We had just landed at Savannah airport in Georgia and the taxi driver who was bringing us to the Bed & Breakfast we had booked for the week-end welcomed us by singing « Georgia on my Mind », Ray Charles’ famous song. The singer, a son of the state, had refused in 1960 to perform in front of an audience from which African Americans were excluded. Since then, a testimony of progress made, the song is the official hymn of Georgia.
Savannah, one of the rare Southern cities which was not destroyed by General Sherman’s Union troops after the Civil War, has kept its old-fashioned charm. Its avenues, shaded by trees with hanging Spanish moss, lead to squares dominated by stately patrician mansions.
One of these houses, the Mercer Williams House, is at the center of John Berendt’s book « Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil ». The book is