Under the baobab: Another major battle, transformative movement is looming in Georgia
On the winter solstice Dec. 21, 1864, General Sherman accepted the surrender of Savannah, Georgia. The Union Army had marched to the sea after burning Atlanta. It was the beginning of the end for the Confederacy. Three and a half months later, April 9, 1864, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. The Civil War was over. Soon slavery would be abolished. It was one of the most momentous days in American history. Now 156 years later, Georgia is about to be the venue for another historical transformative moment.
On Jan. 5, there will be a runoff election for the state’s two Senate seats. Incumbent Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are running neck and neck with Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Ralph Warnock. If the two Democrats win, leadership of the Senate will be in their control. If the Republicans win only one of the seats, they will retain control. In the Presidential election, Joe Biden beat President Donald Trump by 12,000 votes. But, over 100,000 people who didn’t vote in the general election have requested absentee ballots. There is a major battle looming.
This is not the second coming of Sherman. There is not an army of outsiders poised to pillage and plunder. This battle will be between Georgians fighting for the leadership of their state and the future of our nation. Led by Ossoff, Warnock and others like Stacey Abrams, head of Fair Fight Action, there is a multicultural, multiracial grassroots movement which includes a massive voter registration campaign. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are campaigning in Georgia as well as former President Barack Obama. Another former president, Jimmy Carter, will not have to travel far to campaign for the Democratic ticket. He lives in Plains, Georgia.
Georgia is a very special to my wife and I. When it became legal we had our Catholic Church wedding at St. Teresa in Albany. In 1967 in Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the state laws that prohibited mixed marriages. But, like Brown v. Board of Education, the practice of racial discrimination was not immediately eliminated. It still took years before people were allowed to cross those color lines. Our nuptials at St. Theresa’s was a true blessing and symbolically, a major stride forward in the Movement.
In 1961 our friends and fellow activists, Charles and Shirley Sherrod, started the Southwest Georgia Project “to educate, engage and empower through advocacy and community organizing. SWGAP has successfully addressed school segregation, welfare rights, voter rights and education, housing, land loss, economic development and unfair policies affecting school children and families.” Through SWGAP, they organized New Communities Inc. as a safe haven for African American farmers during the civil rights movement. Eventually they acquired a 5000-acre former plantation outside of Albany. They transformed it into a collective farm owned and managed by the farmers. Each family had a plot of their own while sharing in the cultivation and marketing of the cash crops grown on the common land.
During planting and harvest season volunteers from the Movement would come and help. It was a way for many of us to put some of our community development principles into practice. Jo and I volunteered. Many people from our group would go, camping out for a few weeks. It was invigorating and blessed labor.
Shirley became the Georgia State Director for Rural Development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the Obama administration. Breitbart News attacked her by distorting one of her speeches in order to misconstrue her remarks as racist. She was forced to resign. She later sued Breitbart and reached an undisclosed settlement. She went back to managing New Communities.
Last year Shirley was feeling optimistic about the direction Georgia politics was headed.
“There are really positive coalitions developing,” she said, “the voter registration campaigns are even bigger than back in the Movement of the ‘60s. We have come a long way since the days of Gov. Lester Maddox threatening Black folks with his ax handle.”
“Do you think that Georgia will turn blue?” I asked
“It’s already blue if they let everybody vote.”
She was right.