New Georgia Encyclopedia: September in Georgia History

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September in Georgia History

A number of major events have taken place in the state during the month of September.

In 1736 Yamacraw Indian chief Tomochichi, with the help of Benjamin Ingham, a friend of brothers John Wesley and Charles Wesley, secured a school at Irene, outside Savannah.

During the Revolutionary War (1775-83), Lieutenant Colonel Elijah Clarke, with 600 men who had taken an oath of allegiance to the king of England, attacked Augusta on September 14, 1780.

The Battle of Chickamauga, the largest battle ever fought in Georgia, occurred on September 18-20, 1863, during the Civil War (1861-65). On September 1, 1864, at the end of Union general William T. Sherman's Atlanta campaign, the Confederate army was forced out of the city. The mayor surrendered Atlanta to Union soldiers the next day.

In 1865 the First National Bank of Atlanta (later Wachovia Bank, and then Wells Fargo) was chartered.

The Camilla Massacre, one of the more violent episodes during Reconstruction in Georgia, took place on September 19, 1868. On September 18, 1895, the opening day of the Cotton States and International Exposition, Booker T. Washington gave his famous Atlanta Compromise speech. In late September 1906 a race riot broke out in Atlanta, which lasted for three days and resulted in the deaths of dozens of black citizens.

The first class of the Atlanta Medical College (later Emory University School of Medicine) graduated in 1855. On September 27, 1961, Georgia Tech became the first institution of higher education in the Deep South to integrate peacefully and without a court order.

The marble cornerstone for Georgia's current state capitol was laid on September 2, 1885.

On September 1, 1941, the official groundbreaking ceremony for Robins Air Force Base occurred in Warner Robins.

The first issue of the Atlanta Historical Bulletin (later Atlanta History journal) was published in 1927. In 1985 Georgia Trend magazine was launched.

The General Textile Strike of 1934 resulted in skirmishes across the state between textile industry laborers and authorities, who also launched raids to apprehend suspected Communists. That same year the groundbreaking for Techwood Homes, the first public housing project built in the United States, took place in Atlanta.

On September 29, 1948, WSB-TV broadcast the first live commercial television program in Georgia. In 1955 Waffle House opened its first restaurant in Atlanta, and Little Richard recorded his hit song "Tutti Frutti." The film adaptation of the book The Three Faces of Eve, which chronicles the treatment of a schizophrenic woman in Augusta, premiered in that city's Miller Theater in 1957.

In 1963 Gene Patterson, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, wrote a column denouncing the bombing on September 15 of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in which four African American children were killed. Entitled "A Flower for the Graves," the column received national attention.

On September 18, 1990, the International Olympic Committee named Atlanta as the host city for the 1996 Olympic Games. The Georgia Music Hall of Fame opened in September 1996, and Atlanta media mogul Ted Turner announced this month in 1997 that he would donate $1 billion to United Nations charities.

GALILEO, Georgia's virtual library, debuted on September 21, 1995.

In sports, Ty Cobb set the National League record for career hits with his last (4,191th) major league baseball hit on September 3, 1928. Golfer Bobby Jones became the first player ever to win the sport's "Grand Slam," clinching all four major titles with his win in the U.S. Amateur championship on September 27, 1930. Louise Suggs won the U.S. Women's Gold Championship in golf on September 25, 1949, and in 1985 boxer Larry Holmes lost the world heavyweight championship title, which he had held since 1978.

In September 1995 the Georgia International Horse Park, the equestrian venue for the Olympics, opened in Conyers. In 2006 panda bear Mei Lan ("Atlanta Beauty") was born at Zoo Atlanta, and the Naturalist Center at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta opened in 2008.

Events held around the state in September include Buggy Days in Lamar County, the Sumner Egg Festival in Worth County, the Lavonia Fall Festival in Franklin County, the Native American Festival in Butts County, and the Six Gap Century and Three Gap Fifty bicycle races in Lumpkin County.

Notable birthdays this month include artists Hilda Belcher (1881), Alma Thomas (1891), Lamar Dodd (1909), and Larry Connatser (1938); athletes Nap Rucker (1884), Spud Chandler (1907), Louise Suggs (1923), and Larry Nelson (1947); aviator Charles Dryden (1920); businessman D. W. Brooks (1901); coach Vince Dooley (1932); comedian Jeff Foxworthy (1958); ecologist Eugene Odum (1913); historian Phinizy Spalding (1930); filmmaker Tyler Perry (1969); governors Henry McDaniel (1836), Hoke Smith (1855), John Donald Wade (1892), Marvin Griffin (1907), and Lester Maddox (1915); justice Robert Benham (1946); musicians Roy "Pop" Lewis of the Lewis Family (1905), Hovie Lister (1926), Ray Charles (1930), Otis Redding (1941), Jessye Norman (1945), Trisha Yearwood (1964), and Ludacris (1977); music producer Jermaine Dupri (1972); politicians James Jackson (1757), George Troup (1780), Herschel Johnson (1812), Howell Cobb (1815), Francis S. Bartow (1816), Benjamin Hill (1823), Thomas E. Watson (1856), Clark Howell (1863), Eugene Talmadge (1884), Helen Douglas Mankin (1894), Hugh Gillis (1918), Sam Nunn (1938), and Hamilton Jordan (1944); publisher Joseph Addison Turner (1826); scholar-diplomat William Brown Hodgson (1801); Neptune Small (1831), a slave who accompanied members of the Thomas Butler King family to fight in the Civil War; Titanic casualty Archibald Butt (1865); and writers Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1790), Georgia Douglas Johnson (ca. 1877), Julien Green (1900), Frank Yerby (1916), Byron Herbert Reece (1917), Ferrol Sams (1922), James Alan McPherson (1943), Mary Hood (1946), and David Bottoms (1949).

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