An African-American with a best-selling novel — a book that was turned into a movie — that was unheard of in the America of the late 1940s. Yet Frank Yerby did just that. Born in Augusta in 1916 to racially mixed parents, Yerby, all his life, had trouble being accepted in either black or white […]
John Wesley lost his labor of love when he came to Georgia. The founder of the Methodist Church was born in England in 1703, becoming a strict man of God who spread the faith throughout England and America. Ordained as a priest in the Anglican Church in his mid-20s, Wesley and his brother Charles studied […]
Only two Georgians have served as Secretary of State. John Forsyth was one of them. Born in Virginia in 1780, Forsyth went to school in Wilkes County, Georgia, before graduating from the future Princeton University in 1799. He returned to Augusta to practice law and married the daughter of Josiah Meigs, the president of the […]
He was the last Georgia governor who answered to the King. James Wright, born in London in 1716, came to South Carolina as a teenager when his father became the colony’s chief justice. In 1760, he was named by King George III as the third royal governor of Georgia. He thoroughly invested in the colony, […]
Known affectionately as the “Mouth of the South, he created a TV and sports empire that dramatically altered the media landscape. Robert Edward “Ted” Turner was born in Cincinnati in 1938. When he was nine, his family moved to Savannah. Turner took over his father’s billboard company after his father’s suicide and began expanding the […]
It was an international crisis that tarnished America’s global prestige and helped make Jimmy Carter a one-term president. The Iranian Hostage Crisis began in 1979 when Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. It didn’t end for more than a year. Iran’s Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah of Iran, who […]
He was one of the most powerful Americans of the 20th century and served in public office for more than half of it. Richard Brevard Russell, Jr., born in Winder in 1897, graduated from the University of Georgia’s Law School. He immediately entered politics, winning election to the state legislature at 23. At 33, he […]
Its unmatched beauty has been around for millennia, but the largest of Georgia’s Barrier Islands only became a national seashore on this day in 1972. Cumberland Island is the southernmost of Georgia’s Sea Islands. This magical place is noted for having several unique ecological systems: beaches and dunes, inland maritime forests, and saltwater marshes. The […]
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 […]
She was partially deaf, suffered from depression, and had no children of her own, yet she founded the Girl Scouts of the USA. Juliette Gordon Low was born into wealth in Savannah in 1860. Two accidents in her 20s left her partially deaf and led to bouts of depression. At 26, Gordon married William Low, […]
