The New Georgia Encyclopedia is supported by funding from A More Perfect Union, a special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Women of the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance self-published their own monthly newsletter, Atalanta, named after a huntress from Greek mythology and meaning "equal in weight." They sent the newsletter to other women’s groups so that news of Georgia’s queer life circulated across the nation and other parts of the lesbian world, connecting feminist lesbians in Atlanta to their global sisters.
Courtesy of Atlanta History Center, Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance newsletters.
Perhaps the most important social benefit of the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance was its softball teams, notably the ALFA Omegas. The team competed nationally and allowed lesbians from Atlanta to build community around the country.
Courtesy of Atlanta History Center, Pamela Parker Photographs.
The Southern Comfort Conference was one of the most well-known transgender conferences in the United States. Originally held in Atlanta, it created a space where members of the transgender community could gather, learn about medical resources, and organize politically.
From the Digital Transgender Archive, Joseph A Labadie Collection, University of Michigan.
The 2001 documentary Southern Comfort brought unprecedented attention and visibility to the Southern Comfort Conference. Directed by Kate Davis, the film follows the final months of long-time conference regular Robert Eads, a Georgian transgender man dying of ovarian cancer.
Leonard Matlovich received a Bronze Star in 1966 for his service in the Vietnam War. Born in Savannah, he was one of the earliest activists to challenge the status of gays and lesbians in the U.S. military.
Courtesy of Hormel LGBTQIA Center, San Francisco Public Library, Cliff Anchor Papers (GLC 49), #GLC-0013.
On May 11, 1970 protestors massed outside an Augusta municipal building to protest the killing of Charles Oatman, a developmentally disabled Black teenager, in the Richmond County Jail. In 2021 the Department of Justice, through its Cold Case initiative, reopened its investigation into the deaths of Oatman and six other Black Augustans killed in the ensuing protests.
From Augusta University Special Collections and Archives
On May 11, 1970 thousands of Black Augustans participated in a major uprising against police violence. Known thereafter as the Augusta Riot, the event resulted in $1 million in property damage and was the largest Black rebellion in the civil rights South.
From the Augusta Chronicle
On May 5, 1971 students held a national moratorium to remember the deaths of protestors at Kent State University, Jackson State University, and in Augusta the previous spring. In the years that followed, Kent State remained a national touchstone for repressive violence, while Black rebellions in Augusta, Jackson, and elsewhere receded from national memory.
From the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam
The Negro Motorist Green-Book, also known as the Negro Traveller's Green-Book, was an essential guide for Black travelers between 1936 and 1966. This yearly publication, created by postal employee Victor Hugo Green, helped readers avoid sundown towns and locate safe lodging, gas stops, and eateries.
From Wikimedia
Most Ku Klux Klan action was designed to intimidate Black voters and white supporters of the Republican Party. Founded in Tennessee in 1866, the Klan was particularly active in Georgia from 1868 to the early 1870s.
From Harper's Weekly
White supremacists picketing at the first Brotherhood March on January 17, 1987, in Forsyth County.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archive, #AJCNS1987-01-17l.
Organized by civil rights activists Dean Carter, Charles Blackburn, and Hosea Williams, the Brotherhood March brought nationwide attention to Forsyth County's long history of racial violence and discrimination.
Courtesy of Atlanta History Center, Southline Press, Inc. Photographs, #VIS 158.18.05.
Marchers demonstrate for fair housing in Forsyth County in 1987. The march, led by Hosea Williams, ended in a confrontation with Ku Klux Klansmen throwing rocks and bottles at the demonstrators. The incident brought national attention to Forsyth County and resulted in the indictment of two Klan organizations.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Hosea Williams led two demonstration marches in Forsyth County in 1987. The first march, held in celebration of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, was attacked by several hundred members of the Ku Klux Klan. The second march, attended by Coretta Scott King, was held in protest of Klan activities in the county.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Between 1931 and 1977, Black female employees at the Scripto factory in Atlanta organized against unfair wages and a discriminatory work environment. Their activism was a precursor to the civil rights movement.
Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library, Lane Brothers Commercial Photographers Photographic Collection, #LBCB095-022a.
Black women made up more than 80 percent of the workforce at Scripto's factory in Atlanta. This 1958 advertisement depicts ballpoint pens, one of the company's most popular products.
