Truth hurts in a Deep South city's tribute to the shameful days of the slave trade

The cobbles of River Street in Savannah, an uneven mix of large and small, oblong and round, came from the ballast of slave ships. In a city whose population is 50 per cent black, the legacy of slavery in Georgia and the issue of how to mark it continue to divide the community.

A 1,000lb (450kg) bronze statue has finally been unveiled after a decade of wrangling over, among other things, the statue's inscription by the celebrated writer, campaigner and poet, Maya Angelou.

That read: "We were stolen, sold and bought together from the African continent. We got on the slave ships together. We lay back to belly in the holds of the slave ships together in each other's excrement and urine together, sometimes died together, and our lifeless bodies thrown overboard together."

Many people thought the words provocative, others believed they were negative, focusing on the past. Ms Angelou, author of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, said she understood why city officials were hesitant to approve her quotation. "The picture of it, it's so horrible," she said. "And yet if we can see how horrible it is, then we might treat each other a little nicer."

Floyd Adams, the city's first black mayor, likened the effect of the words to the inclusion of a Confederate symbol on the state flag. "I don't want to polarise this community," he said. "Those words are more divisive than anything."

Another black councillor, Clifton Jones, said the words were an unflinching portrayal of the horror of slavery. "They were bound and chained in the bottom of ships and if they had to have a bowel movement or whatever they had to do it right there," he said. "It may be derogatory but it's the truth."

This port city was among the most important centres of the slave trade, European ships unloading their human cargo from Africa and returning full of cotton, timber, indigo and rice.

But while Savannah is good at marking, and marketing much of its more genteel history, especially on the back of the free publicity from John Berendt's award-winning book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, its role in slavery has been largely ignored.

The city had 42 commemorative statues and monuments, but nothing to mark slavery. Dr Abigail Jordan, a campaigner and Savannah resident who spent 11 years on the project, said: "I have been bloodied in my struggle to get that memorial put up. Not literally bloodied, but figuratively. They've even got a statue of dog."

The committee formed to pursue the project ran into delays and setbacks.

There were debates over the theme (a family of four casting off their chains), the sculptor (Dorothy Spradley, a white professor from the city's college of art and design, was selected) and the mood of the figures (resilient yet thoughtful). There was also a request that the statue reflect the past, present and future.

Ms Angelou found the solution, to allow the monument to be unveiled. She agreed to provide the committee with more positive words. The inscription that described the slaves' shared horrors now concludes: "Today we are standing up together, with faith and even some joy."