Georgia · Beach Institute district, Pin Point & the Sea Islands
Savannah
The squares are famous. The First African Baptist basement is what you came for.
Why this city
Savannah's beauty is aggressively marketed and its Black history is not, which is precisely why it rewards a member who arrives briefed. First African Baptist Church, organised in 1773, holds a sanctuary built by enslaved congregants after their own working hours — and beneath its floor, air holes in a diamond pattern that the congregation's oral tradition holds were used to breathe by people hidden in transit north.
In January of 1865, in a house on this city's Green Square, twenty Black ministers told General Sherman plainly what freedom required: land, held separately. Field Order 15 followed, and was rescinded within the year. Everything about American land policy since is a footnote to that meeting.
Ten miles south, Pin Point is a Gullah Geechee community founded by freedmen in 1896 that worked the water and the oyster factory into living memory. The museum there is run by the community itself. It is the best hour in the county.
Museums & historic sites
First African Baptist Church
Organised 1773. Take the tour that goes below the sanctuary floor.
Pin Point Heritage Museum
In the old oyster and crab factory, interpreted by the Gullah Geechee community that built the settlement.
Beach Institute African-American Cultural Center
1867, built by the Freedmen's Bureau. Holds the Ulysses Davis sculpture collection.
Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters
One of the earliest intact urban slave quarters in the South, now interpreted as the primary subject.
Green-Meldrim House
Where the twenty ministers met Sherman in January 1865.
Mounds & ancient Indigenous ground
Earthworks, shell rings and mound complexes within reach of the city — most of them older than anything else you will see on this trip. Where a site sits on sovereign or restricted land, enter with a tribal or preserve guide, and never climb a mound.
Irene Mound site
A Mississippian mound complex on the Savannah River, excavated in the late 1930s by an all-Black, largely female WPA crew whose work set the standard for Southeastern archaeology. The site itself is on port land; the record is at the Georgia Historical Society.
Ossabaw Island shell middens
Reached by boat, with Guale middens and burial ground on a barrier island held as a heritage preserve. Permit and guide required.
Rock Eagle effigy mound, Eatonton
Two hours inland: a bird effigy of white quartz roughly a hundred feet across, of contested age and undisputed intent.
Guale and Yamacraw ground
Oglethorpe's 1733 landing was at a Yamacraw village, by agreement with Tomochichi. The bluff was not empty.
Where to stay
A Black-owned inn near the Beach Institute district
Booked through the Circle's desk. Where a city has no Black-owned house at this standard, we say so and place you in the best independent room instead.
A restored townhouse off Forsyth Park
Independently held, quiet, walkable to the squares without being in the tour traffic.
The table
A Gullah Geechee table on the southside
Rice, crab, okra soup. Family-run, cash-friendly, closes when the pot is empty.
A Black-owned dining room downtown
Lowcountry cooking with contemporary training.
Oysters at Pin Point in season
Arranged with the community where they are selling.
Tours & walks
A Gullah Geechee-led tour of the squares and the wharves
The squares as they were built and by whom.
A Field Order 15 walk
Green Square to the river, with the documents in hand.
A tidal-creek day toward Ossabaw and the islands
By water, with a guide from the coast.
Members have this city's stays, tables and guides booked for them, with introductions where protocol allows. Everyone else is welcome to use the guide exactly as written.
All city guidesNext step
Behind the closed gate.
Our community-governed journeys and the Sovereign Florida Circuit go where a guidebook cannot take you.