The Hidden Fortress: a Story of Black Resistance on the Savannah River
Join BPL Presents as the novelist George Dawes Green and historians Sylviane Diouf and Paul Pressly unravel the extraordinary true story of the Bear Creek Fortress, perhaps the largest and only fortified maroon settlement in the US.
After the Revolutionary War, many Black soldiers from Savannah who had fought on the British side refused to return to slavery. Instead, they joined a community of maroons—fugitives from slavery—and built a hidden fortified village in the forbidding swamps of the Savannah River. They cultivated rice and potatoes, created a place of refuge for a flourishing community, and fought off the Georgia militia. When they were finally defeated in battle by an alliance of the Georgia and South Carolina militias, many escaped, and some may have made their way to Spanish Florida, where runaways from British colonies were granted asylum if they became Catholic.
George Dawes Green wrote about this hidden fortress in his acclaimed new novel The Kingdoms of Savannah. But this story isn’t fiction—although, like so many true stories of Black resistance, it’s not widely known, and the site of the fortress remains archeologically unexplored.
SYLVIANE DIOUF, a pre-eminent scholar of US maroon history, PAUL PRESSLY, well-known historian of Colonial Georgia, and GEORGE DAWES GREEN, novelist and founder of The Moth, discuss the almost unbelievable story of the Fortress: its dramatic history, why that history has been repressed, and the bright prospects for its archeological recovery.
The Kingdoms of Savannah and Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of Greenlight Bookstore.
Participants
George Dawes Green is a New York Times bestselling author and the founder of The Moth. His first novel, The Caveman’s Valentine, won the Edgar Award and became a motion picture starring Samuel L. Jackson. The Juror was an international bestseller in more than twenty languages and was the basis for the movie starring Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin. Ravens was chosen as one of the best books of 2009 by the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Mail of London, and many other publications.
The Kingdoms of Savannah, Green’s latest novel, was published this July to widespread acclaim. Neil Gaiman called it “the apotheosis of Southern Gothic.” The New York Times says that “it’s layered, but like a parfait goes down sweet, chilled and easy ... Green shows how you can love a place’s stink, find it splendid even as you despise its sediment.” Green grew up in Georgia and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Dr. Sylviane A. Diouf, an award-winning historian, is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University. She is the author of the groundbreaking Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons (NYU Press). She has authored and edited thirteen books and curated ten exhibitions. Her book Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America (Oxford University Press) received prizes from the American Historical Association, the Alabama Historical Association, and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award. Her acclaimed Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (NYU Press) was named Outstanding Academic Book. Her series on Kings and Queens of Africa (Franklin Watts) received the African Studies Association Africana Book Award.
Diouf was the 2015 keynote speaker addressing the United Nations General Assembly on the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. She was the founding director of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and is the recipient of the Rosa Parks Award, the Dr. Betty Shabazz Achievement Award, and the Pen and Brush Achievement Award.
Paul Pressly is an educator and historian. He received his B.A. from Princeton, a M.P.A. from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and a D.Phil in history from the University of Oxford. As an educator, he served as head of The Savannah Country Day School, as chair of the National Association of Independent Schools, president-general of the Cum Laude Society, and chair of the SAT Committee for College Board. As historian, he is the author of a book, On the Rim of the Caribbean: Colonial Georgia and the British Atlantic World (University of Georgia Press, 2013), co-editor of Coastal Nature, Coastal Culture: An Environmental History of the Georgia Coast (UGA Press, 2018), and many articles. His book, On the Rim of the Caribbean, was co-winner of the Malcolm and Muriel Bell Award from the Georgia Historical Society.
His forthcoming book, The Borders of Freedom: Black Georgians and the Promise of Spanish Florida and Native Lands (UGA Press) explores how hundreds of enslaved people on the Georgia coast sought out the competing visions offered by the many racial, ethnic, and religious groups in the Southeast during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He is director emeritus of the Ossabaw Island Education Alliance, a partnership between the Georgia Board of Regents, the Department of Natural Resources, and the Ossabaw Island Foundation. Under his leadership, the Alliance held a symposium on African American life in coastal Georgia that became a book, African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: the Gullah-Geechee and the Atlantic World (UGA Press, 2010). In 2009, he received the Governor’s Award in the Humanities.
We are very excited to have you back at our events and would like to remind you that we are still in the midst of the pandemic. Please be considerate of your fellow guests and stay home if you’re feeling unwell. Also, consider wearing a mask when attending indoor BPL Presents events. You’ll be doing your part to help keep yourself and everyone healthy and safe.
