As the United States grapples with racial inequality and the killing of Black people at the hands of police, the Tybee Island City Council has passed a resolution that aims to promote racial equality and social justice.

The resolution is a revised version of Councilwoman Nancy DeVetter’s resolution from the council’s June meeting, penned by Councilman John Branigan. All council members voted in favor of the resolution at the July 9 meeting, except for Barry Brown and Jay Burke.

The resolution commits Tybee to a few things.

The city will place a “comprehensive historic display” at Lazaretto Creek and at the site of the civil rights movement-era wade-in protests, when Tybee’s beaches were white only.

A section of the city’s website will be dedicated to the history of Tybee’s “racial, ethnic and religious past.”

Additionally, a third-party group will conduct an annual review of the city’s arrest and sentencing data, as well as the Tybee Island Police Department’s use of force, and the results will be made publicly available on the city’s website.

All city employees will be required to take diversity training under the resolution.

DeVetter said the resolution that passed, while different from her initial resolution, is still a good start.

“These are concrete steps,” she said. “I really wanted us to actually do something instead of just making a statement, because I’ve seen a lot of resolutions that do that. It seems almost like lip service, or politically popular just to make the statement.”

 

DeVetter’s initial resolution included language about Orange Crush, an unlicensed annual beach party attended mostly by Black college students. It would have required the city to appoint a committee of volunteers to identify further steps the city can take to advance racial equality and reduce inequity on the island, specifically, working with the organizers of Orange Crush to formalize and improve the event.

This wasn’t included in the resolution that passed.

Julia Pearce, the founder of the Tybee MLK Human Rights Organization, worked with DeVetter on the original resolution. Pearce said the council recognizing racial issues in the first place is a step forward, but the resolution that passed doesn’t have the teeth that DeVetter’s did.

“The council sees the climate. And they just didn’t want to be — in my humble opinion — they didn’t want to be embarrassed,” Pearce said. “They see the world looking at them. They see it. And so they came up with something that they thought would be workable.”

The council will be meeting again in August to discuss the implementation of the ordinance, but Pearce said the city and the country have a long way to go.

“We know that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice, but this is ridiculous. The length of it is ridiculous,” Pearce said. “We need to do better. We need to do better as a city, and we need to do better as a country.”