From blues and soul to classical and country—our Spotify playlists feature 130+ songs written and performed by Georgians.
Augustin Verot, known as the "Rebel Bishop" for his support of the Confederacy during the Civil War, became bishop of the Diocese of Savannah in 1861 and led the Catholic community through the turbulent years of war and Reconstruction.
Courtesy of Catholic Diocese of Savannah Archives
On January 4, 1861 Augustin Verot delivered a sermon defending the practice of slavery and condemning abolitionism. It was later reprinted as a Confederate tract and circulated throughout the region, earning Verot wide acclaim in southern states.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, Augustin Verot called for Catholic bishops to support the construction of schools and churches for freedmen.
Iris Blitch, pictured here speaking in Jesup in Wayne County, broke ground for female politicians in the 1950s and 1960s. When she was first elected in 1948, she was the only female legislator in the state.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Iris Blitch, far left, greets U.S. House Sepaker Sam Rayburn. Blitch and Edith Green of Oregon, second from left, were newly elected congresswomen in 1955. The Eighty-Fourth U.S. Congress had seventeen women.
Courtesy of the Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives
Iris Blitch, pictured here circa 1955, won her first congressional election in 1954, after unseating U.S. representative William McDonald "Don" Wheeler. She served the Eighth Congressional District of Georgia from 1955 to to 1963.
Courtesy of the Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives
At the end of the 1820s Augustin Smith Clayton of Athens constructed a cotton mill near his hometown, hoping to prove the protective tariff that subsidized northern industry at the expense of southerners unnecessary.
Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries, Georgia Photo File.
Augustin Smith Clayton, a native of Virginia, lived much of his life in Athens, where he rose to prominence as a politician and jurist of national significance.
Courtesy of Georgia Museum of Art
Published in 1885, the print Our Overworked Supreme Court depicts Supreme Court justices Woods, Blatchford, Harlan, Gray, Miller, Field, Waite, Bradley, and Matthews surrounded by paperwork for cases.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
William Burnham Woods, a native of Ohio, was a resident of Atlanta when he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1881. He served on the Court until his death in 1887.
Courtesy of British Museum, London
Joseph Rucker Lamar, a native of Elbert County, served as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1911 to 1915.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Joseph Rucker Lamar, a native of Elbert County, served as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1911 to 1915.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
James Moore Wayne, pictured circa 1850, was a Savannah native and the first Georgian appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. He served as a justice from 1835 to 1867, one of the longest tenures in the Court's history.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Governor Nathan Deal, elected in 2010, delivers the State of the State address in January 2011. Deal served as governor from 2011 to 2019.
Courtesy of georgia.gov
Nathan Deal (right) was sworn in as Georgia's eighty-second governor on January 10, 2011, in Atlanta. He is pictured with his predecessor, Governor Sonny Perdue (left), and Georgia secretary of state Brian Kemp. Deal served as governor from 2011 to 2019.
Courtesy of Georgia.gov
Young John Allen, born in Burke County and raised in Meriwether County, traveled as a Methodist missionary to Shanghai, China, in 1860 and remained there for much of his life. In addition to his ministry, Allen worked as a journalist and founded a college in Shanghai.
Mary Houston Allen, the wife of Young John Allen, a Methodist missionary to China, is pictured with her children, circa 1870. Before her marriage, Allen attended Wesleyan College in Macon.
Young John Allen (center), a Georgia native and Methodist missionary to Shanghai, China, is pictured with two Chinese writers, identified as Tsai and Yin, circa 1900. During his many decades in China, Allen founded the publication (Church News) and translated books.
Henry L. Benning was an influential advocate for secession and helped to draft Georgia's Ordinance of Secession.
Courtesy of Georgia Info, Digital Library of Georgia.
Henry L. Benning served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia during the 1850s and as a brigadier general during the Civil War. Fort Benning, near Columbus, is named in his honor.
Courtesy of Georgia Info, Digital Library of Georgia.
Fort Benning, home of the U.S. Army Infantry, comprises nearly 120,000 acres in Chattahoochee County.
Courtesy of Fort Benning
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.
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
Thomas "Blind Tom" Wiggins, pictured circa 1880, was a musical prodigy. He was born into slave status in Columbus and spent most of his life performing on the piano for audiences around the country. He also wrote original compositions, including the famous "Battle of Manassas."
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Thomas "Blind Tom" Wiggins, pictured circa 1860 at about the age of ten, was born into slave status in Columbus. He was recognized as a musical prodigy by his owner, James Bethune, and was hired out as a child to traveling showman Perry Oliver. During the presidency of James Buchanan (1857-61), Blind Tom became the first African American musician to perform at the White House.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Hugh Peterson, pictured in 1925, was a state legislator from 1922 until 1934, during which time he was instrumental in passing the State Reorganization Act of 1931. Peterson went on to represent Georgia's First Congressional District in the U.S. Congress, serving from 1934 to 1946.