Join BPL Presents as the novelist George Dawes Green and historians Sylviane Diouf and Paul Pressly unravel the extraordinary true story of the Bear Creek Fortress, perhaps the largest and only fortified maroon settlement in the US.
After the Revolutionary War, many Black soldiers from Savannah who had fought on the British side refused to return to slavery. Instead, they joined a community of maroons—fugitives from slavery—and built a hidden fortified village in the forbidding swamps of the Savannah River. They cultivated rice and potatoes, created a place of refuge for a flourishing community, and fought off the Georgia militia. When they were finally defeated in battle by an alliance of the Georgia and South Carolina militias, many escaped, and some may have made their way to Spanish Florida, where runaways from British colonies were granted asylum if they became Catholic.
George Dawes Green wrote about this hidden fortress in his acclaimed new novel The Kingdoms of Savannah. But this story isn’t fiction—although, like so many true stories of Black resistance, it’s not widely known, and the site of the fortress remains archeologically unexplored.
SYLVIANE DIOUF, a pre-eminent scholar of US maroon history, PAUL PRESSLY, well-known historian of Colonial Georgia, and GEORGE DAWES GREEN, novelist and founder of The Moth, discuss the almost unbelievable story of the Fortress: its dramatic history, why that history has been repressed, and the bright prospects for its archeological recovery.
The Kingdoms of Savannah and Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of Greenlight Bookstore.
Participants
George Dawes Green is a New York Times bestselling author and the founder of The Moth. His first novel, The Caveman’s Valentine, won the Edgar Award and became a motion picture starring Samuel L. Jackson. The Juror was an international bestseller in more than twenty languages and was the basis for the movie starring Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin. Ravens was chosen as one of the best books of 2009 by the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Mail of London, and many other publications.
The Kingdoms of Savannah, Green’s latest novel, was published this July to widespread acclaim. Neil Gaiman called it “the apotheosis of Southern Gothic.” The New York Times says that “it’s layered, but like a parfait goes down sweet, chilled and easy ... Green shows how you can love a place’s stink, find it splendid even as you despise its sediment.” Green grew up in Georgia and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Dr. Sylviane A. Diouf, an award-winning historian, is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University. She is the author of the groundbreaking Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons (NYU Press). She has authored and edited thirteen books and curated ten exhibitions. Her book Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America (Oxford University Press) received prizes from the American Historical Association, the Alabama Historical Association, and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award. Her acclaimed Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (NYU Press) was named Outstanding Academic Book. Her series on Kings and Queens of Africa (Franklin Watts) received the African Studies Association Africana Book Award.
Diouf was the 2015 keynote speaker addressing the United Nations General Assembly on the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. She was the founding director of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and is the recipient of the Rosa Parks Award, the Dr. Betty Shabazz Achievement Award, and the Pen and Brush Achievement Award.
Paul Pressly is an educator and historian. He received his B.A. from Princeton, a M.P.A. from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and a D.Phil in history from the University of Oxford. As an educator, he served as head of The Savannah Country Day School, as chair of the National Association of Independent Schools, president-general of the Cum Laude Society, and chair of the SAT Committee for College Board. As historian, he is the author of a book, On the Rim of the Caribbean: Colonial Georgia and the British Atlantic World (University of Georgia Press, 2013), co-editor of Coastal Nature, Coastal Culture: An Environmental History of the Georgia Coast (UGA Press, 2018), and many articles. His book, On the Rim of the Caribbean, was co-winner of the Malcolm and Muriel Bell Award from the Georgia Historical Society.
His forthcoming book, The Borders of Freedom: Black Georgians and the Promise of Spanish Florida and Native Lands (UGA Press) explores how hundreds of enslaved people on the Georgia coast sought out the competing visions offered by the many racial, ethnic, and religious groups in the Southeast during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He is director emeritus of the Ossabaw Island Education Alliance, a partnership between the Georgia Board of Regents, the Department of Natural Resources, and the Ossabaw Island Foundation. Under his leadership, the Alliance held a symposium on African American life in coastal Georgia that became a book, African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: the Gullah-Geechee and the Atlantic World (UGA Press, 2010). In 2009, he received the Governor’s Award in the Humanities.
Brooklyn Public Library - Central Library, Dweck Center MM/DD/YYYY 60