Image from James Vaughan
Cigarette lighters, such as the popular Compact Vu-Lighter shown here, were one of Scripto Inc.'s defining products, along with pens and mechanical pencils.
Image from Joe Haupt
Operation Breadbasket was created in 1962 as a branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). A minister-led program, Operation Breadbasket worked to improve economic conditions in the Black community through boycotts and organized support.
Courtesy of Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University, Southern Christian Leadership Records.
H. Rap Brown, the final leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, speaks at a press conference in 1967. In 1968 he changed the name of the organization to the Student National Coordinating Committee, marking the group's new willingness to use violence as a means of self-defense.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
H. Rap Brown was the fifth chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and an honorary officer of the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s.
Courtesy of Atlanta University Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library Archives, The Clark Atlanta University Panther.
Civil rights activist H. Rap Brown was elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1967. Brown's radical vision and aggressive rhetoric marked a shift from the nonviolent civil disobedience prescribed by Martin Luther King Jr.
Courtesy of Atlanta University Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library Archives, The Clark Atlanta University Panther.
H. Rap Brown's leadership of the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC) was characterized by radical discourse, as seen in SNCC's newsletters from the late 1960s.
Image from Washington Area Spark
Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown) is pictured in 1990 in front of his grocery store in Atlanta's West End. Al-Amin was arrested in 1999 for his involvement in the fatal shooting of a police officer and later sentenced to life in prison.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
James and Robert Paschal opened Paschal Brothers Soda, a thirty-seat luncheonette at 837 West Hunter Street, in 1947. They are pictured here in 1978.
Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archive.
In 1967 Paschal’s underwent a major expansion with the addition of a six-story, 120-room motel. Paschal’s Motor Hotel was the first Black-owned hotel in Atlanta.
Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archive.
Robert Paschal prepares the restaurant's famous fried chicken, the recipe for which remains a secret to this day.
Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archive.
Representative John Lewis speaks for Atlanta' Concerned Black Clergy at Paschal's Restaurant in 1988. The relationships that James and Robert Paschal built within the city’s Black community made Paschal’s a central meeting spot during the civil rights movement and helped earn the restaurant its reputation as Atlanta’s “Black City Hall.”
Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archive.
Reverend Joseph E. Lowery (right) and mayoral candidate Maynard Jackson at a 1989 campaign event at Paschal's Motor Hotel. Paschal’s was a hotbed of political activity for Atlanta’s African American community.
Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archive.
Soldiers at the Atlanta Army General Depot in 1967 show their support of the troops in Vietnam.
Courtesy of Garrison Public Affairs Office, Fort McPherson
U.S. senator Richard B. Russell Jr. (left) converses with U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968. Russell, an early supporter of and mentor to Johnson, criticized the Johnson administration's escalation of the war in Vietnam during the 1960s.
Courtesy of Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia Libraries, Richard B. Russell Jr. Collection.
Dean Rusk served as U.S. secretary of state from 1961 to 1969. During that period of service under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, he was a primary architect of U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War on the side of the South Vietnamese.
Courtesy of Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia Libraries, Dean Rusk Research Collection.
Pictured in 1966, Julian Bond was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965, but the legislature refused to seat him because of his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War. In December 1966 the U.S. Supreme Court declared the actions of the house unconstitutional, and Bond was finally sworn in on January 9, 1967.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Graffiti left by antiwar protestors marks the military building at the University of Georgia in Athens during the Vietnam War (1964-73). Student activists at UGA attempted to burn down the building five times between 1968 and 1972. The slogan "Che Lives" is a reference to Che Guevara, a leader of the socialist revolution in Cuba and an icon of the American New Left. He was captured and executed in Bolivia in 1967.
In 1970 demonstrators in downtown Atlanta protest U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War (1964-73). Most antiwar marches in the city, which took place from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, followed a route down Peachtree Street to Piedmont Park.
Photograph by Carter Tomassi
William Calley Jr., depicted here in an artist rendering of his 1971 court-martial, was the only U.S. soldier convincted for his role in the My Lai Massacre.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Sketch by Howard Brodie.
In 1968, during the Vietnam War, Max Cleland (far right) was injured in an accident, in which he lost both his legs and his right hand. He was awarded the Silver Star and the Soldier's Medal.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
At a press conference, Assistant Police Chief Eldrin Bell holds up a photo of one of the victims of the Atlanta youth murders. From 1979 through 1981, at least twenty-nine Atlantans between the ages of seven and twenty-seven were abducted and slain.
Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archive.
During the Atlanta youth murders, Techwood Homes community members formed a neighborhood "Bat Patrol." By the time city officials established a formal task force to investigate the killings, eleven young Atlantas had already been added to the list of missing and murdered.
Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archive.
The remains of the Gate City Day Nursery after an explosion on October 29, 1980, that claimed the lives of five people, including four Black children. Though the blast was attributed to an overheated boiler, many community members and observers remained unconvinced that it was an accident.
Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archive.
From July 1979 through May 1981 the Atlanta child murders took place. With leads in the case dwindling and no arrest in sight, Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson imposed a 7:00 p.m. curfew on the city's children and offered a $10,000 reward (pictured) for information about the perpetrator of the crimes.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Atlanta youth murders suspect Wayne Williams is escorted back to Fulton County Jail after a hearing in 1981. Williams would eventually be convicted of two murders and implicated in virtually all of the others.
Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archive.
Howard Moore Jr., a civil rights attorney from Atlanta, handled a number of precedent-setting cases in the 1960s and 1970s. He is best known for serving as lead counsel on the Angela Davis trial.
Howard Moore Jr. grew up near the Auburn Avenue neighborhood in Atlanta. After attending law school in Boston, he returned to Atlanta and soon developed a reputation as the go-to defense attorney for political activists.
Howard Moore Jr., depicted here in a court-rendering alongside Angela Davis, relocated to California in 1971 to serve as lead counsel for Davis's trial. The jury found Davis not guilty in June 1972.
Photograph from Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley
Noted civil rights attorney Howard Moore Jr., depicted in this courtroom sketch, speaks in defense of his client Angela Davis. Moore served as lead counsel on a number of high-profile cases.
Photograph from Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley
The National Committee to Free the Ingram Family worked to promote public interest in Rosa Lee Ingram's case. Their efforts included this Mother's Day postcard campaign addressed to President Truman.
Image by the National Committee to Free the Ingram Family, Wikimedia
Rosa Lee Ingram and two of her adolescent sons were sentenced to death for their role in the death of a white landowner in 1948. Their conviction raised considerable doubt about the integrity of Georgia's judicial system and prompted a nationwide campaign to secure their release from prison.
Photograph from BlackPast.org
Supporters of Rosa Lee Ingram wait outside the offices of the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles during her 1953 parole hearing. The Ingrams were denied parole several times before their release from prison in 1959.
Photograph by Norma Holt, from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, New York Public Library
Captain Ernest L. Medina testifies during the 1971 trial of Lieutenant William Calley Jr. The army Peers Commission concluded that Calley's platoon was responsible for roughly one-third of the deaths at My Lai, and Calley was found guilty on twenty-two counts of premeditated murder. . troops killed hundreds of unarmed civilians in a small coastal village inQiang Ngai province, South Vietnam
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Sketch by Howard Brodie.
Crowds gather in Liberty Plaza near the Georgia Capitol for the eighteenth Annual Disability Day on February 18, 2016.
Courtesy of Ryan Johnson
Governor Nathan Deal, with First Lady Sandra Deal, addresses the Disability Day crowd on February 20, 2014.
Courtesy of Ryan Johnson
From left to right: Sue Jamieson (Atlanta Legal Aid Society) and Olmstead case plaintiffs Elaine Watson and Lois Curtis in 2003.
Photograph used by permission of Institute on Human Development and Disability (UCEDD), College of Family and Consumer Sciences, the University of Georgia
Amy Mallard (far left) is pictured in January 1949 outside the Toombs County Courthouse, where she testified at the trial of William Howell, one of several men accused of killing her husband in a racially motivated attack. Mallard was accompainied by Joseph Goldwasser, a member of the NAACP in Cleveland, Ohio, along with her son, John Mallard, and her daughter, Doris Byron.
Courtesy of Getty Images, Francis Miller/The LIFE Picture Collection.
A crowd gathered in the Toombs County Courthouse on January 11, 1949, for the trial of William Howell, a white man accused of killing his Black neighbor Robert Mallard. Mallard's wife, Amy, witnessed the murder and testified at the trial, after she was falsely accused of committing the crime herself.
Courtesy of Getty Images, Francis Miller/The LIFE Picture Collection.