Congressman Hugh Peterson (front row, center), pictured in July 1937, and guests eat watermelons sent by J. M. Stubbs of Savannah. Peterson served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1934 to 1946.
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.
As part of the top 10 percent of naval aviators, Cecil Alexander volunteered for the marines and became a dive bomber pilot during World War II. The future Atlanta architect flew a total of sixty missions and was twice awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Courtesy of Cecil Alexander
A prominent Atlanta architect and principal of the FABRAP architectural firm before his retirement, Cecil Alexander was a leader in the movement to desegregate Atlanta's public housing and businesses. He is pictured in 2008.
Reprinted by permission of Stephen H. Moore (http://www.shmoore.com/)
The BellSouth Telecommunications Building, located at 675 West Peachtree Street in Atlanta, was built in 1980 by the Atlanta-based firm FABRAP, in conjunction with Skidmore Owings and Merrill of New York. It served as headquarters for both Southern Bell and BellSouth. In 2006 BellSouth was absorbed by AT&T, and today the building is part of the AT&T Midtown Center.
Courtesy of AT&T
Coca-Cola's headquarters in Atlanta, designed by the architectural firm FABRAP, house the corporate offices as well as the offices for the Coca-Cola Foundation.
Photograph by David A. Pike
The Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium hosts the opening night of the World Series in October 1995. The stadium, jointly designed by the architecture firms FABRAP and Heery and Heery, was completed in 1965 and attracted two professional teams, the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Falcons, to the city.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The architect Cecil Alexander, a founding partner of the firm FABRAP, and his second wife, Helen, pictured at their home in Atlanta in 2007.
Reprinted by permission of Stephen H. Moore (http://www.shmoore.com/)
David Emanuel Twiggs, a U.S. Army general, surrendered U.S. forces to Confederate authorities in Texas when that state seceded from the Union in 1861. He was the son of prominent Revolutionary War general John Twiggs and nephew of Georgia governor David Emanuel.
Three companies of the British Sixtieth Regiment of Foot were sent to the Georgia colony in 1763 by King George III to strengthen the defense of colonial garrisons against attack by the French and Spanish.
Courtesy of The Company of Military Historians
Journalist Claude Sitton (right) covers the desegregation of the University of Georgia in 1961 as the southern correspondent for the New York Times.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Claude Sitton, a renowned civil rights journalist, served as the southern correspondent for the New York Times during the 1950s and 1960s. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Sitton was born in Atlanta and raised in Rockdale County.
Courtesy of Claude Sitton
Journalist Claude Sitton greets students during a reunion of the Emory University Journalism Program in October 2006. A 1949 graduate of Emory, Sitton is best known for his civil rights reporting in the New York Times and for his editorship of the News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Courtesy of Emory University Journalism Program
U.S. president Jimmy Carter (right) meets with Hamilton Jordan in the Oval Office of the White House in 1977. Jordan served as Carter's chief of staff from 1977 to 1980.
Courtesy of Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.
Hamilton Jordan, pictured in 1977, served as a prominent advisor to Jimmy Carter during Carter's tenures as governor of Georgia and president of the United States. Jordan grew up in Albany and graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in political science.
Courtesy of Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.
Georgians Jody Powell (left) and Hamilton Jordan, known as "the gold dust twins," sucessfully managed Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign in 1976. Following the election both men, pictured in 1977, served in Carter's administration, Powell as press secretary and Jordan as chief of staff.
Courtesy of Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.
Hamilton Jordan, a noted political advisor to U.S. president Jimmy Carter, recounts his experiences with cancer in the memoir No Such Thing as a Bad Day (2000). Jordan, an advocate for cancer research, cofounded Camp Sunshine, a camp for children with cancer, in 1982 and the Georgia Cancer Coalition in 1999.
John Morgan, pictured in 1890, arrived in Georgia as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1876. Two years later he was given authority over the church's Southern States Mission, headquarterd in Rome.
Courtesy of Special Collections Department, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah
Joseph Standing was sent as a Mormon missionary to Georgia in 1878. The following year he was killed by a mob in Whitfield County while traveling with fellow missionary Rudger Clawson. A memorial park at the murder site was dedicated to Standing in 1952.
