Pin Point, Georgia

Template:Redirect Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox settlement Pin Point is an unincorporated community in Chatham County, Georgia, United States; it is located Template:Convert southeast of Savannah and is part of the Savannah Metropolitan Statistical Area.<ref name=map/> Pin Point is Template:Convert wide and Template:Convert long, and lies 13 feet above sea level. The town is best known for its longstanding Gullah-speaking community, and being the birthplace of U.S. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas.<ref name = gullah-language/>

A rural settlement founded by freed people after the abolishment of slavery post-Civil War,<ref name="MayerAbramson1995"/> it was settled in the 1890s by people from nearby Ossabaw, Green, and Skidaway Islands.<ref name = ga-history/> In 1897, they founded Sweetfield of Eden Baptist Church.<ref name = freemans/> In 1926, as part of a school-building initiative for African American children in the South—who at the time only had access to underfunded, segregated schools—a Rosenwald school was built in the Pin Point community.<ref name = freemans/><ref name = rosenwald/>

The town lies on the edge of Shipyard Creek, a branch of the Moon River. The surrounding land has large oak trees and coastal marshes, as well as crab and oyster habitats.<ref name = freemans/> The main employer in the community was crab and oyster canning from the 1920s through the 1980s.<ref name = ga-history/>

Pin Point remains a small, predominantly African American community that has a well-established Gullah community. The Gullah people have been able to preserve many cultural connections to their origins in West Africa, where many of their ancestors were captured and then enslaved in the United States.

Gullah, the only English-based, Afro-Indigenous creole language in the United States, is spoken in Pin Point.<ref name = gullah-language/> It is unknown how many native speakers there are in the town, but along the Southeastern seaboard there are about 5,000 semi-speakers and 300 native speakers.<ref name = gullah-language/> Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a native speaker of Gullah (then called Geechee).<ref name = thomas-words/> He has attributed his silence on the Supreme Court to his self-consciousness speaking in an all-white school as a teenager, where classmates made fun of him for not speaking “standard English.” Pin Point Heritage Museum, once the Varn and Sons Oyster and Crab Canning Factory, is devoted to the Gullah/Geechee culture and community.<ref name = ga-history/>

Education

Savannah-Chatham County Public Schools is the school district for all of Chatham County.<ref>Template:Cite web - Text list</ref>

Notable People

b. 1948 - Clarence Thomas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

External links

• Pin Point Community historical marker
• Pin Point Heritage Museum official website.]
• Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words