Taking a Stand on the First Tee

BY DEMARCO WILLIAMS

Like all good caddies, Earl Hill, a resourceful and well-known bag-carrier at the Jekyll Island Club in the 1920s, knew the game of golf inside and out. Even better, Hill knew how to use what he knew.

Hill took his knowledge of the sport, a few musical connections that he had nurtured through the years, and paired them with an Atlanta preacher's pioneering efforts to desegregate golf in the state of Georgia to create—some four decades after his caddying heyday on Jekyll—the Southeastern Golf Tournament, the island’s first integrated golf tournament.

That colossal undertaking made Hill one of the island's most impactful agents of change in an era when change did not always come easily.

"He's remembered in the museum," says Andrea Marroquin, curator of Mosaic, Jekyll Island Museum. "We try to commemorate some of the influential, lesser-known people of the island, and he's certainly one of those."

The Rev. Oliver Wendell Holmes of Atlanta helped pave the way for

Hill, pushing to desegregate Atlanta golf courses in 1955 with a landmark Supreme Court decision that struck down Georgia's "separate but equal" doctrine as it applied to public courses throughout the state. Later, when Rev. Holmes, an avid African-American golfer, approached clubs in Savannah and Jekyll Island to play and was turned away, he spoke out in protest.

"A Black golf course had been promised on the south end of the island but had never happened," says Marroquin. "So [Holmes] tried to use the white golf course. And he said when they went to use it, they posted a sign saying it was closed for watering. He was told that, 'They did not allow Negroes to use the course.' He took the issue to the State Parks Commission and requested desegregation of Jekyll Island."

In 1964, a court ruled that the island's state-run facilities be desegregated. And so that same year, Hill—who had kept a close eye on the legal proceedings all along— overcame even more resistance to organize the inaugural Southeastern Golf Tournament (also called "The Classic"). The festivities surrounding the integrated tournament included an appearance by soul legend Jerry Butler, who sang at the initial awards ceremony. That marked the first desegregated concert in the island’s former convention center.

"Some of these big events probably helped [with integration]," Marroquin says of the tournament, which hosted such golf greats as Lee Elder, Calvin Peete, and Jim Thorpe, and welcomed renowned musicians like Butler, Percy Sledge, and Wilson Pickett. "The golf tournament brought some high-profile players here to the island.

"Earl Hill was very significant in making these things happen."

The Classic ended in the early 1980s. But the legacy of Earl Hill— once a caddie for the millionaires who vacationed on the island, later a scratch golfer himself, and most notably a key figure in the hardfought desegregation of Jekyll Island—lives on.

Bits of Native American pottery bind us to Jekyll Island's history

BY JEANÉE LEDOUX

Our crafts help make us human. That's as true these days—during the pandemic, many people found comfort in new pastimes like knitting, breadmaking, and woodwork— as it was thousands of years ago. Just have a look at the Native American pottery collection at Mosaic, Jekyll Island Museum. The remnants of everyday wares and ceremonial pieces connect us across time to the region's prehistoric residents.

"Here on Jekyll Island, we have found evidence of Native American pottery use dating back to the late Archaic Period (around 2500–1000 BC)," says Andrea Marroquin, the museum’s curator. The pottery exhibit consists mostly of potsherds (fragments) discovered during local archaeological investigations, routine island maintenance, and even swimming pool excavations. "It can be a challenge to mend sherds together like pieces of a puzzle to determine the original shape," Marroquin says. One of the museum's showstoppers is a massive tobacco-colored pot, built and stamped with a linear pattern circa 1350 AD, that has been painstakingly reconstructed.

Even tiny pottery fragments found among the oyster shells and animal bones in coastal Georgia’s numerous middens (prehistoric dump sites) have tales to tell. "Potsherds can be very helpful in dating a site," Marroquin says. The sherds also signal that a group has settled down in an area, considering pottery is impractical to carry from place to place. Marroquin adds that distinctive patterns and other characteristics of the clay can reveal connections between people in different regions, links like trade routes and intermarriage.

The techniques that Jekyll's ancient potters employed are still in use today. Craftspeople roll the clay into coils, stack them to form a vessel, then smooth the exterior with rock and water. They add decorations with several different methods, which can include incising lines or pressing a fabric or stamp into the surface. After that, they dry the piece in the sun and bake it in an open fire. They heat it slowly for several hours, then cool it gradually to avoid breakage.

While most of Mosaic's pottery pieces are rooted in survival—cooking, eating, storage—one stands out for its striking beauty. This tall, chiminea-shaped vessel with concentric circles and waves swirling around its neck is a reproduction of the Swift Creek variety of pottery. Tammy Beane, an Alabama ceramicist who specializes in prehistoric and early historic pottery techniques of the Southeast, gleaned information from a potsherd to make the vessel and a carved wooden paddle used to stamp the pattern on it. (That same special potsherd inspired the museum's logo.)

The pottery collection at Mosaic, Jekyll Island Museum is just one way to learn about Native American life on the island. Visitors to the museum also can explore a Timucua hut, climb in a dugout canoe, check out tools carved from stone and bone, and peer inside a reproduction of a midden. Guests may even be inspired to think about the kinds of artifacts they'd like to leave behind for future archaeologists pondering life in the 21st century.

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