Lillian Grant-Baptiste is a Savannah native with stories to share. A gifted orator, Grant-Baptiste uses the power of storytelling to uplift and inspire audiences throughout the Hostess City and beyond. Stories have always been an important part of her life ever since childhood, and she fondly recalls the spirited stories her great grandmother used to tell her growing up. She would sit at her feet alongside her two brothers as the matriarch would regale them with stories passed down through generations. 

“The way my Nana showed up and moved through the world was unique, and part of her uniqueness was her ability to capture and tell a story,” said Grant-Baptiste. “The stories that she told were stories that sparked the imagination and stirred and soothed the soul. These were stories that were a part of her Gullah/Geechee upbringing. Stories of faith, reconciliation and sometimes even resistance. But they were always stories that helped you to reflect and find your center and inner strength.”

Grant-Baptiste said these stories helped her to understand who she was, providing invaluable insights into her tradition, history and culture. These stories proved vital once Grant-Baptiste entered adulthood.

“Sometimes as a young adult, in an effort to find ourselves, we end up losing ourselves by distancing ourselves from the very thing that is the foundation of who we are, and that’s exactly what I did. I wanted to stand in my own independence and freedom, and for some reason, I thought that meant moving away from the traditions that centered me and gave me succor. I came to the realization that to stand strong and firm as a woman, I had to venture back to my roots,” she expressed.

In an effort to reconnect with those roots, Grant-Baptiste began researching and studying stories and traditions from the African Diaspora, with a particular focus on Gullah/Geechee culture. She also sought out the counsel of elders within her family and community. Armed with this rich knowledge, Grant-Baptiste found a renewed sense of self-worth and agency, which has enabled her to empower others through storytelling. 

“Communities gather and find strength around storytelling. Values and lessons are taught through storytelling. In the African American tradition, much of our history was passed down through the oral tradition of storytelling. . . Our people endured so much, but through the power of the stories, they found strength,” she expressed.

Today, Grant-Baptiste is a respected master storyteller, celebrant and motivational speaker with more than three decades of experience enchanting audiences through her work. Prior to pursuing storytelling full time, she served the City of Savannah for over twenty years. During her tenure, she created and led the community planning and development department’s Leadership Development Institute, which provides organizational and leadership training for grassroots community leaders to address local issues and foster change and positive outcomes. 

She retired from the city during COVID but remains very active within the community. She serves on the boards of Healthy Savannah, the King Tisdell Cottage Foundation and the Martin De Porres Society. She is a member of the Faith and Health Coalition and Mayor Van Johnson’s Racial Equity and Leadership Taskforce. She has been an instructor for Parent University for more than 20 years, and she is a faculty member of Step Up Savannah’s faith-based committee. 

Since her retirement, Grant-Baptiste has focused on her storytelling, continuing in the time-honored traditions of great orators before her. In addition to her public speaking, she also helps others commemorate pivotal life events through celebration and ceremony. 

“A celebrant is like an officiant. As a celebrant, I have performed celebrations that mark major life cycle events like adolescent rites of passage programs, wedding renewals, birthing ceremonies and naming ceremonies. I have also facilitated memorials and libation ceremonies to bring purpose and meaning to certain historical events,” she described.

Such events include community Kwanzaa celebrations, the Weeping Time commemoration and the Lazaretto Creek commemoration among others. June is a very busy month for Grant-Baptiste because of all the Juneteenth celebrations taking place throughout the community. 

This year, she is the keynote speaker for the Savannah Area Realtors Juneteenth Celebration on June 15, and she will be conducting libation ceremonies and sharing stories during the Tybee MLK Juneteenth Celebration as well as the Savannah Juneteenth Fine Arts Festival, both of which are on June 17. She will also recite stories at Georgia Southern University’s Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Center’s Juneteenth event on June 19. 

She encourages community members to come out and attend these important Juneteenth events, noting that they will be fun, celebratory and jam-packed with liberating and uplifting information. She sees these events as opportunities to celebrate how far we’ve come while considering strategies for further progress. 

“Juneteenth is important because it makes space for a fixed time for us to remember, reflect and celebrate individually and collectively . . . the significance of our history and the strength, endurance and resilience of our people. It is also a time that we can reflect upon and reckon with the present inequities and injustices that are still pervasive and persistent in our nation and community,” Grant-Baptiste expressed. “Ultimately Juneteenth is, more than anything, a time to look back, gather strength from our story, reckon with our present and recommit ourselves to the continual struggle for equity, fairness, justice, forward movement and liberation.” 

For more information, visit lilliangrantbaptiste.com

This article appears in Jun 1-30, 2023.