Monument Walk in Savannah

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThroughout downtown Savannah there are many monuments, markers, and statues commemorating the Civil War and the people involved. Forsyth Park is home to the Confederate Monument, which stands prominently near the center of the park. There is a marker dedicated to the Union Army headquarters at what is now the Oglethorpe Club and another marking General Sherman’s headquarters at the Green-Meldrim House. The Beach Institute, opened in 1867 as the first school in Savannah designed for the education of African Americans, represents change in the city after the war. The Second African Baptist Church, where General Rufus Saxton read Sherman’s Field Order No. 15 to the citizens of Savannah and promised the newly freed slaves “40 acres and a mule” also illustrates the lives of African Americans in post-war Savannah. Near the river is a slavery memorial depicting an African-American family with broken shackles at their feet, whose inscription by Maya Angelou reads:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWe were stolen, sold and bought together from the African continent. We got on the slave ships together. We lay back to belly in the holds of the slave ships together in each other’s excrement and urine together, sometimes died together, and our lifeless bodies thrown overboard together. Today we are standing up together, with faith and even some joy.”
 

 

 

Watch the video below to hear more about the Confederate Memorial in Forsyth Park from Dr. Todd Groce: