WHO WE AREThe Coalition to Rename Calhoun Square is comprised of local citizens of all walks of life from Chatham County. We are volunteer members of the Susie King Taylor Center for Jubilee's policy initiative to rename a public space that memorialized an enslaver of the past and is the location of a burial ground for the enslaved.
Former U.S. Vice President John C. Calhoun was one of the most influential politicians during America's antebellum era, a strong advocate of slavery's expansion and states' rights, and an ardent supporter of anti-Indigenous American policies, including those precipitating the Indian Removal Act. |
In 2021, The Coalition filed its Application to Rename a Public Square with the City of Savannah.
We are happy to announce that on November 10th 2022, the Mayor and Savannah City Council voted unanimously to remove the name Calhoun from Savannah's square. |
OUR MISSION
The Coalition to Rename Calhoun Square's mission is to support the Center for Jubilee's efforts to create grassroots public policy methodologies to engage the City of Savannah to Rename Public Squares, sponsor city-wide marker programs, and to provide historical platforms to educate government officials and the citizens of Savannah on the importance of renaming public squares in honor of heroes and heroines of America. We aim to restore missing pieces of history to create the full and true pictorial puzzle of Savannah's history, including its part in the enslavement of Africans.
"The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long But it Bends Toward Justice." --Dr. M. L. King, Jr.
"The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long But it Bends Toward Justice." --Dr. M. L. King, Jr.
OUR FIRST VICTORY
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After the Savannah City Council's unanimous vote to remove Calhoun's name from Savannah's Square, the physical remove of his plaque began almost immediately. While this is a huge success, it is only the first step towards renaming the square. There is still work to be done.
Please continue to stay with us as we press forward with our choice for the new square's name: Taylor Square, to honor nurse, teacher, and American hero Susie Baker King Taylor. |
We want to thank all of our coalition members and supporters for the letters, emails, and calls made to the Mayor and City Manager's office to support this mission over the last two years and their continued support as we enter this next phase of naming the new square.
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A Message from Patt Gunn:
I hope and pray each of you have taken time out to get the rest you deserve after our Thursday evening City Council Meeting at City Hall. I just want to say, Thank You from the bottom of my heart for the courageous human beings you are in this 21st century. As my heart is still full, it has taken a couple of days to digest our first victory. We have convinced the majority of the City's leadership to vote to remove the name of John C. Calhoun in two weeks! |
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I believe the presentations and presence of every Coalition Member shook the room. Thursday evening turned the People's City Hall into a sacred place and space.
In years to come, our children, grans, and great grans will hear the stories of how a few brave souls gathered other brave souls and formed a powerful coalition to rename a public square. It was our coalition that filled the room with comrades from organizations, churches, sororities and neighborhood associations, all sitting proud, all with eyes filled with hope for the leadership of Savannah. (One of the most moving moments I captured was to see the leadership of the Weeping Time and their members of the District 1 West Savannah community there with us, praying our strengths!) As our Coalition comrades showed up, both speakers and members in our seats before the City's Mayor and Council, I have never been so proud and honored to be in the numbers with you.
I believe our Coalition has created a shift in the hearts of our city leaders. I looked into each one of their eyes and saw an eagerness to begin conversations about the city's past and a hope for it's future through truth telling.
We, the Coalition to Rename Calhoun Square, became that chosen vessel that will get a brand new square that shall be called Taylor Square in the near future! I have received clergy calls from across the city with messages of their continued prayers for justice to the coalition. Additionally, I received calls from friends, organizations, across the nation to say, keep pressing forward! Finally, even my millennials weighed in on their social media pages, sharing the entire City Council Meeting of October 27, 2022!
As our coalition begins its second phase to Rename Calhoun Square, I want to thank you in advance for all you continue to do to bless the Center for Jubilee's mission work to be a catalyst for positive change on the coast of Georgia.
In years to come, our children, grans, and great grans will hear the stories of how a few brave souls gathered other brave souls and formed a powerful coalition to rename a public square. It was our coalition that filled the room with comrades from organizations, churches, sororities and neighborhood associations, all sitting proud, all with eyes filled with hope for the leadership of Savannah. (One of the most moving moments I captured was to see the leadership of the Weeping Time and their members of the District 1 West Savannah community there with us, praying our strengths!) As our Coalition comrades showed up, both speakers and members in our seats before the City's Mayor and Council, I have never been so proud and honored to be in the numbers with you.
I believe our Coalition has created a shift in the hearts of our city leaders. I looked into each one of their eyes and saw an eagerness to begin conversations about the city's past and a hope for it's future through truth telling.
We, the Coalition to Rename Calhoun Square, became that chosen vessel that will get a brand new square that shall be called Taylor Square in the near future! I have received clergy calls from across the city with messages of their continued prayers for justice to the coalition. Additionally, I received calls from friends, organizations, across the nation to say, keep pressing forward! Finally, even my millennials weighed in on their social media pages, sharing the entire City Council Meeting of October 27, 2022!
As our coalition begins its second phase to Rename Calhoun Square, I want to thank you in advance for all you continue to do to bless the Center for Jubilee's mission work to be a catalyst for positive change on the coast of Georgia.
HISTORY & PRESENT OF CALHOUN SQUARE
Telling the Whole History: Why Not Calhoun? Let the words of John C. Calhoun himself show you why not.
“But let me not be understood as admitting, even by implication, that the existing relations between the two races, in the slaveholding states, is an evil. Far otherwise, I hold it to be a good, as it has thus far proved itself to be, to both, and will continue to prove so, if not disturbed by the fell spirit of Abolition.”
“I appeal to facts. Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically but morally and intellectually. It came among us in a low, degraded, and savage condition, and in the course of a few generations, it has grown up under the fostering care of our institutions, as reviled as they have been, to its present comparative civilized condition. This, with the rapid increase of numbers, is conclusive proof of the general happiness of the race, in spite of all the exaggerated tales to the contrary."
As a man who defended the institution of slavery in America as a “positive good,” and a man who was renowned as a leading voice for those seeking to secure the institution of slavery, John C Calhoun is not a man to be revered and Honored with a Savannah Square. He was a prominent U.S. statesman and spokesman for the slave-plantation system of the antebellum South. We must remember this part of who he was and what he did that affected history.
“But let me not be understood as admitting, even by implication, that the existing relations between the two races, in the slaveholding states, is an evil. Far otherwise, I hold it to be a good, as it has thus far proved itself to be, to both, and will continue to prove so, if not disturbed by the fell spirit of Abolition.”
“I appeal to facts. Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically but morally and intellectually. It came among us in a low, degraded, and savage condition, and in the course of a few generations, it has grown up under the fostering care of our institutions, as reviled as they have been, to its present comparative civilized condition. This, with the rapid increase of numbers, is conclusive proof of the general happiness of the race, in spite of all the exaggerated tales to the contrary."
As a man who defended the institution of slavery in America as a “positive good,” and a man who was renowned as a leading voice for those seeking to secure the institution of slavery, John C Calhoun is not a man to be revered and Honored with a Savannah Square. He was a prominent U.S. statesman and spokesman for the slave-plantation system of the antebellum South. We must remember this part of who he was and what he did that affected history.