King George II granted James Oglethorpe and the Trustees a charter in 1732 to establish the colony of Georgia. This charter provided, among other things, that the new colony would consist of all the land between the headwaters of the Savannah and the Altamaha rivers, with its eastern boundary formed by the Atlantic Ocean and its western boundary by the "south seas," a reference to the Pacific Ocean.
Map by John Nelson. Reprinted by permission of William J. Morton
In 1763 the British divided what had been Spanish Florida into the two new colonies of West Florida and East Florida, with the Apalachicola River serving as the dividing line between them. East Florida was all the land east of the Apalachicola River, with St. Augustine as its capital.
Map by John Nelson. Reprinted by permission of William J. Morton
In 1763 the British divided what had been Spanish Florida into the two new colonies of West Florida and East Florida, with the Apalachicola River serving as the dividing line between them. West Florida, with Pensacola as its capital, extended west to the Mississippi River.
Map by John Nelson. Reprinted by permission of William J. Morton
The appointment of James Wright in 1760 as governor of Georgia coincided with a period of expansion. By 1764 the boundaries of the colony had expanded to include those territories between the Mississippi and Chattahoochee rivers that had not been granted to the Florida colonies.
Map by John Nelson. Reprinted by permission of William J. Morton
In 1767 the governor of West Florida received permission from the king of England to advance the colony's northern border along the Mississippi and Chattahoochee rivers, where royal trading posts were located. Georgia's land holdings significantly decreased as a result.
Map by John Nelson. Reprinted by permission of William J. Morton
The 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War (1775-83), fixed the 31st latitude north as the southern boundary of the new United States. The line extended from the Mississippi River eastward to the Chattahoochee River, moved down that river to its junction with the Flint River, and then followed a direct line east to the headwaters of the St. Marys River.
Map by John Nelson. Reprinted by permission of William J. Morton
The Orr-Whitner line was accepted by Florida in 1861 and Georgia in 1866 as their official boundary, although the outbreak of the Civil War (1861-65) delayed the line's approval by the U.S. Congress until 1872.
Map by John Nelson. Reprinted by permission of William J. Morton
In 1811 Georgia hired Andrew Ellicott to survey and mark the location of the 35th latitude north, which formed the boundary between Georgia and North Carolina. In an 1812 letter to North Carolina governor William Hawkins, Ellicott states: "In the parallel of 35 degree N. latitude, on the west side of the Chatoga river, a stone is set up marked on the South side (G. lat 35 N.) and on the north side, (N.C.) for North Carolina." This map locates what is currently and erroneously called Ellicott's Rock on the east side of the Chattooga River.
Map by John Nelson. Reprinted by permission of William J. Morton
This map shows the surveyed line as marked by James Camak, which set Georgia's northern boundary line south of the 35th latitude north, including the offset known as Montgomery's Corner.
Map by John Nelson. Reprinted by permission of William J. Morton
Following the 1802 Article of Agreement and Cession, Georgia's new western boundary began with the juncture of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers in southwest Georgia and proceeded north to the great bend of the river (at present-day West Point, Georgia). From there it stretched for 160 miles to the Indian village of Nickajack on the Tennessee River and continued from there up to the 35th latitude north.
Map by John Nelson. Reprinted by permission of William J. Morton
Voters in Fulton County line up at the polls in the early 1970s.
Courtesy of Atlanta University Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library Archives, Voter Education Project Organizational Records.
A flyer produced by the Voter Education Project in the early 1970s refers to the protests in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. The VEP, formed in 1962 as a program of the Southern Regional Council, was a voting rights and voter education organization based in Atlanta for thirty years.
Courtesy of Atlanta University Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library Archives, Voter Education Project Organizational Records.
A flyer produced by the Voter Education Project in the early 1970s encouraged African Americans to exercise their right to vote. Based in Atlanta, the VEP promoted voter registration and education, and became known as an authoritative source on southern elections in general.
Courtesy of Atlanta University Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library Archives, Voter Education Project Organizational Records.
John Lewis (left), who served as executive director of the Voter Education Project from 1971 to 1977, is pictured with Julian Bond in the Mississippi Delta during a Voter Mobilization Tour in 1971.
A voter casts his ballot in Fulton County, circa 1972.
Courtesy of Atlanta University Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library Archives, Voter Education Project Organizational Records.
Jean Childs Young (left), pictured with Rosalynn Carter in 1979, was appointed by U.S. president Jimmy Carter as chair of the 1979 International Year of the Child, a program celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child. The program also worked to raise awareness of children's rights and issues.
