New Georgia Encyclopedia: November in Georgia History

NGE >> Features >> November in Georgia History

November in Georgia History

In November 1732 the Anne set sail from England, carrying James Oglethorpe and Georgia's first colonists, and in 1790 a charter was granted to Congregation Mickve Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in the South. The final cession of Creek Indian land in Georgia was signed in 1827, and the Okefenokee Campaign of the Second Seminole War began in November 1838.

The last ship to bring slaves from Africa to Georgia, the Wanderer, arrived at Jekyll Island in 1858. During the Civil War, the Battle of Ringgold Gap took place in November 1863, and Union general William T. Sherman set fire to Atlanta on November 15, 1864, before embarking on his destructive March to the Sea. In 1865 Captain Henry Wirz, the commander of Andersonville Prison, became the only person executed for war crimes during the Civil War. The Georgia division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy formed in 1895.

In 1808 the first steamboat appeared on the Savannah River. The headgates of the Augusta Canal were opened for the first time in November 1846, and the Columbus canal was completed one year later. In 1884 construction began on the new capitol building in Atlanta, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta opened in 1914. In 1998 Dalton-based World Carpets merged with Mohawk Industries to become one of the largest tufted-carpet companies in the United States.

Joel Chandler Harris published his first book of Uncle Remus tales in November 1880, and in November 1946 the Walt Disney film Song of the South, based on the tales, premiered at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. Albany native Ray Charles's recording of "Georgia on My Mind" reached number one on the charts for the first time in November 1960. The film adaptation of John Berendt's book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil premiered in Savannah in 1997.

In November 1936 Thornwell Jacobs, the president of Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, published his concept for a "crypt of civilization" in Scientific American magazine. Spelman College in Atlanta received a $20 million donation from actor/comedian Bill Cosby in November 1988, and in 1992 Georgia voters approved a statewide lottery to help fund public education.

The Georgia Woman Suffrage Association held its first convention in Atlanta in 1899, and in 1922 Rebecca Latimer Felton was sworn in as the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke in 1935 at the opening in Atlanta of Techwood Homes, the nation's first public housing project. In 1972 Andrew Young became the first black U.S. congressman elected from the Deep South since Reconstruction, and in 1976 Jimmy Carter became the first Georgian to be elected president of the United States.

In 1957 eighty members of the Atlanta Christian Council issued a statement, known as the Ministers' Manifesto, providing tenets for the city to follow during its struggles with integration. The Albany Movement began in November 1961, after demonstrators were arrested for attempting to integrate the municipal bus station in Albany. In 1998 the Albany Civil Rights Movement Museum (later the Albany Civil Rights Institute) opened to commemorate the civil rights movement in southwest Georgia. In November 1983 U.S. president Ronald Reagan designated a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

In November 2001 the Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution newspapers merged to publish a single newspaper under the masthead of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

In sports, Frank Sinkwich, a halfback for the University of Georgia football team, won the Heisman Trophy in 1942. The Atlanta Falcons football team won its first game on November 30, 1966, and the groundbreaking for the Georgia Dome, the team's new home, took place in 1989. In 1977 the Atlanta Braves hired Bobby Cox to manage and rebuild the baseball team.

Events held around the state in November include the Alapaha Station Celebration in Berrien County and the Harvest Festival in Calhoun County.

November birthdays include: Revolutionary War patriot Stephen Heard (1740); University of Georgia founder Abraham Baldwin (1754); Civil War naval officer Josiah Tattnall (1795); author and actress Fanny Kemble (1809); physician Crawford Long (1815); governor Allen D. Candler (1834); educators Atticus G. Haygood (1839) and Horace Mann Bond (1904); wealthy landowner Amanda America Dickson (1849); politicians William Y. Atkinson (1854), Carl Vinson (1883), and Richard B. Russell Jr. (1897); athletes George Stallings (1867), Bobby Dodd (1908), Mildred McDaniel (1933), and Larry Holmes (1949); journalists Robert Sengstacke Abbott (1868) and Julia Collier Harris (1875); builder Alexander Hamilton (1870); historians Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (1877), C. Mildred Thompson (1881), and Albert B. Saye (1912); musicians Andrew Jenkins (1885), Johnny Mercer (1909), Duane Allman (1946), Gram Parsons (1946), Amy Grant (1960), and Vic Chesnutt (1964); civil rights activist Thomas Brewer (1894); writers Margaret Mitchell (1900), Frank Manley (1930), Rosemary Daniell (1935), and Tina McElroy Ansa (1949); cartoonist Ed Dodd (1902); librarian Wessie Connell (1915); sportswriter Furman Bisher (1918); artist Benny Andrews (1930); businessmen Roberto Goizueta (1931) and Ted Turner (1938); medical scholar Louis Sullivan (1933); and editor Stanley Lindberg (1939).

breakline

RSS Feeds

A project of the Georgia Humanities Council, in partnership with the University of Georgia Press, the University System of Georgia/GALILEO, and the Office of the Governor.