March 3, 2015

A couple of years ago, I travelled to the American south working on a documentary series about African American Churches. I especially looked forward to our five churches in Savannah, Georgia.

The city sounds just great in their brochures. But Savannah has a pretend surface. It’s one big historic landmark, with about 1100 designated buildings protected from demolition. I think they used a colour chart to co-ordinate the paint on all the old houses. And sure, those amazing squares are rimmed with hedges of blowsy flowering azaleas and hanging moss. “Very pretty…very pretty,” said a visitor.

moss & azaleas

But don’t be taken in, look closer. The building used for auctions of human beings in the 1800s borders one of these grassy squares. Right beside that square, sits The First African Baptist Church. It pulls the back story together. First African owns the nondescript auction building that isn’t on my tourist map. The church is and it’s exploited, knowingly, by the pastor.

He loves to point out the holes in the churches’ wooden basement floor.

The “enslaved” African American builders who worked nights, by torchlight, told the whites that the pattern of those holes was an African symbol carved by the slaves. In fact, those little circles were the breathing holes over the pit used to hide runaway slaves. Looking at those tiny dirt-clogged openings makes you gasp for air.

holes

The church website explains that indeed, the holes in the floor are the shape of an African prayer symbol known as a Congolese Cosmogram. In Africa, it also means “Flash of the Spirits” and represents birth, life, death, and rebirth”.

Four feet under that basement floor is another finished subfloor. Runaways hid between the floors.

Our tour guide was the pastor, Reverend Thurmond Neill Tillman. Tall, good-looking, funny, charming, great suits, charismatic, I could go on. And on. He never lets up selling his church and its history – built by free and runaway slaves. Or as Rev. Tillman says “not slaves, enslaved people. See the difference?” (If you’ve read my Montgomery piece, you know that already.)

Rev. Tillman’s big pitch? First African has the beginnings of a museum with slavery artefacts and archives, and they’re raising money to turn their old slave auction house across from them into subsidized apartments. Seems right and just.

Founded in 1773, First African is the oldest black church in North America. Well…not to be too cynical, we found almost every church can claim the oldest something. When this congregation finished their work, they had “the first building constructed of brick, owned by blacks, in the State of Georgia.” It’s sanctuary holds over 300 people. The pipe organ is the “oldest in Georgia”.

stained glassPastor

The ceiling of the church is in the design of a “Nine Patch Quilt”. It was a code. Anyone hanging out a Nine Patch Quilt was saying: This is a safe house for runaways. The quilt was also a map. Lots of churches have stained glass windows in them; not many have stained glass portraits of their first pastors who were all African Americans.
And we were there to make their sound equipment room match the fine woodwork in the rest of the church. As if it had all been built in the same century.

Savannah pastors including Rev. Tillman, run a programme to help people caught in Georgia’s ‘two strikes and you’re out’ law. (On your third conviction for armed robbery, you go to jail for life, with no parole, – as if you’d committed murder. So, may as well kill anyone who can identify you.)

The pastors know every local person who’s in the two strikes system and when they’ll be released. Three to six months before the prisoners get out of jail, people start visiting them in jail. Families are called, accommodations found, potential jobs are listed. With awareness and support, it’s hoped there won’t be a third time.

Rev. Tillman had men from a rehab programme come to help us. The men always sang as a warm-up to working. And we all damn near cried when one of the men said that they were in the church helping tear down and build up — and that’s what he was doing inside himself.

Oh yea, the ladies of First African made the best cornbread of all the churches. One lady caught co-host Catherine and I stealing it. We were embarrassed, no mortified. The ladies said it was a compliment. We choose to believe them and arrived at our next church covered in corn bread crumbs.

Savannah has the second largest St. Patrick’s Day in the U.S. Did I know that when I made our schedules? In each of our five churches, I’d asked, “What are you doing on St. Patrick’s Day?”
“Gettin’ out of town,”
“What’s the parade like?”
“Don’t know. Never been.”
I still didn’t get it. “Any suggestions for St. Patrick’s Day?”
“Don’t go downtown.”

March 17 shut down our shoots — the Parade and festivities made any travel impossible, so we watched on our hotel’s wide screen in the lobby. Slowly it dawned. Except for our crew, everyone else staying in our hotel was white. The streets were a crush of white people. It was a parade of white people. It was a parade of power.

The other hotel guests looked at our crew with distaste. Especially when we hugged each other in our inter-racial kind of way… which we did a lot. We wanted to upset them and we thought we were rebels and cool. And I admit it, we felt good shaking those tourists up.

I remembered a bumper sticker I’d seen on our drive from Atlanta to Savannah: I’m White and Proud of It. The wide-screen in the lobby continued to broadcast the parade in its full all-white glory. And I finally got it. Did it take so long because I’m white?

3 Comments

  • Pamela Taylor says:

    Barbara I read through your latest blog this morning and your question at the end had me thinking about how my white skin flavors my experiences in ways that is unfathomable to me. There are times when I have felt like apologizing for my whiteness just like my German daughter in law feels at times like apologizing for being German.
    Thank you Barbara for your words and the effect they have on me.
    Bless you
    Pamela with a smile

  • Barbara Boyden says:

    Thank you Pam bb

  • Ilene says:

    Thanks for the terrific manual

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