#97: The King Tisdell Cottage

"I’m black. I’ve accepted myself as that. But didn’t I make some elbow room,

though?” She tapped her temple with her forefinger. “I mean up here?”

—James Alan McPherson (Elbow Room)

The King Tisdell Cottage

This beautiful cottage is now a delightful museum dedicated to preserving African American history and culture in Savannah. Constructed in 1896 and located at 514 East Huntingdon Street near Mother Mathilda Beasley Park see PFS-93), the cottage is named for its African American owners: Eugene King, Sarah King, and Robert Tisdell.

Wesley Wallace Law founded the King-Tisdell Cottage Foundation. Law served as President of the Savannah Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1950 to 1976. A local hero, W.W. Law was known as ‘Mr. Civil Rights’ in Savannah.

Law was the oldest of ten children. All nine of his siblings were sisters. He graduated with a biology degree from Savannah State University (then Georgia State College) on the GI Bill. He was denied a teaching position in the segregated Savannah Public School System because of his NAACP affiliation.

In his mid-20s, Law began a 40-year career working for the U.S. Postal Service. At one point, he got fired from his postal job in retaliation for his Civil Rights activism. But timely intervention by John F. Kennedy and national leaders of the NAACP quickly reversed that injustice. This event led President Kennedy to later fire Edward Day, the Postmaster General of the United States.

W.W. Law pushed hard against racial discrimination in Savannah housing and employment. He was a steady and robust voice for non-violence. His mentor was Ralph Mark Gilbert, the Pastor of the First African Baptist Church (see PFS-48) and the President of the NAACP before Law took charge. Law helped established the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum, now located on Martin Luther King Boulevard.

In the late-1950s and throughout the 1960s, Law led the Savannah Chapter of the NAACP in efforts to desegregate the public schools, register African American voters, encourage sit-ins at popular whites-only lunch counters, and support boycotts of local racist merchants. In retaliation, the National States’ Rights Party (NSRP) established a branch in Savannah in 1968 to provoke racial strife.

Continuing NAACP efforts to register African American voters in Savannah finally paid dividends when Floyd Adams, Jr. was elected the city’s first African American mayor in 1995. In 1996, with the active support of W.W. Law, Savannah’s West Broad Street was renamed Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard.

The quote above comes from Savannah native James Alan McPherson (1943-2016), who in 1978 became the first African American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. When McPherson attended, Savannah public schools were still segregated, undoubtedly influencing his lifelong views of injustice.

McPherson’s story ‘Elbow Room’ first came to my attention while attending the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). This short story, part of a more extensive collection of McPherson’s short stories also published under the name Elbow Room, explores the psychology of race relations in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. I was born in 1973 in the (now) defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and immigrated to the United States in 1999. Until reading McPherson’s Elbow Room for a SCAD literature class, I was largely unfamiliar with past racial issues in my new country and adopted city.

Elbow Room explores the American racial divide using the marriage of a white Vietnam War draft protestor named Paul to a Black Peace Corp volunteer named Virginia. Their story, told by a self-conscious narrator who often draws the readers’ attention to himself, questions the motives of Paul and Virginia. The narration twists the couple’s story into emotionally absorbing dislocations. A great read!