The first Georgian to win the Pulitzer Prize in fiction was a woman who never went to college. Caroline Miller was born in Waycross and published her first novel, Lamb in His Bosom in 1933. It won the Pulitzer the next year. While Miller worked every day as a housewife and raised three children, she […]
The women of Georgia finally got the right to vote on this day in 1921 when Governor Thomas Hardwick signed the act that made it official. The suffrage movement had been slow to gain ground in the South. Many women joined men in arguing that there was no more important job than wife and mother, […]
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 […]
Organize and reform was Mary Ellen Peters’ mantra long before unions adopted it. Nellie Peters was born in Atlanta in 1851. After her husband died, she became an active reformer. With seven children of her own, she was a fierce advocate of free kindergartens and hospitals, compulsory education, diversified farming, and the enforcement of child […]
Cold Sassy Tree, a coming of age tale set in turn of the century Georgia, was inspired by some bad news. Olive Ann Burns was a writer for the Atlanta Constitution in 1975 when she was diagnosed with cancer. She walked out of the doctor’s office determined to write a novel. Born in Banks County […]
Prohibition and voting rights for women: they were the twin passions of Mary Latimer McLendon. Mary Latimer was the younger sister of outspoken suffragist Rebecca Latimer Felton. She was born in DeKalb County in 1840 and graduated from the Southern Masonic Female College in Covington. After the Civil War, McLendon became active in the Women’s […]
She was the first African-American woman elected to the Georgia Legislature. Grace Towns Hamilton was born in Atlanta in 1907. She graduated from Atlanta University in 1927 before earning a masters degree in psychology from Ohio State. Hamilton taught college for the next decade before she was appointed executive director of the Atlanta Urban League […]
She was a Southern icon whose byline appeared in the Atlanta Constitution for 58 years. Celestine Sibley was born in Florida in 1914. She got her first job at the Mobile Press Register before moving to Atlanta and going to work at the Constitution in 1941. The manpower shortage caused by World War II provided […]
Her artwork hangs in distinguished company. Lucy May Stanton was born in Atlanta in 1875. She grew up across the street from the Wren’s Nest, Joel Chandler Harris’ home. Stanton majored in Greek and Latin at Southern Female College in LaGrange. Most of her formal art training came in Paris. Her work appeared in exhibitions […]
She was the first woman and first African-American to lie in state at the Georgia State Capitol rotunda. Coretta Scott was born in 1927 in Alabama and studied music education at Antioch College in Ohio. After graduation she enrolled in The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she met a young Boston University […]
