Individual Development and Identity

July 6, 1901

Charles McCartney

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 […]

June 21, 1981

Atlanta Child Murders

In July 1979, two 14-year-old boys went missing. When police found the bodies of Edward Hope Smith and Alfred Evans, it began a two-year nightmare that held Atlanta in the grip of fear. A serial killer was on the loose, and in the end at least 28 children, teenagers, and adults were victims in what […]

June 20, 1770

Moses Waddel

In a half century of teaching, Moses Waddel taught some of the most influential and important statesmen of the 19th century. Born in North Carolina in 1770, he began teaching at age 14. He moved to Georgia briefly but left to attend Hampden Sydney College in Virginia and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. After […]

June 7, 1935

Harry Crews

He was hailed as a bold new Southern writer in the Southern Gothic tradition, with his books populated by strange characters in a brutal and darkly humorous South. It was a world Harry Crews knew well. Born in Bacon County in 1935 to poor farmers, Crews grew up with a violent and drunken uncle who […]

June 2, 1868

John Hope

Morehouse College and Atlanta University each once had a white president. John Hope changed that. Hope was born in Augusta in 1868 to a white father and free-born black mother. After graduating from Brown University, Hope taught first in Nashville. He married future black activist Lugenia Burns and moved to Atlanta to teach at Atlanta […]

May 18, 1928

Pernell Roberts

As an actor, he was defined by two roles: the eldest of Ben Cartwright’s sons and the chief of medicine at a San Francisco hospital. Pernell Roberts was born in Waycross in 1928. He attended Georgia Tech and the University of Maryland with a two-year stint in the Marines in between. Roberts made his stage […]

May 20, 2008

Hamilton Jordan

It may be the Jordan River, but Jimmy Carter’s chief of staff’s name was pronounced “Jerden.” Born in 1944, Hamilton Jordan always loved politics. He was voted “most likely to become governor” in high school. He got close. Literally. After interning for Senator Richard Russell, he worked on Jimmy Carter’s failed try for Georgia governor […]

May 16, 1777

Button Gwinnett – Lachlan McIntosh Duel

His John Hancock is rarer than John Hancock’s. Born in England in 1735, Button Gwinnett came to Savannah 30 years later. He bought St. Catherine’s Island and became a planter. In 1776 he was elected commander of Georgia’s Continental Army Battalion during the American Revolution. When political opponents- including Lachlan McIntosh- challenged his election, he […]

May 8, 1915

Henry McNeal Turner

Mixing religion and politics worked out well for Henry McNeal Turner. Free-born in South Carolina in 1834, he was educated by white attorneys at a firm where he did janitorial work. Drawn to preaching, he led revivals in Macon, Athens, and Augusta. He pastored a church in Washington D.C., where he met Republican congressmen Charles […]

April 30, 1825

William McIntosh

On this day in 1825, 200 Creek warriors set fire to a plantation house, and shot and stabbed the owner to death. The owner was William McIntosh, a Creek Indian chief killed by his own people. McIntosh was born around 1778 to a white Scotsman and a Creek woman. Though raised among the creeks, he […]