EDITORIAL: Is Personal Accountability Missing Key in Calls to Change Bridge’s Name?

Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge spanning Savannah River. (Getty image by Michael Orso)

The word accountable has a friendlier ring to it when applied to someone other than oneself. Used in a statement such as, “Today I will hold myself accountable for making a positive difference in the world,” it feels more nakedly ominous than courageous or inspiring.

​Simply put, it means acceptance of responsibility for a specific action or desired outcome. That can be a good or bad thing depending on motives and results involved. In the example at hand, the motive is pursuit of social justice and the desired result is a long-sought correction of history.

400 Girl Scouts and House Resolution 1054

The concept of accountability has my full attention at present because of the admirable way some 400 Girl Scouts made their way to the Georgia State capital to urge lawmakers to remove the late white supremacist Eugene Talmadge’s name from the impressive bridge spanning the Savannah River between the city and Hutchison Island, and replace it with that of their founder: Juliette Gordon Low. With the scouts symbolically and strategically at this side, Rep. Ron Stephens (R-GA) on February 6, 2018, introduced House Resolution 1054: “A RESOLUTION honoring the life of Ms. Juliette Gordon Low and dedicating a bridge in her memory; and for other purposes.”

Joining Stephens, a republican, on the bill’s sponsorship were five democrats: Rep. Gloria Frazier, Rep. Carl Gilliard, Rep. Mickey Stephens, Rep. Al Williams, and Rep. Teri Anulewicz. 

​The Girl Scouts’ highly-commendable move won them much applause across the nation. It also prompted questions concerning why African-American leaders and community members in Savannah and throughout Georgia have done so little to protest the current name of the bridge or have it changed. Why, for example, in a city famous for its majority-black population, was the African-American presence in the audience at the historic Symposium to Rename the Talmadge Bridge held at the Savannah Theater on September 5, 2017, so overwhelmingly under-represented? As in clearly, visibly, a lot less than half the attendees?   

Accountability for Making Memorable Corrective History 

The issue is at least as much about engaging the present and preparing for the future as it is about correcting a misstep from the past. Imagine, for example, if during this 2018 Black History Month educators, entrepreneurs, social justice activists, church members, mosque members, temple members, fraternity groups, student groups, government employees, and rappers all had gone one big step beyond applauding our forebears for their triumphs and sacrifices. What if citizens had chosen to hold themselves accountable for staging a peaceful march across Savannah’s bridge in the manner of those who made the perilous trek across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965––minus the bloodshed?
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What might it be like to hold ourselves personally accountable for making memorable corrective history instead of simply praising what others have already contributed to it, even as we (apparently) ignore the costs of their unwavering commitment where the name of the bridge is concerned? 

Black Leadership & Followership

The question of why black leaders and followers in the city should be singled out as the ones to hold themselves most accountable is a fair one. The answers are agonizingly numerous. One would have to be because: no one has likely already lost, or will continue to lose, anywhere near as much from failure to change the bridge’s name. Consider what it means to sanction via silence the daily overt devaluation of an entire population. Calculate how that institutionalized devaluation translates into impoverished families and individuals, and communities traumatized by gun violence, domestic violence, and social unease as well as disproportionate numbers of unemployed and imprisoned people of African descent.
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But among the most important reasons black leaders and community members in different capacities should contemplate holding themselves accountable in this scenario is the exercise which doing so could provide, for currently and following generations, in serving as effective stewards of freedom and justice.  On a lighter side: possible photo opportunities stemming from a peaceful march across the bridge would not hurt at all during these social-media-addicted times. 

To Build Girls of Courage

​Certainly the Girl Scouts make a good case for naming the bridge after Juliette Gordon Lowe (and if House Resolution 1054 makes it through the approval process that is exactly what will happen). Some of the reasoning stated in HR 1054 is debatable but few would argue with these: 

“WHEREAS, Ms. Low's life mission was to build girls of courage, confidence, and character; (12 and 13) WHEREAS, her legacy continues to make an extraordinary impact on the lives of millions (14) of girls in Georgia and across our country, with 2.6 million members and 59 million (15) alumnae; and (16) WHEREAS, the movement started by Ms. Low now reaches every corner of the world, with (17) Girl Scouts living throughout the United States and its territories and in more than 90 [ ] countries across the globe…” 

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​That there are already considerable public acknowledgements of Low—most notably the district bearing her name and year-round promotions of the same––and virtually none of other significant historical figures seems to have been discounted.      

Alternative Possibilities

​Compelling cases may also have been made for a number of other possibilities. My personal favorite happens to be The Tomochichi-Oglethorpe Bridge because combining the two names could symbolize the kind of coexistence for which so many are currently advocating.

Yet Civil War veteran and pioneering educator and author Susie Taylor King, publisher and hero of the Great Migration Robert Abbott, pre-Civil War entrepreneur and spiritual leader Andrew Cox Marshall, and long-time mainstay of the Poetry Society of Georgia Gerald Chan Sieg, all of whom held themselves accountable for facilitating the correction of unjust conditions, would also have made suitable choices. Opting for “The Savannah River Bridge” could be neutrally serviceable enough but also in some ways more of a cop-out than a useful compromise.

What matters more than anything else is engaging the issue, and others of similar significance, with intent to help resolve it in a way that proves more beneficial than antagonistic. We cannot, after all, hold legislators, history itself, or Girl Scouts accountable for righting grievous wrongs if we are not willing to take on the same responsibility ourselves.
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Aberjhani
February 14, 2018
Savannah, GA