Savannah Council takes up Calhoun Square renaming. For activists, the fight dates back years

Savannah City Council on Thursday will hear public comments on the removal of former Vice President and slavery advocate John C. Calhoun's name from his namesake square in Savannah's Historic District.

A council vote on the matter is expected in November.

For a group of activists, known as the Center for Jubilee, Reconciliation and Healing, stripping Calhoun's name from the Abercorn Street square is a move nearly two years in the making.

What started in December 2020 as a push to rename both Whitefield and Calhoun squares because the greenspaces were developed on or near a burial site of enslaved people eventually narrowed its scope to Calhoun only.

Savannah: Activists seek to rename squares built on slave burial grounds, named for slave owners

Since then, the proposed new name for the square has changed and opposition has mounted, leading to counterpetitions and a battle for the support of the property owners surrounding Calhoun Square.

From the beginning, Patt Gunn and Rosalyn Rouse, the co-founders of the Center for Jubilee, Reconciliation and Healing, have led the charge.

A call to action

Gunn and Rouse and the Center’s journey began on Jubilee Freedom Day in 2020. Every year, the center holds an event commemorating the day Union Gen. William Sherman’s troops marched into Savannah, enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation and effectively ending slavery in Savannah.

Typically at these events, there’s music, the observance of Gullah Geechee traditions and a history lesson on the day itself, but in 2020, the day also came with a call to action. 

At the event, Gunn called for historical markers in both squares, making note of the fact that the greenspaces rest on sacred ground — they were burial locations for enslaved Africans in Savannah.

At the time, they hoped to rename Calhoun Square as Sankofa Square. The Sankofa bird is a Ghanan symbol expressing the importance of knowing one's history, the word itself translating to “go back and fetch it.”

They seek to change the name of Whitefield Square to Jubilee Square, after Jubilee Freedom Day.

“Let the record show that we are looking for some good trouble,” Gunn said that day.

Narrowing their focus

Eventually, the focus shifted solely to Calhoun Square. While both Whitefield and Calhoun were slave owners, George Whitefield was, at least, a historical figure who lived in Savannah, and founded the Bethesda Orphanage.

Whitefield was a plantation owner, a slaveholder and used slave labor to run the orphanage. A somewhat conflicted figure on his views on slavery, Whitefield argued against the mistreatment of enslaved people, but blamed the financial woes of Bethesda Orphanage on Georgia's prohibitions of slavery up until 1751. When he died, he left the orphanage, 4,000 acres of land and 50 enslaved people to the Countess of Huntingdon.

In March 2021, the city’s Municipal Archives Department released a 68-page report, compiled by Director Luciana Spracher. The detailed report is replete with historical documents, modern overlays of the locations of the cemeteries and an extensive timeline of burial grounds in the city.

More: Push to erase names of slaveholders from Savannah squares would be first change in a century

It found that the burial grounds for free and enslaved people of color overlapped with Whitefield Square, the next square to the east that the Center was initially hoping to rename as well. The burial grounds don’t overlap with Calhoun Square, according to the report, but another cemetery does: the Stranger’s Burial Grounds, intended for those who died in Savannah, but didn’t have family here.

In March 2021, Gunn said changing the name of Whitefield Square was still a goal, but they were shifting their focus to Calhoun Square primarily.

Calhoun, on the other hand, has practically no ties to Savannah, spare the city’s proximity to his home state of South Carolina.

Calhoun was a staunch defender of slavery and served as vice president to President John Quincy Adams. He once wrote that slavery was not a “necessary evil,” but a “positive good.”

Calhoun argued that enslaved people in the South were better off than free Black people in the North. He helped push ideologies that led the South to secede, though he died in 1850, more than a decade before the start of the Civil War.

The square renaming push came in the wake of the social justice movement that took root in the summer of 2020. The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of law enforcement officers led to protests around the country an calls to remove several Confederate monuments.

In June 2020, a statue of John C. Calhoun in Charleston, S.C.'s Marion Square was one of many statues were either torn down or slated for removal.

Following a process

City code includes a process for renaming public spaces. When the Center first filed their application in May 2021, some requirements were missing due to a discrepancy in language.

Perhaps the highest hurdle was the required signatures of 51% of all property owners surrounding the space. 

In the code, these signatures are required to change the name of “a park, playground, trail, recreational area or space.” Gunn says that since the word “square” is not explicitly used in these descriptors, they tried filing the renaming application without any property owner signatures.

