to The Associated Press, the bid to rename one of Savannah’s 23 squares after Susie King Taylor passed on Thursday, changing its name from Calhoun Square, which it was named to honor former Vice President John C. Calhoun. 

Before we get further into the name change, let’s talk about how — in a country that supposedly isn’t racist and was founded on principles of freedom and liberty for all — a square honoring a vehement racist stood for so long.

Exactly what kind of man was John C. Calhoun?

From LEVEL:

Bestowing the title “Chief Racist” wasn’t as hard as one might think. America’s borders are what they are because of Calhoun and those he persuaded. Much of what is now Mexico might be part of the United States, but for his insistence, we didn’t want any more of Mexico because there were “too many Mexicans.”

“Nor have we ever incorporated into the Union any but the Caucasian race,” said Calhoun. “To incorporate Mexico would be the first departure of the kind; for more than half of its population are pure Indians, and by far the larger portion of the residue mixed blood. I protest against the incorporation of such a people. Ours is the Government of the white man.”

“I take higher ground,” he said. “I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good — a positive good. . . . I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other.”

“There is no instance of any civilized colored race of any shade being found equal to the establishment and maintenance of free government,” Calhoun argued. He pointed to the impoverished living conditions of Northern free blacks as proof that black people lacked the ability to exercise their freedom positively.

In Calhoun’s view, slavery benefited black people.

“Never before has the black race…from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually,” he said. “It (slaves) came to us in a low, degraded, and savage condition, and in the course of a few generations, it has grown up under the fostering care of our institutions.”

Ahhhh — it all makes sense now.

More than two centuries before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his state’s board of education approved teaching students that enslaved people benefited from slavery, men like Calhoun had already developed the narrative. More than two centuries before President Donald Trump and the rest of MAGA America launched the largest and most hateful anti-immigrant campaign in modern history, men like Calhoun had already drawn the blueprint for that campaign. No wonder a certain political party is obsessed with preserving the Confederacy.

In Savannah, five out of the nine people who serve on the city council are Black women, which Mayor Van Johnson noted, calling it an event Black people in Taylor’s day “never would have fathomed.”

“It’s one thing to make history. It’s something else to make sense. And in this case, we’re making both,” Johnson said.

According to LEVEL, “Susie King Taylor, who taught formerly enslaved people to read after the Civil War and was the only Black woman to write a memoir of her life during the war.”

Yeah, I think that’s a better choice. One can only wonder if our current administration would agree.

SEE ALSO:

Georgia Prosecutor Declines Criminal Charges Against Deputy Who Killed Exonerated Black Man

Shanelle Booker Becomes 1st Black Woman Appointed To Acting US Attorney For The Middle District Of Georgia

Read more