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 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. […]
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 […]
The white South’s opposition to court-ordered desegregation in the 1950s was known as “Massive Resistance,” and while Georgia’s reaction wasn’t as violent as other states, it was no less defiant. On this day in 1956, Governor Marvin Griffin addressed a joint session of the General Assembly and urged lawmakers to invoke the doctrine of interposition […]
We often talk about firsts. Today, it’s a last. The United States got its Supreme Court in 1789. For many years Georgia was the only state that didn’t have a supreme court to review lower court decisions. The only way to correct judicial error was a new trial in a local court. That changed in […]
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” So said James Madison, and after the revolution, Georgians realized the fledgling republic would survive only with educated citizens. In 1784, the General Assembly set aside 40,000 acres for a state […]
It took the Supreme Court to seat Julian Bond in the Georgia Legislature. Born in Nashville in 1940, graduated from a Quaker school in Pennsylvania, he came to Atlanta to attend Morehouse College. Bond led nonviolent protests that helped integrate Atlanta lunch counters, theaters and parks. In 1960, he was one of the founders of […]
Georgia’s first African-American congressman was born a slave. Jefferson Franklin Long was born in Alabama in 1836. His master sold him to a man in Macon. Long taught himself to read and write while setting type for the Macon newspaper. Long attended Macon’s African Methodist Episcopal Church and was deeply influenced by Henry McNeal Turner, […]
It was built to look like the United States Capitol and is now a national historic landmark. Georgia’s capital moved from Milledgeville to Atlanta in 1868 but without any buildings to house it, so state government had two temporary quarters—the old Atlanta City Hall and the Kimball Opera House. In 1883, the state legislature authorized […]
