The New Georgia Encyclopedia is supported by funding from A More Perfect Union, a special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Famed newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst purchased the Atlanta Georgian in 1912, expanding his media empire into the South for the first time. Hearst brought in staff from his other newspaper holdings across the country to populate the Atlanta newsroom and, by 1914, it had surpassed the Atlanta Constitution in circulation, making it the second most popular newspaper in Atlanta for a brief period.
Courtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library, Edmond Torbush Papers, Southern Labor Archives.
The race massacre of 1906 made international headlines and threatened Atlanta's image as a thriving New South city. The incident, sparked by sensationalized accounts of Black violence, lasted for two nights and resulted in dozens of Black deaths. It was reported in the October 7, 1906, issue of the French publication Le Petit Journal. The original caption translates as "Lynchings in the United States."
The Atlanta Georgian, which circulated daily from 1906 to 1939, was the first newspaper in the South owned by William Randolph Hearst and the most prominent example of yellow journalism in Georgia. Under his ownership, the paper expanded circulation to eight or more editions a day and printed increasingly scandalous headlines and illustrations that dramatized local crimes in Atlanta.
Courtesy of Digital Library of Georgia.
Mildred Seydell was one of the first women in Georgia to work as a professional journalist. A native of Atlanta, Seydell began her career as a correspondent for a West Virginia newspaper before being hired in 1924 as a society-page writer for the Atlanta Georgian.
Courtesy of Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University, Mildred Seydell Papers.
The American Music Show was a weekly television series created and broadcast in Atlanta from 1981 until 2005. One of the longest-running public access cable television programs, it acquired cult status and helped launch the career of RuPaul, who was an early regular on the show.
From Atlanta Studies
The television version of The American Music Show debuted on Atlanta’s People TV cable station in early 1981. Dick Richards and James Bond co-hosted, with camerawork and production by Potsy Duncan. When Bond left the show in the early 1980s, Potsy Duncan took over as co-host alongside Richards, while Bud “Beebo” Lowry ran the camera and simultaneously co-hosted, made visible on a monitor between Richards and Duncan.
Courtesy of Paula Gately Tillman
RuPaul Andre Charles was born to Ernestine “Toni” Fontenette and Irving Charles in San Diego, California, on November 17, 1960. His parents, who relocated from the South during the Great Migration, named him after the Creole cooking ingredient “roux.” When he was fifteen RuPaul moved with his sister Renetta to Atlanta. There he attended Northside School of Performing Arts and worked with his brother-in-law transporting and restoring luxury automobiles before pursuing a career in showbusiness.
Courtesy of Paula Gately Tillman
The American Music Show's storylines and characters reflect southern tropes, often outrageously rendered, from the perspective of Atlanta’s urban milieu. The fictional Peek family multiplied comically until the family reached mythological proportions. DeAundra Peek, pictured here, went on to host her own cable access show, “DeAundra Peek’s Teenage Music Club,” and perform regularly in Atlanta throughout the 1990s.
Courtesy of Paula Gately Tillman
Mirabeau B. Lamar established the Columbus Enquirer as a four-page weekly newspaper in 1828, the same year the Georgia legislature incorporated the city of Columbus. The issue seen here dates from May of that year.
Courtesy of Digital Library of Georgia.
Julian Harris, editor and co-owner, with his wife, Julia, of the Columbus Enquirer-Sun, reads mail at his desk in the late 1920s. Harris, the son of Georgia folklorist Joel Chandler Harris, and his wife jointly won a Pulitzer Prize in 1926 for their reporting in the Enquirer-Sun on state officials with ties to the Ku Klux Klan.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
ful0939-85.
The Ledger-Enquirer Building, seen here in the 1930s, was designed by local architecture firm Smith & Biggers. The building was purchased by Columbus State University in 2014.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Walking Dead televsion series is adaptated from a comic book created in 2003 by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore. The series premiered on the AMC cable network on October 31, 2010.
The Walking Dead comic book series, created by writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore, was first published in 2003. The popularity of the comic increased dramatically with the premiere of The Walking Dead television series in 2010, and two years later it had become the best-selling independent comic book series.
The Georgia Radio Hall of Fame was founded in 2007 to honor the work of Georgia's radio professionals and to preserve the history of Georgia radio.
Courtesy of the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame
Elmo Ellis's 1950s campaign, "Removing the Rust from Radio," encouraged the revitalization of radio in the wake of television's growing popularity. Ellis was honored with a Peabody Award and was inducted into the Georgia Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame.