But ultimately, the city determined the square fell under these renaming requirements, and the Center began to send out mailers to the neighbors and property owners surrounding the square asking for their support. They were hesitant to canvass the area in person due to COVID-19.

Throughout 2021, Gunn, Rouse and their growing coalition of supportive neighbors sought signatures via a letter-writing campaign. They also hosted monthly meetings called “Come Sunday” to educate those curious about the initiative and to garner more support.

Related: Group seeking to change name of Calhoun Square proposes honoring Susie King Taylor

A group of neighbors-turned-advocates ultimately came up with another new name for Calhoun Square, one that honored a Savannah icon, Susie King Taylor.

The neighbors wanted the square to be named after a person, to match the other squares. All but four of Savannah’s 22 current squares are named after people, and Gunn thought Taylor was an excellent choice.

“She's always been my She-ro, one of my heroes, and she has so many accolades in terms of women of achievement in Georgia,” Gunn said in August 2021. “There are so many different things she has been honored for, but never in our area. So to have a square, I think it would be wonderful. We don't have any squares named for women, and we don't have any squares named for African-Americans.”

In late 2021, the Center submitted the renaming petition. It was to be reviewed by the Historic Site and Monument Commission, the last step before going to a council vote.

But the application was pulled off the commission agenda because the Center didn't have enough signatures from those who own property around the square. The petitioners were one signature short of the 10 required because one of the property owners who'd signed on for the change had recently sold their home.

More: A group hopes to change the name of Calhoun Square. Here's how that can happen.

Georgia: Jubilee Freedom Day honors Savannah's enslaved people as group pushes to rename Calhoun Square

Looking for signatures

Into 2022, the push to rename Calhoun Square remained a numbers game. The petitioners remained shy of the 51% threshold, as additional supporters sold their properties.

The Center and the Coalition reached out to each new neighbor, hoping they too would be in favor of the change.

At the same time, city officials waffled over how many properties neighbored the square, creating uncertainty over the 51% number. Earlier this year, the number of property owners who get a say in the decision was reduced from 19 to 17 after the city attorney’s office decided the three properties that make up Wesley Monumental United Methodist Church only constituted one property owner

For a few days, the nine neighbor signatures the Center had collected were enough to get the petition on a Historic Sites and Monuments Commission agenda..

But not long after, Kathleen Brenneman, whose property is adjacent to the square, actively campaigned to have neighbors rescind their support. She emailed the city signed signature revocation letters to ensure Gunn and company remained two signatures short. 

Brenneman's email and the removal of these two signatures stalled the petition and the renaming process.

More: The power to rename Calhoun Square is currently in the hands of adjacent property owners

Recently: Savannah neighbors rescind support for changing name of Calhoun Square, claiming they were misled

City Council steps in

Throughout the process, council members kept the initiative at arm’s reach, with the intention of letting the group go through the process outlined in city code. But council taking action to remove Calhoun’s name from the square was always an option.

The city's requirement of 51% support from neighbors is meant to be a high hurdle. The city’s director of policy and external affairs, Joe Shearouse, says the requirement ensures that any name change has overwhelming community support.

But among Calhoun Square's neighbors, it's a razor-thin margin. And Shearouse said that could have consequences down the line.

More: Calhoun Square to lose its name? What to know about latest plans to address controversy

There’s no limit on how many renaming petitions can be filed, and he feared “dueling petitions” in the future.

Even if the Center were to succeed in renaming Calhoun Square to Taylor Square, nothing is stopping the opposition from coming back next year with their own 10 signatures in an attempt to change the name back.

In theory, opponents could do it by pure financial force - they could buy up the properties of those who signed in support of the name change and gain the voting power.

By stripping Calhoun's name off the square, Savannah City Council can circumvent future petitions. Council's intention is to rename the square at a future date using a yet-undefined process.

Come Thursday night, the two-year saga could see the beginning of its end. Those interested in providing comments to city council can attend the meeting at City Hall, at 6:30 p.m.

Will Peebles is the City Council and County Commission reporter for Savannah Morning News, covering local Savannah and Chatham County decisions. He can be reached at wpeebles@savannahnow.com or on Twitter @willpeeblesSMN

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Timeline: Activists have been trying to rename Calhoun Square for 2 years