Women’s struggle for equality took a major step forward on this day in 1836. The first college in the world to grant degrees to women was chartered in Macon — an incredibly progressive idea for the times. Now known as Wesleyan College, it began as Georgia Female College after a group of Macon businessmen raised […]
“I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.” Thus did U.S. General William Tecumseh Sherman notify President Lincoln that he had captured Savannah at the end of his March to the Sea. Sherman left Atlanta […]
He was known as the black Babe Ruth, and some consider him baseball’s all-time home run king. Josh Gibson was born in Buena Vista, Georgia, in 1911 and moved to Pittsburgh in the 1920s. He dropped out of trade school to play semi-professional baseball, and in 1930 joined the professional Negro Leagues, playing for the […]
The second Georgian to serve as Secretary of State was a prime architect of the Vietnam War. Dean Rusk was born in Cherokee County in 1909. A Rhodes Scholar at Oxford prior to World War II, Rusk strongly opposed appeasement of Hitler, a position towards tyranny that would shape his worldview all his life. Rusk […]
In 1776, Georgia patriots, like other Americans during the Revolution, battled not only the British, but demoralization when things went badly…. Or, in the words of Thomas Paine, “the summer soldier and the sunshine Patriot.” Paine, a master at propaganda, had rallied Americans earlier that year with his pamphlet Common Sense, a clarion call for […]
The words slavery and slave were never mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, until Georgia ratified the 13th Amendment and officially abolished slavery in the United States. Ironically, an earlier 13th Amendment would have done just the opposite, outlawing amendments ending slavery in an attempt to persuade the Southern states not to leave the Union. The […]
His novels captured the desperation of poverty in Georgia and seared that image into the American psyche. Erskine Caldwell was born in Coweta County in 1903, the son of a home missionary. Caldwell witnessed firsthand the grinding poverty of poor blacks and whites. He wanted his writing to bring their plight to the wider world. […]
He wrote the section of Georgia’s constitution that guarantees religious liberty to its citizens. Jesse Mercer was born in North Carolina in 1769 and migrated to Georgia with his family as a child. A preacher’s son, he was ordained a Baptist minister and was a gifted preacher who pastored seven churches in his life, several […]
It is still one of the most popular films ever made, and its romanticized view of the Old South became firmly established in the popular imagination. Gone with the Wind was based on Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and the film’s completion was miraculous in itself. It took 140 days, 5 directors, and 13 writers—including […]
The greatest college football player ever? Bear Bryant said he was. Even if he did play for Georgia. Charley Trippi was born in Pennsylvania in 1920. The young athlete caught the attention of a former Georgia Bulldog who ran a Coca-Cola bottling plant near Trippi’s home. He offered Trippi a scholarship to play football at […]