Courtesy of History of WSB Radio
Sam Hale, cofounder of the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame, welcomes guests to the organization's inaugural induction awards ceremony, held in Atlanta in 2007.
Courtesy of the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame
John Long (left), cofounder of the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame, accepts a commendation from Georgia governor Sonny Perdue (not pictured) at the organization's inaugural induction awards ceremony, held in Atlanta in 2007.
Courtesy of Georgia Radio Hall of Fame
DeForest Kelley, an Atlanta native, was an actor best known for playing the role of Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy in the television series Star Trek and feature films.
From the collections of the Margaret Herrick Library
Atlanta Constitution journalists and Pulitzer Prize winners Gene Patterson (left), Ralph McGill (center), and Jack Nelson are pictured circa 1967, the year Patterson received the award.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Gene Patterson, pictured in 2002, was an influential editor of the Atlanta Constitution during the civil rights movement and later founded Georgia Trend magazine.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Albany native Paula Deen, a well-known restaurateur and television personality, is the host of Paula's Home Cooking, which premiered on the Food Network in 2002. Her restaurant, The Lady and Sons, is a popular tourist destination in Savannah.
Photograph from Paula Deen
Paula Deen's iconic restaurant The Lady and Sons opened in downtown Savannah in 1996 and features such southern favorites as fried green tomatoes and hoecakes. In 2004 she opened another restaurant in Savannah, Uncle Bubba's Oyster House, with her younger brother.
Image from Steven Miller
Paula Deen published her first cookbook, The Lady and Sons: Savannah Country Cookbook, in 1997, one year after opening The Lady and Sons restaurant in Savannah. She became well known outside the South by selling the cookbook on QVC, a home-shopping television network.
Atlanta-based Alton Brown, the host and producer of the Food Network's television series Good Eats, has written numerous books about cooking, including I'm Just Here for the Food (2002) and Good Eats: The Early Years (2009).
Alton Brown, raised in White County, is a food television personality and producer based in Atlanta. His cooking show, Good Eats, premiered in 1999 and received a George Foster Peabody Award from the University of Georgia in 2007.
Photograph from UGA Today
J. Richardson Jones, an Atlanta native, was a journalist, filmmaker, and entertainer whose work both challenged segregation and celebrated African American life during the Jim Crow era.
Courtesy of Atlanta History Center.
J. Richardson Jones, kneeling right, is pictured on a handbill from the 1925 production of his play Thy Will Be Done at the Strand Theatre in Jacksonville, Florida. The play was later produced in July 1926 at the Douglass Theatre in Macon. An Atlanta native, Jones began his career in vaudeville and radio, and later became a journalist for the Atlanta Daily World.
Courtesy of Middle Georgia Archives, Washington Memorial Library.
A poster advertises Parade of Negro Progress, a Technicolor feature film based on a short newsreel produced in 1939 by J. Richardson Jones as an advertisement for the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. The feature played in all-Black theaters around the South in 1941-42.
Courtesy of Archives Division, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System
Tyler Perry, a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, is an Atlanta-based filmmaker, playwright, and performer. His Tyler Perry Studios, established in Atlanta in 2008, is the first major film studio in the nation to be solely owned by an African American.
Photograph from AMFM STUDIOS LLC
Journalist Deborah Norville, pictured in 2007, is a native of Dalton and a graduate of the University of Georgia. She became host of the news and entertainment television program Inside Edition in 1995.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Deborah Norville is pictured in 1997 at a signing for her self-help book Back on Track. A Georgia native, Norville is the host of the television news program Inside Edition and the author of several books.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Journalist Deborah Norville, a native of Dalton, published her third motivational book, The Power of Respect, in 2009. Norville has also published knitting and children's books.
Emmeline Southall Scott is surrounded by her sons in a family photograph. From left: Emel Julius, Aurelius Southall, Lewis Augustus, William Alexander (W. A.) II, Cornelius Adolphus (C. A.), and Daniel Marcellus. W. A. Scott founded the Atlanta World (later Atlanta Daily World) in 1928, around the time this photograph was taken. C. A. Scott assumed the editorship in 1934, following his brother's death.
Courtesy of Atlanta Daily World
M. Alexis Scott, president of the Atlanta Daily World, speaks at one of three newsstands that opened at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in 2009. Scott is the granddaughter of W. A. Scott II, who founded the newspaper in 1928.
