Georgia, Then and Now
Posted on April 2, 2025
In late March I visited Georgia for the first time in a couple of years. Savannah and Brunswick, specifically.
In Savannah, I gave the bulk of my Scarlett family archive to the Georgia Historical Society, where it will be housed as the Scarlett-Tison collection. Letters, photos (some from the 19th century), documents (official and unofficial), a typed oral history tracing Francis Muir Scarlett’s purchase in 1858 of a captive African from the illegal slave ship The Wanderer, one of the last of its brutal kind to cross the Atlantic. The man my great-great-grandfather Scarlett purchased from the Wanderer—for $1,500—had survived the deadly 40-day ocean crossing in a yacht retrofitted to hold over 400 captives in decks no taller than 19 inches. After my great-great-great grandfather bought him, this unnamed man reportedly refused to perform the tasks of an overseer and was accordingly punished “severely,” according to the document now at GHS. My ancestor then rented this enslaved man out to fellow planters as a “producer of children” at $100 a day.
BRAG team leaders in Brunswick with Leslie, March 2025
(L-R: Anita Collins,Philip Wu Jr., Atiba Mbiwan)
Some of this horrific story emerged during a sunlit two-hour conversation in Brunswick with members of BRAG—Bicycle Ride Across Georgia—a nonprofit I began supporting in 2024. Among other events designed to engage middle- and high-school students in and around Brunswick, BRAG sponsors a monthly “I Ride Beside Maud” bike ride in Brunswick. The ride honors Ahmaud Arbery, who was murdered in 2020 by white supremacists on land where my Scarlett ancestors enslaved hundreds of men, women, and children over the course of several decades. The links between then and now—between the crimes of my ancestors and the crimes of Arbery’s killers—could scarcely be clearer.
My husband and I chanced to be in Brunswick for the launch of the latest BRAG ride honoring Ahmaud. Among the cyclists were Ahmaud Arbery’s father, Marcus, and uncle, Gary. It was more than humbling to meet these two men of such obvious strength, courage, and faith. They remind me that our work is far from done.