Savannah Black History Tour highlights freedom, land promises made to formerly enslaved

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - Rita Fuller Yates, owner of the Savannah Black History Tour, led visitors through sites tied to Black history in Savannah, including locations connected to freedom, land ownership and community development.

Fuller Yates said the tour covers church, war, slavery, freedom, family, business, culture, segregation and Jim Crow laws, along with what she described as the success of Savannah, Georgia, and its Black communities.

Early free Black population in Savannah

Fuller Yates said that in 1820, 43 free Black people resided in downtown Savannah.

Freedom in December 1865

Fuller Yates said freedom came to Savannah in December 1865 explaining it was the 13th Amendment, not the Emancipation Proclamation, that freed the Black community.

The Greene Meldrim House and Field Order 15

The tour stopped at the Greene Meldrim House. Fuller Yates said free Black people at the time did not want to live among white people, fearing it would take years for the South to introduce equality, and instead wished to live on their own land.

Fuller Yates said on Jan. 12, 20 Black leaders met with white military leaders at the Green Meldrim House site. Fuller Yates said that on that day, they signed Field Order 15, which reserved 400,000 acres of Confederate land for previously enslaved people. Fuller Yates said each family was to receive 40 acres and a mule, with the mule provided by the military.

Fuller Yates said 1,000 freedmen initially settled on Georgia’s Skidaway Island. Fuller Yates said within a few months, 40,000 free Black people arrived seeking to obtain land under the order.

Fuller Yates said the promise made under Field Order 15 was never realized. Fuller Yates said the land is now a body of water surrounded by houses, and few Black residents live there today.

Fuller Yates said families who had been enslaved never received the land promised to them, and the land was ultimately given back.