Courtesy of Atlanta Daily World. Photograph by Willie E. Tucker Jr.
The Atlanta Daily World, Atlanta's oldest African American newspaper, was established in 1928 by W. A. Scott II. The paper has remained in the hands of the Scott family since its founding.
Photograph by Wally Gobetz
William Alexander (W. A.) Scott II founded the Atlanta World newspaper in 1928. In 1932 the publication became the Atlanta Daily World, one of the nation's first Black daily newspapers.
Courtesy of Atlanta Daily World
Cornelius Adolphus (C. A.) Scott served as editor of the Atlanta Daily World from 1934 until his retirement in 1997. Although more conservative than many Black editors of his time, Scott spoke out about Georgia's white primary system and advocated school integration and Black suffrage in the pages of the newspaper.
Courtesy of Atlanta Daily World. Photograph by Griff Davis
M. Alexis Scott became president and chair of the board of directors for the Atlanta Daily World in 1997, after twenty years as a journalist with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Cox Enterprises. Her grandfather W. A. Scott founded the publication, Atlanta's oldest Black newspaper, in 1928.
Courtesy of Atlanta Daily World
Actress Butterfly McQueen is best known for her portrayal of Prissy in the film Gone With the Wind (1939). McQueen spent her childhood and many of her adult years in Augusta, where she died in 1995.
Courtesy of Atlanta History Center.
Natasha Trethewey, a graduate of the University of Georgia and professor at Emory University, won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her third collection of poems, Native Guard (2006).
Journalist Ralph McGill won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1959. As editor and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, McGill broke the code of silence on the subject of segregation.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Mike Luckovich, a native of Seattle, Washington, became the editorial cartoonist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1989. Luckovich has twice won the Pulitzer Prize, in 1995 and 2006, for his nationally syndicated work.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Margaret Mitchell's epic Civil War love story, Gone With the Wind, was published in June 1936. Mitchell was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the novel in May 1937.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
John H. Deveaux, a native of Savannah, was the first owner and editor of the Colored Tribune, which he founded in 1875. In 1878 he was forced to close the paper because white printers in the city refused to print it, but he reopened the publication, known today as the Savannah Tribune, in 1886.
Courtesy of Savannah Tribune
Sol C. Johnson, the second editor and owner of the Savannah Tribune, was a Savannah native. During his long editorship, from 1889 until 1954, the newspaper covered the injustices of the Jim Crow era, including segregation, lynchings, and the convict lease system.
Courtesy of Savannah Tribune
The Colored Tribune, a weekly newspaper in Savannah, was founded in 1875 as the by John H. Deveaux, whose stated purpose was to defend "the rights of colored people, and their elevation to the highest plane of citizenship."From the Georgia Newspaper Project.
Courtesy of Digital Library of Georgia.
In 1973 Robert E. James, pictured in 2008, reestablished the , which had closed in 1960. He served as owner and publisher of the newspaper until 1983, when his wife, Shirley B. James, became the publisher and sole owner.
Courtesy of Savannah Tribune
Shirley B. James, pictured in 2008, has owned and published the Savannah Tribune since 1983. Under her direction, the newspaper covers local and national news of interest to the African American community in Savannah.
Courtesy of Savannah Tribune
Robert S. Abbott, a Georgia native, was a prominent journalist who founded the Chicago Defender in 1905. He is pictured (second row, fifth from right) in June 1918 at a meeting of Black leaders in Washington, D.C. Prominent historian and educator W. E. B. Du Bois stands in the first row, fourth from the right.
Courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries
A newsboy sells copies in April 1942 of the Chicago Defender, a leading Black newspaper founded in 1905 by Georgia native Robert S. Abbott. The publication covered events and issues in Chicago's Black community, but also reported on racial news from the South and encouraged southern Blacks to move north after World War I.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
The Georgia Historical Society erected a historical marker at the site of newspaper editor Robert S. Abbott's childhood home in Savannah on August 26, 2008. In 1905 Abbott founded the Chicago Defender, which quickly became one of the most important Black newspapers in the first half of the twentieth century.
Courtesy of Georgia Historical Society, Historical Marker Program.
John H. Sengstacke (right), a Savannah native and nephew of Robert S. Abbott, assumed management of the Chicago Defender in 1940 upon the death of Abbott, who founded the newspaper in 1905. Sengstacke is pictured in March 1942 at the Defender's office in Chicago.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection, #LC-USW3-000802-D.
