New Georgia Encyclopedia : Site Updates

Abbot, John

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:37:48 EDT

Naturalist and artist John Abbot advanced the knowledge of the flora and fauna of the South by sending superbly mounted specimens and exquisitely detailed illustrations of birds, insects, moths, and butterflies to collectors and scientists. An autobiography detailing his early life was discovered after his death, but little information exists about the nearly sixty-five years he spent in Georgia. Although well known and revered during his lifetime, Abbot's reputation has diminished because much of his work was published in England, kept in private collections, or contained in publications by others, unsigned. Nevertheless, Abbot's carefully detailed drawings enabled scientists to accurately classify New World plants and animals, even though his nomenclature, or system of naming, varied from the standard system of plant and animal classification developed by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus....

Armstrong Atlantic State University

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:55:06 EDT

Since its founding in 1935, Armstrong Atlantic State University has evolved from a junior college supported by the city of Savannah into a four-year unit of the University System of Georgia. It now offers a full undergraduate curriculum as well as several graduate programs. Within the university system, Armstrong has been designated a Regional Health Professions Education Center....

Bartram, William

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:35:40 EDT

William Bartram's 1791 book, Travels, reprinted many times, continues to fascinate American readers and attract them to the wildernesses he loved. The great explorer and diarist spent much of his time in backwoods Georgia, where he recorded matchless descriptions of the area's flora, fauna, and Native American inhabitants....

Basinger, Kim

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:26:59 EDT

Best known as an Academy Award?winning actress, Georgia native Kim Basinger has also been recognized as a fashion model, businesswoman, animal activist, and to a lesser extent, recording artist. ...

Camilla Massacre, The

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:57:10 EDT

The Camilla Massacre, which took place on September 19, 1868, was one of the more violent episodes in Reconstruction Georgia. Two months earlier, Georgia had fulfilled the requirements of Congress's Radical Reconstruction plan and had been readmitted to the Union, yet in early September, the state legislature expelled twenty-eight newly elected members because they were at least one-eighth black. Among those removed was southwest Georgia representative Philip Joiner. On September 19, Joiner, along with northerners Francis F. Putney and William P. Pierce, led a twenty-five-mile march of several hundred blacks and a few whites from Albany to Camilla, the Mitchell County seat, to attend a Republican political rally....

Carter, Jimmy Library and Museum

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:51:02 EDT

The Jimmy Carter Library and Museum was dedicated in Atlanta on October 1, 1986. It is one of ten presidential libraries administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. It ranks with the National Park Service location in Plains as the indispensable site in Georgia for biographical background on the thirty-ninth president of the United States, Jimmy Carter (1977-81), and first lady Rosalynn Carter...

Civil Rights Movement

Fri, 6 Nov 2009 15:23:20 EST

The civil rights movement in the American South was one of the most significant and successful social movements in the modern world. Black Georgians formed part of this southern movement for full civil rights and the wider national struggle for racial equality. From Atlanta to the most rural counties in Georgia's southwest Cotton Belt, black activists protested white supremacy in a myriad of ways?from legal challenges and mass demonstrations to strikes and self-defense. In many ways, the results were remarkable. As late as World War II (1941-45) black Georgians were effectively denied the vote, segregated in most areas of daily life, and subject to persistent discrimination and often violence. But by 1965, sweeping federal civil rights legislation prohibited segregation and discrimination, and this new phase of race relations was first officially welcomed into Georgia by Governor Jimmy Carter in 1971....

Clayton State University

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:22:05 EDT

Clayton State University (CSU) opened in 1969 in Morrow as Clayton Junior College, a unit of the University System of Georgia. Harry S. Downs, a university system administrator, became the founding president and served through 1993. The Board of Regents elevated the institution to baccalaureate status in 1986 and adopted the present name in 2005. ...

