Darien, Georgia, loves its history. How this small town sees inauguration.

When Darien, Georgia, was on the southern fringe of the British Empire, the battle-hardened Scottish Highlanders who lived right here helped maintain the road in opposition to the Spanish on the Battle of Bloody Marsh in 1742.

That battle, although a lot exaggerated in native lore, was a British victory that ended any Spanish claims in Georgia. These troopers, among the many first colonists of what can be a future American state, signify values nonetheless held in a lot esteem in the present day: dedication, industriousness, pleasure in heritage.

These values nonetheless infuse concepts about what it means to be an American in a spot like Darien, the seat of McIntosh County on the southern Atlantic coast. A number of hundred residents hint their bloodlines to these early Georgians, and are recognized domestically as “direct descendants.”

In 2024, Donald Trump gained McIntosh County – with its shrimp boats docked amid huge marshes – incomes almost two-thirds of the vote. Many individuals imagine his robust stances on commerce might assist a struggling fishing business.

Some, too, liken his guarantees of harder border enforcement and mass deportations to the actions of these early Scots, who stood as much as the Spanish assault.

However voters in McIntosh County additionally elected a brand new sheriff – a Black Democrat named Thornell “T.Ok.” King. Mr. King, a retired State Patrol main, made his identify giving freely turkeys at Thanksgiving and presents for poor kids on Christmas. He defeated a white candidate who was intently aligned with Mr. Trump.

“He has the fitting background, and he takes care of the neighborhood relatively than simply working a jail,” says Becky Owens, an area shopkeeper and ticket-splitter.

She voted for each profitable candidates. In them, she says she noticed a glimpse of a rustic that relied on its founding values and centered on progress inside native communities. That doesn’t imply progress below President-elect Trump will probably be straightforward, Ms. Owens says.

“I’m very excited” about Mr. Trump’s second inauguration, Ms. Owens says.

“However I additionally know that to ensure we nonetheless have a rustic, some folks must go away and a few folks is perhaps harm,” she says of the prospect of mass deportations. “Proper now, an excessive amount of of politics is attempting to make all people joyful.”

“And there’s no Center America the place folks aren’t hurting proper now,” she provides.

Right here in Darien, her personal function will probably be working to alleviate the various inequities that also exist. It’s a spot the place white folks have lengthy dominated native politics – and its wealth. McIntosh County is 66% white and 31% Black.

So Ms. Owens says she’s stepping up her work at Charlie’s Place, a soup kitchen that helps feed the roughly 150 residents who dwell beneath the poverty line. She believes that a part of the mission of the USA for the following 4 years ought to be additionally to resolve historic injustices.

She sees this as important to America’s long-held give attention to the pursuit of happiness as a key a part of citizenship, if not of life.

Ashley Lewis, nevertheless, is just not so positive a second Trump administration will give attention to everybody’s pursuit of happiness. Ms. Lewis factors to President-elect Trump’s previous derogatory statements about folks of colour and Democratic areas of the nation.

She traces her lineage to the Gullah Geechee folks, descendants of West and Central Africans enslaved on plantations alongside the Atlantic coast. To listen to the way in which Mr. Trump “others” folks – similar to immigrants, protesters, and Black folks – not solely hurts, Ms. Lewis says, but additionally threatens to drive America’s historic injustices even deeper.

Nonetheless, she says, the well being of the economic system issues lots. “Our essential focus as a household is on inflation. However costs have gotten higher, together with fuel,” says the mom of grade schoolers.

She and her husband, Iddarion, simply purchased 50 kilos of native oysters for $75. “That was truthful,” she says. They held a celebration, cooking the oysters on a bit of tin roofing over a fireplace, masking them with water-soaked burlap sacks to steam.

“I don’t consider it as politics”

Newly elected Sheriff King is heaving steaming baskets of fried shrimp and whiting onto paper plates, slicing a humble profile in a cornmeal-dusted sweater.

Throughout him on this small city on the Georgia coast, kids and fogeys are streaming in for his thirteenth annual Christmas giveaway, the place toy vans and stuffed animals are there to convey the little ones some vacation cheer. For years, Mr. King has spearheaded occasions throughout Thanksgiving and Christmas, providing assist and a smile to the impoverished residents in considered one of Georgia’s poorest counties.

“It’s fascinating,” Mr. King says. “My opponent tried to make a problem of this. He mentioned, ‘What does giving freely turkeys and items need to do with public security?’ I didn’t actually know what he meant.”

Mr. King – a former state trooper and shrimp boat captain – says his marketing campaign channeled the values of the Gullah Geechee descendants. He gained the workplace of McIntosh County sheriff by specializing in perseverance, respect, and resourcefulness.

For a lot of, his victory gives hope for constructing a neighborhood with shared values and mutual respect on this period of polarization and vitriol.

Nevertheless it’s difficult. In some methods, Ms. Lewis’ unease is rooted within the historical past of how her ancestors survived in McIntosh County. It was not by profitable battles to protect an empire.

By way of the previous century, Black residents right here have quietly demanded their rights and their due – a type of Southern protest, coated in manners and beauty, however at its core, a requirement.

