He took a Bible with him into the ring. Dubbed the “Georgia Deacon,” he was the first black boxer to be middleweight champion of the world. Theodore “Tiger” Flowers was born in Camilla in 1895 and started boxing at 18. Flowers was the first black boxer after Jack Johnson to fight for a world title, […]
She helped create the literary genre known as “Southern Gothic.” But more than anything else, Carson McCullers wrote with penetrating insight about loneliness and suffering. Born as Lula Carson Smith in Columbus in 1917, she went to New York for college and married Reeves McCullers, the beginning of a complex and destructive relationship. In 1940, […]
It started with Deliverance in 1972. From there, Burt Reynolds “delivered” a lot of film business to the state of Georgia. As he was becoming Hollywood’s biggest box office draw for five years running, Georgia became number three in the nation for film production behind only New York and California. Burton Leon Reynolds, Jr. was […]
He was one of the greatest – if not the greatest – running backs to ever play the game of football. Jim Brown was born on St. Simons in 1936. At Syracuse University, Brown excelled in five sports. The NFL’s Cleveland Browns drafted him in 1957 and he led the league in rushing in 8 […]
Knucksie won more games after age 40 than any pitcher in Major League history. Phil Niekro, one of the most popular Atlanta Braves of all time, was born in Ohio in 1939. He made his big league debut with the Milwaukee Braves in 1964 before they moved to Atlanta in ‘66. He earned that nickname […]
It was not a flag that all Georgians could rally around. On this date in 1956, Governor Marvin Griffin signed legislation to change the Georgia flag to one that included the Confederate battle emblem on two-thirds of the banner. Democratic Party leader John Sammons Bell began the campaign a year earlier after two controversial Supreme […]
She was born in Eatonton in 1944 and at age 8 she was blinded in one eye by a BB gun fired by her brother, a traumatic event that crippled her self-confidence. She was eventually homecoming queen and valedictorian at Butler-Baker High School. But it was Alice Walker’s searing literary portraits of African-American life and […]
His was a voice of moderation during one of the South’s most racially divisive periods. Ralph McGill was born in Tennessee in 1898. His sports columns in the Nashville Banner caught the eye of Atlanta Constitution editor Clark Howell, who hired McGill in 1929. By 1941, McGill was the paper’s editor, and over the next […]
Before Vince Dooley became synonymous with Georgia football, there was Wally Butts. Known as the “Little Round Man,” Butts was born in Milledgeville and earned scholarships in three sports at Mercer University. Butts became the University of Georgia’s head football coach in 1939. Over 22 seasons he led the Bulldogs to 140 wins, four SEC […]
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 […]
