Georgia Historical Society

Readings

Packets encompassing all required course readings will be provided to each confirmed participant well in advance of the Landmarks workshop.  Articles and titles on the list of recommended readings are provided as suggestions for further research and will not be included in the course reader. 

We ask that all required readings be completed prior to the opening workshop session.  These readings are intended to serve as a foundation upon which our presenting scholars, landmark site visits, meaningful group dialogue, and invested research and study will be built as we explore and better understand the complex themes and experiences relating to the life and culture of African-Americans in Georgia’s Lowcountry.

Required Readings

• Erskine Clarke, Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic (Yale University Press, 2005)
• John Michael Vlach, Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery (University of North Carolina Press, 1993)
• William S. McFeely, Sapelo’s People: A Long Walk Into Freedom (W.W. Norton, 1994)
• Cornelia Walker Bailey, God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks About Life on Sapelo Island (Doubleday, 2000)
• Philip D. Morgan, “Work & Culture: The Task System and the World of Lowcountry Blacks, 1700 to 1880,” William & Mary Quarterly 39 (October 1982)
• Philip D. Morgan, “Black Society in the Lowcountry, 1760-1810,” in Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution ed. By Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman (University Press of Virginia, 1976), pp. 83-141

Reading Excerpts

• David Goldfield, Cotton Fields and Skyscrapers: Southern City and Region, 1607-1980 (LSU Press, 1982)
• Julia Floyd Smith, Slavery and Rice Culture in Low Country Georgia (University of Tennessee Press, 1985)
• Betty Wood, Women’s Work, Men’s Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia (University of Georgia, 1995)
• William Dusinberre, Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps (New York, 1996)
• Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 1730-1775 (University of Georgia Press, 1984)
• Richard C. Wade, Slavery in the Cities: The South, 1820-1860 (New York, 1964), pp. 3-28, 243-81
• Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 64-76, 142-76, 290-324

Recommended Readings

• Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619-1877 (Hill & Wang, 1993)
• Peter J. Parish, Slavery: History and Historians (Harper & Row, 1989)
• Donald R. Wright, African Americans in the Early Republic, 1790-1831 (Harlan Davidson, 1993)
• Donald R. Wright, African Americans in the Colonial Era: From African Origins Through the American Revolution (Harlan Davidson, 1990)
• Jeffrey Robert Young, Domesticating Slavery: The Master Class in Georgia and South Carolina, 1670-1837 (University of Georgia Press, 1999)
• Thomas F. Armstrong, “From Task Labor to Free Labor: The Transition Along Georgia’s Rice Coast, 1820-1880,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 64 (1980)
• Philip D. Morgan, “The Ownership of Property by Slaves in the Mid-Nineteenth Century Low Country,” Journal of Southern History 49 (1983): 399-420
• Dylan Penningroth, “Slavery, Freedom, and Social Claims to Property Among African-Americans in Liberty County, Georgia, 1850-1880,” Journal of American History 84 (September 1997): 405-35
• Douglas C. Wilms, “The Development of Rice Culture in Eighteenth Century Georgia,” Southeastern Geographer 12 (1972): 45-57
• Joyce E. Chaplin, “Tidal Rice Cultivation and the Problem of Slavery in South Carolina and Georgia, 1760-1815,” William and Mary Quarterly 49 (1992): 29-61
• Joyce E. Chaplin, “Creating a Cotton South in Georgia and South Carolina, 1760-1815,” Journal of Southern History 57 (1991)
• Darold D. Wax, “’New Negroes Are Always in Demand’: The Slave Trade in Eighteenth-Century Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 68 (1984)
• Erskine Clarke, Wrestlin’ Jacob: A Portrait of Religion in the Old South (University of Alabama Press, 2000)
• Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (Oxford University Press, 1977)
  Eugene D. Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (Pantheon Books, 1974)
• Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery & Freedom, 1750-1925 (Vintage Books, 1976)
• Theresa A. Singleton, ed., The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life (Academic Press, 1985)
• Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: “The Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (Oxford University Press, 1978)
• Charles Joyner, Down By the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (University of Illinois Press, 1984)
• Michael Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (University of North Carolina Press, 1998)
• Malcolm Bell, Jr., Major Butler’s Legacy: Five Generations of a Slaveholding Family (University of Georgia Press, 1987)
• Robert Manson Myers, ed., The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War (Yale University Press, 1972)—primary documents
• Clarence L. Mohr, On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia (University of Georgia Press, 1986)  

Historic and Cultural Sites 

Beach Institute and their African-American Heritage Tour 

The Beach Institute was named in honor of Alfred S. Beach, a New Yorker who donated the funds to purchase the site. Originally 600 students were enrolled, and were taught by nine female teachers and a male principal. In 1874 the Institute was turned over to the Savannah Board of Education and became a free school for black children. The Savannah Boys Club got its start in the Beach Institute in 1917, and the educational activities fo black youths were very popular. In 1919 the Institute closed due to low enrollment as alternate schools opened.  

Sapelo Island

Most of Sapelo Island is owned by the state of Georgia and is a state park, with forest, beach and dunes and salt marsh the island offer visitor's a variety of environments to study. Hog Hammock is a Gullah community on Sapelo, and native Cornelia Walker Bailey will present on the significance of the community and its past. 

Ossabaw Island

Ossabaw Island is a Georgia State Park and per the Georgia Historic Preserve is  only “used for natural, scientific and cultural study, research and education, and environmentally sound preservation, conservation and management of the Island’s ecosystem.” The gift of Ossabaw Island to Georgia was made by Mrs. Eleanor Torrey-West and her family who wanted the island to be preserved for future generations. 

Owens Thomas House 

Found on Oglethorpe Square in Savannah, the Owens-Thomas house was  designed by renowned architect William Jay for the  Richardson family. In 1830 the Owens family took over the house, and it remained  in the family until 1951 when it was bequeathed to the Telfair Museum to become a house museum. The house has been restored to the elegance of the 1830s and tours are conducted daily. 

Libraries and Archives  

Georgia Historical Society Library

The Georgia Historical Society's library and archives is a major research center for Georgia and American history. The library and archives house the oldest and one of the most outstanding collections of manuscripts, books, maps, photographs, architectural drawings, portraits, and artifacts related to Georgia and its role in American history.