The women of Georgia finally got the right to vote on this day in 1921. 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, and […]
Vocabulary – Georgia Women Gain Right to Vote Suffrage Movement Noun The movement to give women the right to vote Reform Verb To change and improve something by correcting faults, removing inconsistencies and abuses, and imposing modern methods or values Amendment Noun A formal change to the text of the written constitution of a nation […]
Learn More – Georgia Women Gain Vote Elna C. Green, Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, “Caretakers of Southern Civilization: Georgia Women and the Anti-Suffrage Campaign, 1914-1920,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 82 (winter 1998): 801-28. Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, New Women of the […]
Daily Activities – Georgia Women Gain the Right to Vote The daily activities created for each of the Today in Georgia History segments are designed to meet the Georgia Performance Standards for Reading Across the Curriculum, and Grade Eight: Georgia Studies. For each date, educators can choose from three optional activities differentiated for various levels […]
Wyomia Tyus was born to run. The Griffin native became the first athlete to win gold medals in the 100-yard dash in consecutive Olympics. As a fifteen–year–old African-American competing in the state track championships, she caught the eye of coach Ed Temple of the legendary Tigerbelles, Tennessee State University’s women’s track team. Two years later, […]
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 […]
On August 20, 1933, Governor Eugene Talmadge led 500 Georgians to Chicago’s Second World’s Fair, where it was Georgia Day. The fair was officially known as the “Century of Progress Exposition.” With the country mired in the Great Depression, Governor Talmadge predicted “events of this kind will surely turn the trick and bring back prosperity.” […]
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, Georgia, 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 […]
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 […]
