NEH Landmarks of American History

July 11, 2010 - July 24, 2010

 

From July 11 - 24, 2010, GHS will bring 50 educators from 23 states to participate in two week-long NEH funded workshops for community college faculty entitled, “African-American History and Culture in the Georgia Lowcountry: Savannah and the Coastal Islands, 1750–1950.”  Each session will be attended by 25 community college faculty members currently teaching humanities courses at institutions throughout the country. Workshop participants will explore the broad themes of race and slavery in American history by focusing on site-specific experiences of communities in and around Savannah from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. The workshop will include lecture sessions by nationally recognized experts on African-American folklife, culture, and religion and slavery in the American South; guided tours of the streets, squares, and structures of Savannah’s Historic Landmark District; and site visits to Ossabaw and Sapelo Islands.

The McIntosh County Shouters

July 21, 2010

 

Wednesday, July 21, 2010, 6:00 P.M.

Second African Baptist Church

123 Houston Street, Savannah

 

Derived from African practices, the ring shout combines call-and-response singing, the percussion of a stick or broom on a wood floor, and hand-clapping and foot-tapping. First described in depth by outside observers on the sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia during the Civil War, the ring shout was presumed to have died out in active practice until 1980, when the shouters in the Bolden community first came to the public's attention.
 
The McIntosh County Shouters are the last of the active practitioners of this art form and the only group with a direct connection to their African roots.    Through there performance, the McIntosh County Shouters have preserved one of the oldest forms of African American cultural and religious expression.  Since 1980, they have held audiences spellbound and contributed to a greater understanding of early African American culture.

We ask that no photographic/video/audio equipment be brought into the church for the performance.
 
Free and open to the public.