“Yes, I’m a real southern boy,” he told reporters. “I’ve got a red neck, white socks, and drink Blue Ribbon beer.” Billy Carter was born in Plains in 1937. After their father’s death, Billy resented his older brother Jimmy returning home to run the family business and joined the Marines instead. Billy ran the business […]
Margaret Mitchell portrayed him as a corrupt carpetbagger, whose great failing was to be a Republican who supported African-American equality. Rufus Bullock was born in 1834 in New York. He moved to Augusta and did business with the Confederates after the Civil War began, though he opposed secession. He was a lieutenant colonel in the […]
It started as a swindle and ended up as a landmark Supreme Court case. In 1795, Georgia passed the Yazoo Land Act, selling 35 million acres of western land—most of present-day Alabama and Mississippi—to four land companies for $500,000, about 1.5 cents an acre, far below its value. Opponents cried foul: many legislators owned shares […]
He was Atlanta’s mayor for eight years in the 1960s, and he was the only Southern politician to testify in favor of the Civil Rights Act. Ivan Allen Jr. was born in Atlanta in 1911 and graduated from Georgia Tech before joining his father’s office supply company. Allen served in World War II. Afterwards, he […]
He was Georgia’s 80th governor and the only one to win a Profile in Courage award. Roy Barnes was born in Mableton in 1948 and at age 26 won a seat in the Georgia State Senate, where he served for 16 years. After an unsuccessful run for governor in 1990, he served six years in […]
For 28 years, if Mr. Tom said no, state legislation didn’t pass. Tom Murphy was born in 1924 in Bremen and graduated from North Georgia College. He fought in the Pacific for the U.S. Navy in World War II, and then went to the University of Georgia Law School. Murphy entered the legislature in 1961. […]
He was a Revolutionary leader involved in the most famous duel in Georgia history. Lachlan McIntosh was born in Scotland in 1727 and came to Georgia with a group of Highland Scots to defend the colony’s southern border. He grew up in the Scots settlement of Darien and became a prosperous rice planter. During the […]
He was the son of a Georgia governor and served two terms as governor himself. Joseph M. Brown was born in Canton in 1851. His father Joseph E. Brown was Georgia’s controversial governor during the Civil War and one of the most accomplished politicians in Georgia history. “Little Joe Brown,” as his family called him, […]
Terrorism is not a new phenomenon, as we see in the story of former Georgia Governor Thomas Hardwick. Born in Thomasville in 1872, Hardwick served in the state legislature in the 1890s as a staunch advocate of disenfranchising black voters. Yet later, he lost an election by opposing the Ku Klux Klan. Hardwick also served […]
When you help guide a city through a depression and then, later, guide it through the civil rights era…when you are responsible for Atlanta’s becoming the aviation capital that it is…then it’s fair to say you’ve had an impact. William Hartsfield was mayor of Atlanta longer than any other person. He was born in Atlanta […]
