Tybee Island Wade-Ins

Tybee Island Wade-Ins. . At a mass meeting of the Savannah NAACP, W.W. Law, Chapter President and local icon of the Civil Rights movement, praised the protesters: ,

“If these youngsters can sit in, wade in, and kneel in, all Negroes can stay off Broughton Street. Why should we buy segregation?”

, Because of potentially explosive racial tensions and anticipated large numbers of protesters, the Tybee prison camp located near the present-day police station had been reopened., The success of the peaceful protests helped to convince Savannah community leaders to gather at the negotiating table to end segregation., The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. commented that Savannah was “the most desegregated city south of the Mason-Dixon line.” When the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964, Savannah Beach had been integrated for 8 months., The wade-ins, in conjunction with sit-ins, kneel-ins, and boycotts of Savannah businesses, eventually granted African-Americans equal access to public recreational facilities., In spite of this, racial tension remains over regulating the Black college students' spring break celebration known as Orange Crush (named after Savannah State University's color orange)., On June 19, 2015, the Tybee MLK Human Rights Organization began an annual Juneteenth celebration to observe both the historic Tybee wade-ins and the first Juneteenth, June 19, 1865. It occurred in Galveston, TX, where the last remaining enslaved African-Americans in the United States finally learned from Federal Troops that they had been freed two years earlier by the Emancipation Proclamation., In July of 2020, more than half a century after the wade-ins and 133 years after the city's founding, Tybee City Council recognized the need to acknowledge Tybee's history of racially discriminatory practices and approved a Resolution Promoting Justice and Equality. Among other directives, the resolution established June 19, Juneteenth, as an annual City holiday., Wade in the water , Wade in the water, children , Wade in the water. , God's gonna trouble the water , Negro Spiritual (1901), Captions , . (Left) Photo: Vicki L. Hardy, Tybee MLK Human Rights Organization 2019 , . (Right) Photo: Vicki L. Hardy, Tybee MLK Human Rights Organization 2020