OurCoast.com :: Savannah City Guide

This was the time of the hated, opportunistic carpetbaggers, displaced freed slaves and the beginning of the Ku Klux Klan. It was hard to get freed slaves back to work since they wanted to enjoy freedom for the first time in their lives. Finally, needing work, many returned to the fields as sharecroppers.

Many others stayed on in town, though, and Savannah found its population swollen with Negroes. These new citizens lived in deplorable conditions, since white people did not want to rent to Blacks or would ask horrid prices. Social lives developed separately, though in many regards similarly.

Great initiatives for educating the Negroes arose, but coeducation was not possible. Teachers from the North, trying to realize a long-guarded dream, were not welcomed by Whites, and often had to live in the Negro quarter of town.

The support of the freed slaves for the carpetbaggers further enraged Whites. A corrupt state government and the exclusion of the Rebel Whites from the right to vote enhanced the racial prejudice. In this fertile soil was born the Ku Klux Klan, which is still active today, although not confined to the South.

After "The War" and the fading of Reconstruction, the economy improved and cotton was king again. The city built the Cotton Exchange and, for a time, the world price of cotton was set in Savannah. Despite setbacks of fires, yellow fever and hurricanes, the city grew.

Social life was again important and people passed time playing golf, meeting at the yacht club or civic clubs, and going to the theater or concerts. The most elegant hotel of that time, the DeSoto, opened, streetcars were running through the city and a railroad was built to Tybee Beach. The Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences opened as one of the South's first public museums. Between 1908 and 1911, teams of the United States were competing with European teams for the Vanderbilt Cup, the most desirable prize in early automobile grand prix racing. Savannah was prosperous and enjoyed it.

--Sojourn in Savannah

The King is dead and the "pretty woman with a dirty face" gets a makeover.
A brief history of Savannah, Georgia 1900-1955

pre-1732 | 1733-1776 | 1776-1800 | 1800-1850 | 1850-1865 | 1865-1900 | 1900-1955