Tiger Woods hasn’t done it. Jack Nicklaus didn’t do it. But Atlanta’s Bobby Jones did. On this date in 1930, Jones became the first and only golfer to win the Grand Slam: the U.S. Amateur, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the British Amateur. Born in 1902, Jones learned to play golf at the […]
He’s the only Georgian to ever be elected president of the United States, Jimmy Carter was born in Plains and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. He’s the only Georgian ever elected President of the United States. Jimmy Carter was born in Plains and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. To his wife Rosalynn’s dismay, […]
It killed more Americans than all of our twentieth century wars combined. When 138 soldiers at Camp Gordon in Atlanta were hit with it this day in 1918, the Spanish Flu epidemic had spread across Georgia. The flu hit just as World War I ended. That war took ten million lives over four years. The […]
Warm Springs soothed his body and restored his spirit. Franklin Roosevelt made his first visit to the healing waters on this day in 1924. Roosevelt contracted polio three years earlier and traveled to Warm Springs on the advice of George Foster Peabody, his friend and part-owner of the springs. He visited 41 times. Other polio […]
What Georgian doesn’t feel a tinge of pride every time we hear Ray Charles sing “Georgia on my Mind?” It is Georgia’s official state song, and maybe the reason it sounds especially soulful is that Charles was singing about home. Born in Albany, Ray Charles Robinson later changed his name to avoid confusion with boxer […]
Lamar Dodd’s paintings evoked “Georgia, Georgia, Georgia,” according to one New York art critic. Born in Fairburn and raised in LaGrange, Dodd studied briefly at LaGrange College and Georgia Tech before attending the Arts Students League in New York City. He studied under Boardman Robinson, American Scene artist Thomas Hart Benton, and George Luks of […]
Macon usually gets top billing when it comes to Georgia’s musical heritage, but Columbus has a trump card – “Ma” Rainey, the “Mother of the Blues,” who was honored on this day in 1994 by the U.S. Postal Service. Gertrude “Ma” Rainey was born in 1886 in Columbus, where she first started performing in vaudeville […]
His writing still evokes the spirit of the north Georgia mountains. Novelist and poet Byron Herbert Reece was born in Union County near Blood Mountain. Nicknamed “Hub,” he grew up on the family farm. That life and his mountain heritage would be recurring themes in his writing. He attended Young Harris College and published his […]
It was a giant step forward for Georgia women on this day in 1922. Viola Napier of Bibb County and Bessie Kempton Crowell of Fulton County became the first women elected to the General Assembly. They hit the milestone only two years after the Nineteenth Amendment granted women the vote. Napier was a schoolteacher and […]
It was touted as one of the finest hotels between New York and Miami, but its owner refused to rent rooms to Black patrons. The Heart of Atlanta Motel, which opened on this day in 1956, would figure into the heart of a landmark civil rights case. Located at 255 Courtland Street, the motel was […]