Courtesy of Archives Division, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System. Photograph by Rick Reinhard
Jean Childs Young, pictured circa 1985, was the wife of Georgia politician and civil rights leader Andrew Young. She was renowned nationally and internationally for her work as an educator and advocate for children's rights.
Courtesy of Archives Division, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System
In 1953, the year before she married civil rights leader Andrew Young, Jean Childs became the first African American to be elected "May Queen" at Manchester College in Indiana. She graduated from Manchester with a bachelor's degree in elementary education and later earned her master's degree in education from Queens College in New York City.
Courtesy of Archives Division, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System
Jean Childs Young is pictured with her husband, Andrew Young, during his tenure as mayor of Atlanta in the 1980s. During those years, Jean Childs Young founded and chaired the Mayor's Task Force on Public Education and was active in other educational endeavors, including the Georgia Alliance for Public Education.
Courtesy of Archives Division, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System
A 1981 flier from the group "Women for Andrew Young," founded by Jean Childs Young, promotes Andrew Young during his campaign to be elected mayor of Atlanta. The group supported Young through four U.S. congressional campaigns, two mayoral campaigns, and one Georgia gubernatorial campaign.
Courtesy of Archives Division, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System
The Battle of Jonesboro reenactment at Stately Oaks Plantation takes place every second weekend in October.
Courtesy of Clayton County Convention and Visitor's Bureau
Reenactors portray a Confederate unit during a reenactment of the Battle of Chickamauga in Walker County in September 1999.
Courtesy of Gordon L. Jones
Confederate reenactors crew a half-scale cannon at the Civil War centennial reenactment of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in June 1964.
From Centennial Commemoration, Battle of Kennesaw Mountain--June 27, 1864-1964: Official Souvenir Program
A reenactor portrays a Union soldier in General William T. Sherman's army at an encampment at the Atlanta History Center in 2005.
Courtesy of Gordon L. Jones
A woman portrays a local refugee during a reenactment of the Battle of Chickamauga in Walker County in September 1999.
Courtesy of Gordon L. Jones
Latina women from the Mexican, El Salvadoran, and Guatemalan communities in Dalton participate in the city's annual Mexican Independence Day parade.
Courtesy of Thomas Deaton
Latino workers plant loblolly pine seedlings in 1999 near Bremen, in Haralson County. Latino immigrants came to Georgia in large numbers during the 1980s and 1990s to work in the agriculture, construction, carpet, and poultry processing industries.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
An 1866 tobacco label depicts Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto and his crew being welcomed ashore by Native Americans. De Soto entered Georgia twice in 1540, encountering the Altamaha, Capachequi, Coosa, Ichisi, Ocute, Patofa, Toa, and Ulibahali chiefdoms during his travels in the area.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Centennial Olympic Park, one of the most enduring legacies of the 1996 Olympic Games, was carved out of a blighted area in downtown Atlanta. The twenty-one-acre swath of greenspace and bricks was closed after the games, redesigned for permanent use, then reopened in 1998.
Photograph by Wikimedia
Los Compadres, a supermercado (grocery store) located in Athens, is one of many Latino-owned businesses that have opened around the state since the wave of Latino immigration in the 1980s and 1990s.
Photograph by Sarah E. McKee, New Georgia Encyclopedia
Erwin Mitchell visits elementary students in 2000 at Roan Street School in Dalton. In 1997 Mitchell founded the Georgia Project, an innovative teacher exchange program that provided training opportunities for Dalton educators working in bilingual classrooms until 2007.Reprinted by permission of Christopher Lancette.
The Etowah Mounds in Bartow County include one of the largest Indian mounds in North America. The mounds, constructed during the Mississippian Period, served as platforms for public buildings in a town that occupied the site from around 1100 until the 1600s.
Rock Eagle, a stone effigy built by Native Americans during the Woodland Period, circa A.D. 200, is located in Putnam County. The structure, made of quartz cobbles, measures 102 feet across the wings.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
A drawing from Lambert A. Wilmer's Life, Travels and Adventures of Ferdinand de Soto, Discoverer of the Mississippi (1859) depicts Hernando de Soto and his men crossing the Chattahoochee River. The accidental introduction of European diseases by explorers destroyed many of the civilizations along the river's banks.
Courtesy of Florida State Archives, Photographic Collection.
