Georgia

How much would you pay to kill a pest? On this day in 1909, the Georgia General Assembly formally asked the U.S. Congress for a $5 million prize to the first person to eliminate the boll weevil. This was six years before the cotton–consuming pest even appeared in Georgia. Cotton had been Georgia’s premier staple […]

He’s the only person who ever beat Gene Talmadge. Ellis Arnall was born in Newnan in 1907. He earned a degree in Greek from the University of the South, and a law degree from the University of Georgia. He was a young man on the rise: elected to the state legislature at 25 and attorney […]

It was a major blow to the rights of black Georgians. At the same time, a new phrase was born – the Grandfather Clause. In 1907, Georgia Governor Hoke Smith, who had campaigned promising to disenfranchise black voters, signed an act that would amend Georgia's constitution and impose a literacy test as a requirement for […]

It was easy to get Charles McCartney’s goat. Born in Iowa in 1901, McCartney got hurt working for the New Deal WPA in 1935. A religious awakening led him to hitch a team of goats to a wagon and travel the country with his wife and son, dressed in goatskins, preaching the Gospel. Thus was […]

Not many governors had to prove their courage by facing down a lynch mob. William Yates Atkinson did. The two-term governor was one of Georgia’s most progressive voices in an era known more for racial demagogues. Born in 1854 in Oakland, Ga., Atkinson practiced law in Newnan in 1893, he became one of Georgia’s youngest […]

“Remember the Maine” – three simple words that helped propel the United States into a major conflict with Spain. And Georgians played an important role in it. The Spanish-American War grew out of American support for Cuba’s rebellion against Spain. After the American battleship USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor, Americans clamored for war. Georgia […]

She lived by two rules: love what you do and eat right. It clearly worked for Leila Denmark. At the age of 103, she was the oldest practicing pediatrician in the country when she retired in 2001. Born in Bulloch County in 1898, Denmark made a bold choice for a woman at that time – […]

Can you imagine Saturday afternoons in autumn without college football in Georgia? It almost happened. On this day in 1897, UGA player Richard Von Albade Gammon was fatally injured in a game with the University of Virginia. There had been a nationwide call for a ban on the violent sport, and Von Gammon’s death galvanized […]

His namesake college in north Georgia is small. Its effect has been anything but. Young Loftin Harris was born in Elbert County around 1812. He became a lawyer, judge, and state representative, but he made his money in the insurance business. Harris joined the Southern Mutual Insurance Company in 1849. Over a 45-year career, he […]

He was Georgia’s Civil War governor who opposed almost every Confederate policy. Joseph Emerson Brown was born in South Carolina in 1821 and was raised in north Georgia. He rode a successful legal career all the way to the governorship in 1859. Brown championed the common man and for the rest of his life he […]