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 […]
She was the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Georgia. Cynthia McKinney was born in Atlanta to Billy McKinney, one of Atlanta’s first African-American police officers and a longtime member of the state legislature. Her father was known for his fiery spirit, and his daughter was no different. In 1988, Cynthia followed her father […]
He would box, but he would not fight. At the height of the Vietnam War in 1967, Muhammad Ali was drafted. Declaring himself a conscientious objector, he refused to serve. With his case on appeal, Ali was banned from boxing by several of the sport’s governing bodies. He hadn’t floated like a butterfly nor stung […]
He was the leader of the band that helped spark the Southern rock movement of the 1970s. Duane Allman was born in 1946 in Nashville and his family moved to Florida when he was 11. Duane started playing guitar and he and his brother Gregg formed a band called the Allman Joys. It would be […]
He was born in a one-room shack in Barnwell, South Carolina, in 1933. He moved to Augusta, Georgia when he was five. His mother abandoned him, he grew up in abject poverty and he was sent to jail for petty theft at 15. But James Brown overcame it all to become one of the most […]
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 […]
Howard Finster saw things; he literally had visions. They inspired him to create a universe of unusual paintings, sculptures, and drawings. A self-taught folk artist and preacher, he became one of the most important creative artists of the twentieth century. Finster was born in 1916 in Valley Head, Alabama, one of 14 children. He saw […]
He would tell Yankee immigrants who found fault with the South: “Delta is ready when you are.” Lewis Grizzard was born in Fort Benning and grew up in Moreland. He studied journalism at the University of Georgia. After quickly realizing he didn’t belong in Chicago, Grizzard returned to Atlanta to write a humorous regional column […]
He was billed as the world’s strongest man and, during the Cold War, a convenient symbol of American power. Paul Anderson was born in Toccoa, Georgia and overcame Bright’s disease as a child. A football scholarship got him to Furman University, but he quit and began lifting weights instead. Anderson discovered that he had extraordinary […]
There were many firsts in his family. Born in Dallas, Texas in 1938,Maynard Holbrook Jackson, Jr. moved to Atlanta when he was 8. His Georgia roots ran deep. His grandfather, John Wesley Dobbs, founded the Georgia Voters League. His mother was the first African-American with an Atlanta public library card. His aunt Mattiwilda was the […]
