Tybee Island’s Juneteenth hosts special ‘wading in the water’ tradition

by Cam McCann

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - Rain did not stop residents from gathering at Tybee Island on Juneteenth to continue a tradition that remembers the town’s civil rights history.

“It feels very cathartic,” said Julia Pearce, co-founder of Tybee MLK Human Rights organization and event organizer.

Thunderstorms nearly forced organizers to cancel this year’s event, but participants celebrated despite the weather.

History of the wade-in protests

The annual “wading in the water” celebration recreates a 1960s protest in which 11 black college students were arrested for wading at a whites-only beach on Tybee Island.

The white population assailed them with racial slurs until police escorted them to jail. African Americans continued to stage wade-ins in Savannah for the next two summers, finally prompting the city to desegregate the beach in 1963.

Modern celebration honors freedom

Today’s tradition transforms the protest into a celebration of freedom and equal rights.

“We took tragedy into triumph, we are celebrating,” Pearce said.

Pearce said Juneteenth emphasizes the freedom celebrated during America’s birthday.

“America is going to be 250 years old, and as a part of that we need a real freedom holiday, and this is a real freedom holiday and we just felt it in between the raindrops,” she said.

“This is truly freedom day,” said Davida Campbell, a Savannah resident.

Cultural significance for Gullah Geechee community

Patt Gunn, a Gullah Geechee historian, brought her band “The Saltwata Players,” who played and sang spirituals like “Wade in the Water.”

“Our job is to get them to the water and have them heal from anything that has happened the last year, come to the water,” Gunn said.

For the Gullah Geechee people, water is life and provides a sacred connection back to their home continent.

Tony Brown, a vendor and Savannah resident, said he feels that connection.

“I will always remember each time because I set up in the same place, so I can have a view of that water, knowing at one time there were slave ships coming in,” Brown said.

Historical context of Tybee Island

When slave traders first brought West Africans to Georgia in the eighteenth century, Tybee Island served as a quarantine station. Following the Middle Passage, enslaved men and women were forced into a nine-story lazaretto, an Italian word meaning “pest house.” They remained quarantined for days to protect Savannah’s population from infectious diseases. Those who died were buried directly on Tybee Island.

Civil rights activists in the early 1960s fought to integrate spaces like buses and lunch counters, but they also maintained that African Americans deserved equal access to leisure and recreation.

The nearest beach to which African Americans had access to was in Hilton Head, South Carolina, about twice the distance from downtown Savannah as Tybee Island. Excluded from beaches, African American children often swam in streams polluted by industry or parks overcome with runoff.