The Atlanta Business Chronicle, founded by Bob Gray and Mike Weingart in 1978, is a weekly journal that covers business and industry news in Atlanta. Today the publication is owned by American City Business Journals.
The Great Locomotive Chase, a Disney film released in 1956, depicts the events of the Andrews Raid of 1862, in which Union raiders seized a Confederate train in north Georgia during the Civil War. The film is an adaptation of the written accounts of William Pittenger, a Union participant in the raid.
Courtesy of Library of Congress
Silent film comedian Buster Keaton directed and starred in The General (1927), a fictionalized account of the famous Andrews Raid of 1862, in which Union raiders seized a Confederate train in north Georgia during the Civil War.
Photograph from www.filmreference.com
Workers at the Brumby Chair Company in Marietta pause for their noon break in the summer of 1903. Under the leadership of Thomas Brumby, who helmed the company from 1888 to 1923, the Brumby Chair Company became one of the largest employers in Marietta and one of the largest chair factories in the Southeast.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
cob106.
A Brumby Chair Company delivery truck is pictured, circa 1928. The Brumby Chair Company, based in Marietta, was incorporated in 1884 by brothers Jim and Thomas Brumby. The company, which the family continues to operate, is best known for its iconic rocking chair.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
cob299.
Marietta leaders gather in the law office of Rip Blair (seated right) to honor Niles Trammel (seated left), circa 1940. Otis Brumby Sr. (standing far left) was the vice president of Brumby Chair Company. Also standing, from left: Stanton Read, Ed Massey, Jake Northcutt, Eugene McNeel Sr., unknown, Ryburn Clay, J. J. Daniell, Morgan McNeel.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
cob498.
Scott Wilson, an Atlanta native, was an actor with credits in more than fifty feature films and in numerous television productions. His filmography includes In the Heat of the Night (1967), In Cold Blood (1967), The Great Gatsby (1974), Dead Man Walking (1995), Pearl Harbor (2001), and Junebug (2005).
Courtesy of Scott Wilson
Julia Harris (left) poses with artist Marcel Lenoir. An Atlanta native, Harris was co-owner of the Columbus Enquirer-Sun, along with her husband, Julian Harris, during the 1920s. The couple's editorials against the Ku Klux Klan won a Pulitzer Prize in 1926, and in 1998 Harris was inducted into Georgia Women of Achievement.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Sherman's March (1986), a documentary film by Ross McElwee, chronicles the filmmaker's search for love in the modern South while loosely retracing Sherman's 1864 march to the sea. Portions of the film take place on Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, and on the Georgia coast, near Savannah.
Filmmaker and professor Ross McElwee is pictured during the filming of Bright Leaves. In 1986 McElwee's documentary Sherman's March, much of which was filmed in Georgia, was released to critical acclaim.
Image from AdrianMcElwee
A film crew shoots a commercial for Georgia tourism at Stone Mountain in 2006. Commercial production increased dramatically in the state during the first years of the twenty-first century, with such major corporations as Coca-Cola, Delta, Ford Motor Company, and General Electric choosing to film in Georgia.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
A camera operator works on a film set in Georgia, where the film industry has generated more than $4 billion for the state's economy since the 1970s. The Georgia Film, Video, and Music Office, established in 1973 by then-governor Jimmy Carter, recruited more than 550 major projects between 1973 and 2007.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Sally Fields (left) and Burt Reynolds are pictured during the filming of Smokey and the Bandit (1977). An enormous commercial success, the film was one of several projects that Reynolds brought to Georgia during the 1970s.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Cast members of the television series In the Heat of the Night pose during the filming of an episode in downtown Covington, circa 1994. From left, Denise Nicholas (Harriet DeLong), Carroll O'Connor (Sheriff Bill Gillespie), and Carl Weathers (Chief Hampton Forbes).
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Crew members shoot an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard in Covington, circa 1979. The first several episodes of the series were filmed in Covington before production moved to California. The famous shot of the airborne General Lee, the Duke cousins' muscle car, was filmed at nearby Oxford College.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Mary-Louise Parker (left) and Mary Stuart Masterson are pictured during the filming of Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), adapted from a novel by Fannie Flagg. Although set in Alabama, the film was shot in the small town of Juliette, in Monroe County. Portions of the film set, including the Whistle Stop Cafe, are now open to visitors.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Robert Redford (right), the director of The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), demonstrates a golf swing to the film's stars, Matt Damon (left) and Will Smith (second from left). The film was shot in the streets and country clubs of Savannah.
Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.
Students in the video production program at West Georgia Technical College in LaGrange work on a class project. In addition to producing three television series, students at the college have won awards for two documentaries, Soaring with Eagles and Helping to Build Hope.
Courtesy of Technical College System of Georgia
Attendees of the 2006 Savannah Film Festival congregate outside the historic Trustees Theatre, which was restored by the Savannah College of Art and Design. The festival, which is hosted by SCAD each fall, offers feature-length, short, and documentary films from around the world.
Courtesy of Savannah College of Art and Design
The Athens-based rock band R.E.M. has filmed some of their music videos in Georgia over the years, including collaborations with Chattooga County artist Howard Finster and Hall County artist R. A. Miller. From left, Peter Buck, Michael Stipe, and Mike Mills.
Courtesy of Warner Brothers Records
With increased financial incentives to film in Georgia, international studios invested resources to produce in the state. These three photographs show the Pinewood Atlanta Studios site in Fayette County before, during, and after construction. Originally part-owned by British Pinewood Studios, the Fayette location has since become an independent venture named Trilith Studios.
From USDA-FSA Aerial Photography Field Office. Collage by Jonathan D. Hepworth, New Georgia Encyclopedia.
With a generous state tax credit passed in 2008, Atlanta became known as “the Hollywood of the South.” Here, a parking lot across from the Richard B. Russell Federal Building becomes a Lagos, Nigeria, street scene in filming the movie Captain America: Civil War in 2015.
From torontokid2, Wikimedia Commons
A portrait of journalist Clark Howell who served as a bridge from Georgia to the rest of the nation in matters political and journalistic.
Georgia Historical Quarterly
Ambrose Wright, a native of Jefferson County, served as a general in the Confederate army during the Civil War. In 1866 he became part owner and editor of the Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel newspaper, which he used to protest radical Republican policies during Reconstruction.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
The television film Andersonville (1996), directed by John Frankenheimer, portrays the experiences of Union soldiers held at Andersonville Prison, the notorious Civil War prison located in Sumter County. The miniseries, starring Carmen Argenziano, Jarrod Emick, Frederic Forrest, and Ted Marcoux, was filmed partially in Coweta County.
A sketch of the Andersonville prison, by John B. Walker (1864). The set of Andersonville, a 1996 television film directed by John Frankenheimer, was modeled on the buildings of the original prison.
Courtesy of Georgia Historical Society, Georgia Historical Society Collection of Photographs, 1870-1960, #GHS 1361PH-21-13-4296.
Warm Springs (2005), a film produced by Home Box Office, chronicles the experiences of Franklin D. Roosevelt at his home in Warm Springs during the 1920s. The film, which stars Kenneth Branagh as Roosevelt and Cynthia Nixon as Roosevelt's wife, Eleanor, was filmed on location at Warm Springs, in Meriwether County.
Franklin D. Roosevelt first visited Warm Springs in 1924, after contracting polio, and soon thereafter bought a home in the area. The house later became known as the "Little White House," after Roosevelt's election as U.S. president in 1932.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
The Three Faces of Eve (1957), a film starring Georgia native Joanne Woodward, is an adaptation of a book by the same name, written by doctors Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley. The narrative chronicles the experiences of a young housewife with multiple personalities, who was initially diagnosed and treated at the Medical College of Georgia (later Georgia Health Sciences University) in Augusta. The film was produced and directed by Nunnally Johnson, another Georgia native.
The front page of the inaugural issue of the Great Speckled Bird, a countercultural newspaper published in Atlanta from March 1968 to October 1976, features a mock obituary for Atlanta Constitution editor Ralph McGill, lamenting his support for the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam.
Melvyn Douglas was a prominent film, television, and theater actor in the mid-twentieth century, and one of the few to win an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony award. Born in Macon, Douglas first entered show business at the age of two, when he won first prize at the 1903 Georgia State Fair Baby Show.
Actor Melvyn Douglas (right), a Macon native, chats with actor Paul Robeson at a benefit in Washington, D.C., in June 1942. Earlier that year Douglas, an active member of the Democratic Party, was appointed head of the Office of Civilian Defense Arts Council, which enlisted the help of artists to support the war effort during World War II.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Melvyn Do
