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CNN Saturday Morning News
Interview With Dr. Akinyele Umoja of Georgia State University
Aired April 27, 2002 - 07:51 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: In Georgia's oldest city of Savannah, there's a series of secret tunnels that once helped slaves escape to freedom. Our Seema Mathur travels to Savannah's First African Baptist Church to give us a look at the intricate escape route.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SEEMA MATHUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Many who worship at First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia get their strength from their faith, and what's below their feet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is about four feet of space below this floor. And that space was used as a hiding place for slaves.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a humbling experience.
(MUSIC)
MATHUR: Humbling for its history: Slaves and free blacks actually bought the land and materials for this church. They finished building it in 1859. Proud of their work, the West African slaves left their tribal signatures on the pews.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They came here working late evenings and nights to erect this building after most of them had already worked from 12 to 16 hours for their slave owners.
MATHUR: What their slave owners didn't know is that beneath these pine boards, secret escape crawl spaces were being built. These holes in the floor were used as ventilation disguised in the pattern of a diamond, a design that has meaning.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's actually a family symbol. Also, it means the four movements (ph) of the sun.
MATHUR: Since the spaces are now sealed off, we can't see below. But down the street, at what is now the Pirate's House Restaurant, there is evidence of another hiding space from the same time period. Both spaces are said to have connected to a tunnel that led to the Savannah River.
HARRISON GRANTHAM, PARISHIONER: It's very inspiring to know that children, mothers, fathers hid, and the prayers that they may have prayed underneath those buildings in the dark, just so that one day, people like myself could come here and worship for free.
MATHUR (on camera): There's no documentation to say just how many slaves used these spaces to escape, but most historians agree that the number was significant.
MODIBO KADALIE, SAVANNAH UNIVERSITY: When the slaves started running away, that undermined the productivity of plantations like this.
MATHUR (voice-over): Which, some historians say, fueled the Civil War.
KADALIE: The depreciation of labor brought -- really, brought on the Civil War because the plantation owners controlled the government.
MATHUR: But the South lost that war, and slaves were eventually freed.
But that's just one chapter celebrated here.
GROVER THORNTON, NAACP MEMBER: This church was the hull, if I may use that terminology, for the civil rights struggle.
MATHUR: Pastor Ralph Mark Gilbert (ph), one of the fathers from the Civil Rights Movement, came from this church, where members of the congregation found inspiration to fight discrimination.
THORNTON: This is a solid church. These people who were strong. We were able to carry on with a tradition that they were trying to get us to do.
MATHUR: It's been about 40 years since the Civil Rights Movement, and more than a century since slavery. And this church and its history still motivate young and old.
QUENTIN ODEM, PARISHIONER: It shows me that we had a great deal of power, a lot more than I thought we did. It inspires me to push on and to let me know that there is nothing that can hold me back from what I want to do.
GLADYS COHEN, PARISHIONER: The African symbols in this church are a part of our heritage, a part of our legacy, left by our African brothers and sisters. It's a part of us being able to know where we come from, so we know where we're going.
(MUSIC)
Seema Mathur, CNN, Savannah, Georgia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: Wow, those slave tunnels dispel the old Southern myth that most slaves were happy serving their masters. We're going to get more of the historical significance of the tunnels this morning from our guest, Akinyele Umoja, the associate professor of African-American studies at Georgia State University, and he's with us here in Atlanta. Umoja, I got -- I was practicing the first name, and now I got the second part wrong -- Akinyele -- tell me what it means.
DR. AKINYELE UMOJA, GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY: Akinyele means a valiant person who brings honor to his house.
PHILLIPS: That's beautiful. Well, you went and you visited this church. Tell me what it was like for you, as a black man.
UMOJA: It was very inspiring. And it wasn't only inspiring for me but I also took a group of about 15 students with me of varying ages because some of them had their children with them. And then I had college students, some of them older than me. And we were all very inspired that our ancestors were not defeated. They were able to come together and organize systems to liberate themselves and free themselves.
PHILLIPS: And you say the tunnels were of great sophistication. Tell me what you mean by that.
UMOJA: What I mean by sophistication, because as you saw, their holes in the floor of the basement of that church which at that time was the sanctuary of the church. And then in those holes it allowed Africans who were hidden below the floors of that church to breathe. And there were tunnels that led from the church, which is in the central district of Savannah at that particular time in history, to the Savannah River.
And history tells us that the Savannah River was a home, a fugitive communities of Africans who had run away. Oftentimes (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the rooms -- they were called at that time "outliers" (ph) or "swamp Negroes."
PHILLIPS: How many survived? Did they always survive once they got through the tunnels, or did a lot of them die trying to escape?
UMOJA: I don't have any record of any one dying, trying to escape during that time. And as I said, there were communities of folks along the Savannah River.
There's a long history there also, from 1771 up through after the American Revolution, where there was resistance of those communities against the slave communities -- the plantation system -- during that particular time. In Georgia and in South Carolina.
PHILLIPS: And what amazes me is that non-blacks thought that the black community was happy with slavery in the 50s and the 60s; that just blows my mind.
UMOJA: Well, this is a myth that was carried on during slavery in order to defend the system of slavery during that time, plantation owners created this myth that black people were happy during slavery and that they were in fact doing us a favor from bringing our ancestors over here from Africa.
And, unfortunately, this myth was carried on in public education, inside of this country, scholars repeated -- historians repeated this myth -- and it was carried into our history up until, really, the 1960s and 1970s.
PHILLIPS: So is there sort of a neat spiritual feeling that you get when you go into that church, maybe different from another church, because of the history?
UMOJA: Well, as you said -- that history is present in that church, but you find other histories in other churches, also.
We have to -- just as many of our viewers probably didn't know about this First African Baptist Church in Savannah -- which we would encourage people to visit, not just during African-American History Month but as Tom Joyner says, you know, every month is African- American History Month.
We would encourage people to visit here, but in our communities, there's rich history. And right in the families of black people inside this country. There are rich histories and stories of challenges against slavery, against Jim Crow, against segregation, against lynching.
So we just would encourage people to not only visit Savannah but also, particularly for black folks, to go inside your family and find those stories from your grandparents, from your mothers and your fathers.
PHILLIPS: Ah, that's inspiring. Akinyele -- I'm going to practice that -- Umoja. Gosh, I always get a tough one...
UMOJA: You'll have it right by the next time I come.
PHILLIPS: That sounds great, thanks for being with us.
UMOJA: Thanks for having me.
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