“The U.S., because it pertains to Trump and id, is such an enormous and unstable place, with numerous totally different areas and totally different folks from totally different backgrounds, and a few folks prefer to assume that every one of this collective striving results in concord,” says Georgia Southern College historian Bennett Parten, creator of “Someplace Towards Freedom.”

“However the actuality is that there are winners and losers, and folks like Trump have discovered a approach to prey on that competitors – pitting one group in opposition to one other,” says Dr. Parten. “In a way, historical past is a seesaw between taking note of our baser instincts after which, like Lincoln did, calling us to our higher angels.”

The workplace of McIntosh County sheriff, in actual fact, additionally has a protracted, difficult, and really Southern historical past.

From the Nineteen Fifties to Seventies, Tom Poppell, a white-haired charismatic sheriff, mainly dominated the county from behind a set of sun shades.

His father was the sheriff for over a decade earlier than he took over in 1948. And when Mr. Poppell died in 1978, his spouse took over as interim sheriff.

For 30 years, Sheriff Poppell was primarily above the regulation, historians say. He’d oversee looting operations on disabled tractor trailers on Freeway 17. He as soon as mentioned that the way in which to regulate Black folks was to maintain them hungry.

However he additionally employed Black deputies and gave help to Black neighborhood members in addition to white. “If you happen to weren’t cautious, he’d be your buddy,” one saying went. “He simply wrote his personal regulation,” mentioned one other, in accordance with native accounts.

Sheriff King’s father was amongst these early Black deputies employed by Sheriff Poppell.

“For many of this century, there was an odd racial calm within the county, consisting in a part of good manners, in a part of intimidation, and partly as a result of the Sheriff cared much less concerning the colours black and white than he did concerning the colour inexperienced,” writes Melissa Fay Greene in “Praying for Sheetrock,” her award-winning historical past of McIntosh County’s civil rights period.

For his half, Mr. King is loath to speak politics. Sure, he ran as a Democrat, however in some methods that’s as a result of get together affiliation is required for the workplace he’ll occupy, he says. “I don’t consider this as politics. I consider this as constructing a greater neighborhood.”

A reenactor ponders his function in historical past

From 1721 to 1736, Fort King George was the southernmost outpost of the British Empire in North America.

Lengthy hidden below a large sawmill, the fort’s artifacts had been unearthed within the mid-Twentieth century by native historians. With a grant from the state, a duplicate of the unique fort was constructed on McIntosh Highway in Darien. The Union Jack flies over the previous frontier outpost.

Resting along with his musket on a Sunday afternoon a couple of month earlier than inauguration, a redcoat reenactor, Michael Bagley, says the fort finally failed due to what these again then known as the “miasma” – or “dangerous air.” Melancholy, loneliness, and drunkenness had been different components, historians say.

Not lengthy after the fort was deserted, Gen. James Oglethorpe, thought-about Georgia’s founder, recruited almost 200 Scottish Highland households to construct a city close to its ruins. This turned Darien.

Mr. Bagley cheerily acknowledges that his presence at Fort King George is stuffed with contradictions and ironies.

He was born in Canada. His ardour for historic reenactment helped him meet a lady who turned his spouse. They moved to Columbus, Ohio, and he turned a U.S. citizen. As a reenactor, he specializes within the Queen Anne period and the Struggle of 1812.

He quietly watches as a pirate reenactor claims that politics, not profiteering, drove pirates like him to cover from maritime regulation within the Georgia marshes. Mr. Bagley rapidly pooh-poohs the reenactor’s claims: “They had been in it for the cash,” he says.

Regardless of the crimson coat, implying loyalty to a crown, the previous punk rocker and present data know-how safety specialist can also be a Democrat. And Mr. Bagley says he’s nonetheless attempting to return to phrases with Mr. Trump’s victory. What does that imply and what does it say concerning the American folks? he wonders.

In his view, if People fall an excessive amount of in thrall to despotic conduct, “We all know what can occur,” he says, “as a result of we’ve seen it earlier than.”

Mr. Bagley believes the most effective plan of action proper now’s to do what he’s doing: sitting again, interval rifle in hand, and ready it out. He simply worries he’ll be just like the final two troopers stationed at Fort King George earlier than the English lastly deserted it: relegated to historical past’s dustbin.

Extra optimistically, he says, he’ll proceed as a reenactor, reminding People that historical past gives a way of distance in addition to hope. It informs in the present day’s struggles however doesn’t outline them.

“I feel we’ve got gotten caught with top-down type of candidates, and what we want are bottom-up candidates,” Mr. Bagley says. “High-down candidates shield the established order and mainly invite corruption. It ends in an excessive amount of infighting and enabling, and doesn’t actually assist resolve our issues.”

For Ms. Owens, Ms. Lewis, Sheriff King, and Mr. Bagley, the second Trump administration represents, in numerous methods, a nation that seesaws between advance and retreat, between progress and reversion, and a obligatory wrestling with the core query “What does it actually imply to be American?”

“Each 4 years, we get to resume what society appears like, and in that there’s at all times the promise of what early America was – to begin recent and new,” says Professor Parten at Georgia Southern. “It’s a symbolic regeneration of our politics.”