PinPoint and Johnny Mercer

Contributed by M Harris

Pin Point

Johnny Mercer learned many life lessons during his childhood visits to Pin Point, near his family’s

Vernon View home. Pin Point is a little fishing village along an estuary south of Savannah , near

the Bethesda orphanage. Freed slaves founded the rural settlement after the American Civil War.

It is one mile wide and a mile and a half long, and has been accessible by paved roads for some

years. The small, predominantly African-American community has a well-established community

of Gullah speakers, a dialect that draws heavily from West African languages. It is the birthplace of

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In Justice Thomas’s memoirs, “My Grandfather’s Son,”

he vividly describes the poverty in which he spent his early years, and the hard work and discipline

of his years living with his grandparents in Savannah .

The crab pickers in the Pin Point community will treat Savannah schoolchildren to a videotaped

storytelling and impromptu a capella folk singing.