About The Get Low Country Bike Tour
The BFO Black August Bike Tour will be held August 18-21, 2022. This year we will journey through the unbridled history: the rebellions, and freedoms that lie along the Black Georgia Coast (also known as the Low Country). We look forward to being in community and joyful resistance with you. Join us for a 4-day bike, camping tour from Tybee Island and Savannah to Sapelo Island.
Tybee is a small 3.2-mile barrier island 18 miles from Savannah, Georgia. The revisionist history excludes the pain and suffering—brutal subjugation of black folk. Tybee Island holds the stories of Slave Jails: A quarantine station where our ancestors were poked and probed before families were torn apart and auctioned in Savannah. Wade-ins: The summers of 1960-1963 where young African Americans risked their lives to wade in the waters of the Tybee beach in defiance of Jim Crow laws. This unheralded part of our history led to the eventual desegregation of the former whites-only beaches 8 months before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1980, The Orange Crush Beach Parties were formed by students of Savannah State University. Over-policing of these joyful events served as a stark reminder that progress is never as close as it appears.
South of Tybee sits Sapelo Island, another barrier island that holds a unique story of its own. The island has been home to generations of the Gullah-Geechee people, direct descendants of enslaved West African people brought to the island in the 1700s and 1800s. Nine generations have tended to the land and kept the rich cultural traditions from the coastline of West Africa, such as making baskets, casting nets, and the unique music of the Sea Island Singers.
Sapelo Island is also home to the Historic Hogg Hammock Community. This name derived from the fact that the settlement is located on the lowest point of the island where hogs were raised. The settlement was named after resident, Sampson Hogg. A Black man employed by the Thomas Spalding plantation to care for livestock/hogs. The 434 acre site was purchased by the descendants of the enslaved and it is the last intact Gullah Geechee community in the Georgia Sea Islands.
We will explore Tybee Island to Savannah while learning more about our history on its land. We will bike, rolling at modified paces to accommodate the varying levels of riders, along multipurpose trails (when available) and flat paved roads lined with canopy trees laced in Spanish moss. The bike tour provides a unique space for riders to experience this rich history collectively and individually. Riders will have the option to contribute to the success of the tour by co-leading activities (routes, meal prep, nightly accommodations, discussions, and skill exchanges). You don’t want to miss what is sure to be an experience of a lifetime—a truly unforgettable experience of continuous love and resistance.