Courtesy of Special Collections Department, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah
Henry Alexander's lithograph Infantry: Continental Army, 1779-1783 depicts the uniforms and weapons used by the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Nathanael Greene was one of the most respected generals of the Revolutionary War and a talented military strategist. As commander of the Southern Department of the Continental army, his leadership was the catalyst that turned the tide toward American victory in Georgia.
Courtesy of Independence National Historical Park
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.
Newt Gingrich speaks to the media in Atlanta in December 2000, after the U.S. Supreme Court had decided in favor of George W. Bush in the contested presidential election of that year. Gingrich has remained politically active since his resignation from the U.S. Congress in 1999.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Elected ten times to the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Newt Gingrich emerged as a powerful national leader of the Republican Party after he became Speaker of the House in 1995. He retired from Congress in 1999.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
In 1978 Republican Newt Gingrich won his first term to the U.S. House of Representatives. He went on to represent the Sixth District of Georgia until 1999.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Between 1911 and 1927 native Georgian Sherry Smith played for fourteen years in the major leagues. His team played in the World Series twice. Later in his career, Smith returned to Georgia to coach for the Macon Peaches in the Southeastern League.
Courtesy of Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.
During the 1730s, Scottish settler Patrick Tailfer led a group of colonists, knowns as the Malcontents, in protest of various laws and policies enforced by the Georgia Trustees. His 1740 tract, entitled A True and Historical Narrative of the Colony of Georgia, was read in influential circles but failed to make a substantial impact on the circumstances of the Malcontents.
From A True and Historical Narrative of the Colony of Georgia in America, by P. Tailfer
The original Southern Bell Telephone Building in Atlanta, pictured in 2008, was designed by architect P. Thornton Marye in the late 1920s. The art deco-style building was advertised as the city's "first modernistic skyscraper." The building's original six stories were extended to fourteen in the 1940s and topped with a tower in the 1960s.
Photograph by Mary Ann Sullivan
The Atlanta Terminal Station, pictured circa 1905, was designed in a Renaissance revival style by architect P. Thornton Marye. The structure, a pioneer work in reinforced concrete, was razed in 1971.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
ful0100.
Passengers walk through the Atlanta Terminal Station in 1967, four years before the structure was demolished. The station, built in 1905, was designed by architect P. Thornton Marye.
Courtesy of George Lane
St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Atlanta, pictured in 2005, was built in 1906. The church was designed in the Gothic revival style by architect P. Thornton Marye, in association with A. Ten Eyck Brown.
Courtesy of Atlanta Time Machine
The Fox Theatre in Atlanta, pictured from the south in 2002, was originally designed as the Yaraab Temple by the architectural firm Marye, Alger, and Vinour. The building opened as a theater in 1929.
Photograph by Mary Ann Sullivan
On the final day of the 1964 legislative session, Georgia representative Denmark Groover attempted to stop the clock in the state House of Representatives during a debate on congressional redistricting.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Representative Denmark Groover, pictured in 1984, was considered one of the shrewdest members of the General Assembly because of his prodigious memory for legislation. He was also involved in some of the state's most controversial political events, including two redesigns of the state flag.
Courtesy of Georgia Info, Digital Library of Georgia.
Pictured in 1982, Tom Buck of Columbus served in the Georgia House of Representatives for thirty-eight years, one of the longest tenures of any lawmaker in the state's history.
Courtesy of Georgia Info, Digital Library of Georgia.
Calvin Smyre (left) and Tom Buck were powerful and effective legislators in the state House of Representatives for their home district of Columbus. They are pictured in 1986.
Courtesy of Georgia Info, Digital Library of Georgia.
State senator Culver Kidd, pictured in 1990, was a powerful legislator who sponsored a larger number of bills each session than most of his colleagues.
Courtesy of Georgia Info, Digital Library of Georgia.
Culver Kidd served as a member of the Georgia General Assembly for forty-two years, representing Baldwin County in middle Georgia. His portrait was painted circa 1996 by Stan J. Strickland and hangs in the state capitol.
Courtesy of Georgia Capitol Museum, University of Georgia Libraries
Georgia state senator Culver Kidd speaks in 1988 with fellow Democratic state senator David Scott in the legislative chambers. Scott was elected to the U.S. Congress in 2002.
Courtesy of Georgia Info, Digital Library of Georgia.
Bill Lee (left), one of the longest-serving members of the state House of Representatives, converses with Representative Calvin Smyre in 1988. A native of Clayton County, Lee served as chairman of the House Rules Committee.
Courtesy of Georgia Info, Digital Library of Georgia.
State representative Bill Lee (left) is pictured with fellow representative Frank Redding in the 1990s. Lee served in the house for forty-two consecutive years, thereby earning the nickname "Dean of the House."
Courtesy of Georgia Info, Digital Library of Georgia.
