Savannah is full of stories. You can walk around downtown almost any day and catch snippets being told by different tour companies. This architect designed this home, this building survived the 1820 fire, this ghost haunts this area.
While the stories are entertaining, they serve a purpose which is normally to teach about the city’s history, but some stories have a bigger purpose.
Last week, the Savannah College of Art and Design debuted a film about Ellen and William Craft at the SCAD Museum of Art. “A Thousand Miles and Counting” shows how the young couple made a daring escape from enslavement in Macon to freedom in Philadelphia right before Christmas in 1848. The first leg of that journey brought them through the Central of Georgia Railway Station in Savannah.
Credit: Justin Chan
Credit: Justin Chan
I watched as an auditorium full of people sat in awe of the Crafts. We listened as the story was told by historians and even a few of the Crafts’ own great-great-granddaughters.
“Ellen and William Craft were 22 and 24 when they devised this plan to escape from slavery in Macon, Georgia, not only because they wanted to be free, but because they also wanted children,” said Vicki Davis Williams, the great-great-granddaughter of the Crafts.
“They did not want to have children in slavery because they had experienced being torn away from their siblings and from their parents.”
Ellen Craft’s biological father owned her mother. When Ellen was 11, she was given to her own half-sister as a wedding present.
Credit: SCAD
Credit: SCAD
With their shared childhood trauma urging them forward, Ellen and William made the decision to escape. The film details how Ellen used her lighter complexion to disguise herself as a white man with William posing as her slave.
They made it to Boston but were forced to flee to England a few years later after a new law could have sent them back to Macon. In England, they learned how to read and write and even published a book about their escape. After the Civil War, they moved to Bryan County, Georgia, and opened a school to teach formerly enslaved people.
The true story of the Crafts sounds like Hollywood blockbuster material. You’d expect to hear this story included on most of the tours in Savannah, but the first time I heard this mentioned was a few weeks ago on a tour by Art and Amble. Joël Díaz, the director of the Evans Center for African American Studies at SCAD, said the college decided to call attention to the story after Dr. Walter Evans brought it up to President and Founder Paula Wallace. A bronze medallion was added to the SCAD Museum of Art to honor the Crafts’ legacy.
Credit: Justin Chan
Credit: Justin Chan
“The museum currently sits where the Central of Georgia railway complex historically stood. That’s the connection and how we became aware of the story. We were moved to keep that history,” said Díaz.
The narrative of Savannah’s tours, especially ghost tours, has long revolved around white men, but that is such a small portion of the stories Savannah has to share. That narrative is changing with films like “A Thousand Miles and Counting” and new exhibits at the Jepson Museums that finally shift the focus to include Black stories and voices.
Ghost tours should take this as a learning opportunity to include different perspectives on Savannah’s history that don’t just use the experiences of Black people as a plot device but rather as the main characters.
As Mayor Van Johnson said in his opening remarks before the screening of “A Thousand Miles and Counting,” stories give us life.
To watch “A Thousand Miles and Counting,” go to SCADMOA.org/Crafts.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Boo Business: SCAD documentary 'A Thousand Miles and Counting' an example of changing narrative
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