Benjamin Van Clark Neighborhood Documentation Project
Neighborhood Oral History Project
Savannah Department of Cultural Affairs
Oral History# 8
EarlL. Luke
May 192003
Savannah, Georgia
EarlL. Luke is a retiree and native Savannahian. He is a graduate of St. Pius X Catholic High School,
which closed in 1971 after being in existence for twenty years. The school was located on Anderson
Street on Atlantic Avenue one block over from Hemy Street.
The following is an abstract of the interview, for a complete recording of the interview please see the
corresponding tape:
Very few blacks lived around here when I moved here at 1329 East Henry Street, in 1969,
which is one block from Bee Road. The Feiler Company built four new homes in the neighborhood after
I moved here in 1969. Four elderly white ladies lived on the Southeast comer of Henry across the street
from me when I moved here in 1969.1 was the first black to move into this neighborhood on Henry
Street. When I moved in, whites began to move out. By 1971, the neighborhood became all black. In
1951, when I was eight, my family lived in the 1200 block of East Waldburg Street. I lived there until
adulthood. In 1951, one had to go to the 1300 block of East Waldburg to see white families living there.
Garden Homes on Bee Road was all white bounded by Ash, Henry, Wheaton Street, and Bee Road.
In 1969, the whites began to move out of Garden Homes. For a brief period, whites and blacks
stayed in Garden Homes public housing project. In the 70s, the white families moved out of Garden
Homes, and it became all black. Initially, Mrs. Traynor, wife of Dr. Traynor (a white medical doctor),
rented my house to white families only before I bought the house in 1969. When I moved in 1329, in
1969, the neighborhood was virtually all white. My first tenant in the apartment I owned behind my
house was a white woman. She rented the apartment for seven years, until1976. She was a
supervisor with the Savannah Electric and Power Company.
-End of interviewAbstract prepared by:
Charles J. Elmore
Project Historian