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 […]
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 […]
In the early morning hours of this day in 1958, 50 sticks of dynamite exploded at the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, Atlanta’s oldest and most prominent synagogue. Though no one was injured, the city’s Jewish population feared the rise of antisemitism reminiscent of the Leo Frank lynching. The temple was the fourth southern synagogue to be […]
He made history when he flew solo across the Atlantic. On this day in 1927, just months after his historic flight, Charles Lindbergh arrived in Atlanta for Lindbergh Day. The “Lone Eagle” came to Atlanta thanks to city alderman and aviation enthusiast William Hartsfield. Lindbergh landed the Spirit of St. Louis – the same plane […]
He won the first Heisman Trophy ever awarded to a southern college football player. But Frank Sinkwich might never have played at the University of Georgia if a recruiter hadn’t stopped for gas. Sinkwich was born in 1920 in Croatia and grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. UGA Assistant Coach Bill Hartman was recruiting another player […]
Clashes with the Ku Klux Klan began Joseph Lowery’s lifelong fight for equality. The man who became one of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, chief lieutenants was born in Huntsville, Alabama. Early encounters with bigotry would shape the direction of his life as a Methodist minister. Inspired by Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Lowery […]
Her most powerful weapon is her voice. It always has been. Bernice Johnson Reagon was born in Albany. This Baptist minister’s daughter grew up immersed in the power and glory of spirituals. Reagon’s activism began at Albany State in 1961. She was arrested for participating in a civil rights protest sponsored by SNCC, the Student […]
The rock of tradition versus the hard place of progress is an old southern dilemma. John Donald Wade, born in Marshallville, knew it well. Wade’s deep Georgia roots ran back to his great grandfather, John Adam Treutlen, Georgia’s first governor. Teaching at Vanderbilt in the 1920s, Wade helped create one of the seminal books in […]
When Robert Benham was appointed the first African American on the Georgia Supreme Court, it was only one of a long line of firsts. Robert Benham was born in Cartersville in 1946. He majored in political science at Tuskegee University and attended Harvard before graduating from the University of Georgia’s School of Law in 1970. […]
Three Georgians died on the Titanic. One of them was Archibald Butt. He was born in Augusta on this day in 1865. Archie Butt became a journalist for the Macon Telegraph. The Atlanta Constitution made him its Washington correspondent. The U.S. State Department appointed him Secretary of the American Embassy in Mexico. He was there […]
