SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) – Former Georgia Gov. Eugene Talmadge unflinchingly defended segregation in the 1930s and ’40s, and infamously proclaimed a black man’s place was “at the back door with his hat in his hand.”
Now the mayor of Savannah and its city council say the towering suspension bridge that fills the city’s riverside skyline is the wrong place to display Talmadge’s name. A resolution approved unanimously on Thursday calls for renaming the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge, as the span crossing the Savannah River has been known for six decades.
Mayor Eddie DeLoach called for stripping Talmadge’s name from the local landmark soon after the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists rallying in support of Confederate statues clashed with counter-protesters.
While other cities moved to take down monuments to Civil War figures, Savannah took aim at the honor bestowed on a racist, Jim Crow-era governor in a city where 54 percent of residents are black and tourism is a $2.8 billion industry. Now the question is whether state lawmakers will honor the request to change the name to The Savannah Bridge.
“If they don’t vote in favor of this, then it’s a shame on them,” said DeLoach, who was sworn in last year as Savannah’s first white mayor in 20 years after defeating a black incumbent. He said the bridge should “no longer be named for a man who divided us.”