Pin Point, Georgia

Pin Point is an unincorporated community in Chatham County, Georgia, United States; it is located 11 miles (18 km) southeast of Savannah. Pin Point is part of the Savannah Metropolitan Statistical Area.[1]

"Pin Point" redirects here. For other uses, see Pin Point (disambiguation).
Pin Point, Georgia
Map showing the location of Pin Point, Georgia
Coordinates: 31°57′11″N 81°05′33″W
CountryUnited States
StateGeorgia
CountyChatham

The town is best known as the birthplace of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on June 23, 1948.[2]

A rural settlement founded by freed slaves after the American Civil War,[3] Pin Point is 1 mi (1.6 km) wide and 1.6 mi (2.6 km) long.

Pin Point is a small, predominantly African American community that has a well-established Gullah community. It was settled in 1896 by formerly enslaved people from nearby Ossabaw, Green, and Skidaway Islands.[4] 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.

The community has a long-established Gullah speaking community; it is unknown how many native speakers there are in Pin Point, but along the Southeastern seaboard there are about 5,000 semi-speakers and 300 native speakers.[5] Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a native speaker of Gullah (then called Geechee). [6] 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.”

The main employer in the community was crab and oyster canning from the 1920s through 1980s.[4] Pin Point Heritage Museum, once the Varn and Sons Oyster and Crab Canning Factory, is devoted to the Gullah/Geechee culture and community.[4]

References
  1. Pin Point, Georgia
  2. Merida, Kevin; Fletcher, Michael A. (22 April 2007). "Justice Thomas's Life A Tangle of Poverty, Privilege and Race". Washington Post. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
  3. Mayer, Jane; Abramson, Jill (6 November 1995). Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas. Plume. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-452-27499-0. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
  4. "Pin Point Community". Georgia Historical Society. 2014-06-16. Retrieved 2022-03-27.
  5. Wolfram (2021). "Gullah language". Endangered Language Project.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  6. "In Thomas's Own Words". Educational Cyper Playground. New York Times. 2000-12-14. Retrieved 2022-03-27.
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