Jim Crow in Savannah's Parks in the 20th Century presented by Jeffrey M. Ofgang: About this Project

Savannah had a well-deserved reputation in the Jim Crow era as more progressive on race than other southern cities and it mostly avoided the violent reaction to integration elsewhere in the South. But many Savannahians can remember suffering under Jim Crow discrimination until the Civil Rights era in the 1960s. Park segregation is a less-examined aspect of Jim Crow in Savannah. This project details how Savannah denied Black people access to the best public parks and recreation facilities. In short, Black taxpayers paid for a superior park system for whites. 

I researched primary sources including the collected speeches of Mayor Malcolm Maclean, Park and Tree Commission minutes and correspondence, the Savannah City Code, and plans and designs of the Public Works and Engineering Departments. The papers of Savannah civil rights leader W.W. Law also yield information about the fight to desegregate Savannah parks and other public places. The archives of the Black-owned Savannah Tribune weekly are especially important for historical context because the white "newspaper of record," the Savannah Morning News, barely covered the Black community until the mid-20th century.

I am a graduate student of History at Georgia Southern University and retired from a career in domestic and international journalism. I was head of the news department at WMAZ-TV in Macon for nearly ten years. I received a Master of Arts degree from Georgia Southern in 2019 with a research focus on World War One.

For this project, completed in April 2022, I interned at the City of Savannah Municipal Archives under the supervision of director Luciana M. Spracher and continued her research into the impact of Jim Crow on Savannah's park system. Luciana's guidance was crucial in researching this project and keeping me on course. Professor of History Dr. Lisa Denmark of Georgia Southern University supervised and edited the content of this digital exhibit, for which I am grateful. 

My Master's project, under the direction of Dr. Olavi Arens, was titled, "In the Trenches: The Everyday Lives of British and German Troops in The Great War."