College of Coastal Georgia

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:35:06 EDT

The College of Coastal Georgia (CCG) is a public four-year college located in Brunswick, with a satellite campus in Camden County. One of the thirty-six colleges and universities in the University System of Georgia, the college is governed by the policies of the Board of Regents. From 1972 until 2008 it was also one of four institutions in the University System of Georgia that included a division administered by the Technical College System of Georgia. In 2008 the college began the transition from a two-year to a four-year institution, changing its name from Coastal Georgia Community College to the College of Coastal Georgia and transferring its technical division to other institutions. During fall semester 2008, approximately 3,000 students attended the college....

Easton, "Bumble Bee Slim"

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:17:54 EST

"Bumble Bee Slim" Easton was a prolific singer and songwriter whose relaxed, upbeat style and often humorous lyrics made him one of the most-recorded and best-selling blues artists of the 1930s. His work exemplifies the beginnings of what came to be known as the Chicago style, retaining elements of earlier country blues while anticipating the more polished urban sounds of the postwar period....

Fort Valley

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:38:26 EDT

The county seat of Peach County, Fort Valley was founded in the 1820s as a Native American trading post and incorporated in 1856. Its economy has long been based on agriculture. Located in central Georgia, Fort Valley is fifty-eight miles from the Alabama state line and ninety miles due south of Atlanta. It is located at the intersection of U.S. Highway 341 and Georgia Highways 96 and 49, where two early Indian trails met. That crossing of trails made it a natural place for a North Carolinian named James Abbington Everett to set up a trading post in the 1820s. The origin of the town's name is unclear. One story claims that Everett named it "Fox Valley" but that his writing was misread by officials in Washington, D.C., as "Fort Valley." Another story claims that Everett named the town after his friend Arthur Fort, a Revolutionary War (1775-83) hero from nearby Milledgeville. In any case, it seems that there was never a military fort on the site. ...

Johnson, Hall

Mon, 2 Nov 2009 16:28:34 EST

Hall Johnsonwas a highly regarded African American choral director, composer, arranger, and violinist who dedicated his career to preserving the integrity of the Negro spiritual as it had been performed during the era of slavery. His Hall Johnson Choir, the first professional group of its kind, enjoyed a successful concert and recording career for more than three decades in the United States and abroad. During his professional life Johnson coached hundreds of distinguished musicians, including the famous opera singer Marian Anderson. Virtually every black singer of note has performed Johnson's solo compositions and arrangements. ...

King Jr., Martin Luther (1929-1968)

Fri, 6 Nov 2009 15:29:10 EST

Martin Luther King Jr., Baptist minister and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), was the most prominent African American leader in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s....

McTell, Blind Willie (1898-1959)

Tue, 3 Nov 2009 12:07:06 EST

"Blind Willie" McTell was one of the great blues musicians of the 1920s and 1930s. Displaying an extraordinary range on the twelve-string guitar, this Atlanta-based musician recorded more than 120 titles during fourteen recording sessions. His voice was soft and expressive, and his musical tastes were influenced by southern blues, ragtime, gospel, hillbilly, and popular music. ...

Redemption

Mon, 9 Nov 2009 11:36:33 EST

In the context of southern politics the term Redemption refers to the overthrow or defeat of Radical Republicans (white and black) by white Democrats, marking the end of the Reconstruction era in the South. In addition to its biblical allusions, the term also underscores the widely held belief among white southerners of that era that the Republican state regimes that ruled during Reconstruction had been inefficient and corrupt, and that the "Redeemers" who reestablished white Democratic control of the state also restored effective and honest government. In recent years historians have come to avoid the term because of both the bias it suggests and the very different way in which modern scholars interpret the overthrow of Reconstruction....

Segregation

Fri, 6 Nov 2009 15:32:42 EST

Beginning in the 1890s, Georgia and other southern states passed a wide variety of Jim Crow laws that mandated racial segregation or separation in public facilities and effectively codified the region's tradition of white supremacy. The name "Jim Crow" refers to a minstrel character popular in the 1820s and 1830s, but it is unknown how the term came to describe the form of racial segregation and discrimination that prevailed in the American South during the first half of the twentieth century. ...