Misa-Proof USG Georgia History Legislative Requirement Exam

Georgia History: Overview

-Georgia was the last of the thirteen colonies to be founded. Its formation came a half century after the twelfth British colony.Georgia was the only colony founded and ruled by a Board of Trustees, which was based in London.

-Georgia was established in 1732, with settlement in Savannah in 1733

-Georgia continues to attract new opportunities for employment. Kia Motors Corporation, broke ground on a factory in Troup County in 2006

-major employer Delta Airlines emerged successfully from bankruptcy in 2007

-new tax-incentive legislation for the entertainment industry, passed in 2008, brought numerous film projects to the state

-Georgia's unique landscapes and culture support a thriving tourism industry as well.

Mississippian Period: Overview

(A.D. 800-1600), complex native cultures, organized as chiefdoms, emerged and developed lifeways in response to the particular features of their physical surroundings.

Chiefdoms

a specific kind of human social organization with social ranking as a fundamental part of their structure. In ranked societies people belonged to one of two groupings, elites or commoners.

Difference between elites and commoners in chiefdoms

rested more on ideological and religious beliefs than on such things as wealth or military power.

Purpose of mounds in Mississippian culture

capitals of chiefdoms, platforms for buildings, as stages for religious and social activities, and as cemeteries.

Hernando de Soto in Georgia

-The first European to explore the interior of what is now the state of Georgia. Entered the state on two occasions during the course of his expedition.

-From Spain

-discovered the true way the Indians lived, but devastated their societies with the plague and small pox

Spanish Missions

-Georgia's earliest colonial history is dominated by the lengthy mission era, extending from 1568 through 1684. Catholic missions were the primary means by which Georgia's indigenous Native American chiefdoms were assimilated.

-Spanish missions were explicitly established for the purpose of religious conversion and instruction in the Catholic faith.

-repartimiento: this system of obligatory wage labor a specified number of unmarried male Indians were required to go to St. Augustine each year to work in the Spanish cornfields or to build and maintain Spanish fortifications.

-Up to 300 mission Indians from across Spanish Florida were drafted annually for work between March and September, causing considerable change in the native societies.

-Depopulation, combined with widespread forced resettlements eventually led to the abandonment of Georgia's interior missions.

James Oglethorpe

-Colony of Georgia Was founded in 1732 (Got permission from King George II)

-Conceived of and implemented his plan to establish the colony of Georgia. Led the expedition of colonists that landed in Savannah early in 1733.

-Georgia's Trustees Motto—Non sibi sed aliis (Not for self, but for others)

-Famous for Battle of the Bloody Marsh from the War of Jenkins Ear (Spanish invasion)

Battle of Bloody Marsh

-On July 7, 1742, English and Spanish forces skirmished on St. Simons Island in this encounter

-Only Spanish attempt to invade Georgia during the War of Jenkins' Ear and resulted in an English victory (which greatly decreased Spanish morale).

-Led and won by General James Oglethorpe.

Yamacraw Indians

-Small band of Native Americans that existed from the late 1720s to the mid-1740s in the Savannah area.

-First led by Tomochichi, it consisted of 200 people.

-Used to be a mix of the Creeks and Yamasees.

Tomochichi

-Chief of the Yamacraw Indians. Principal mediator between the native population and the new English settlers during the first years of settlement.

-Friends with James Oglethorpe and helped him mediate

Malcontents

-Among those to voice displeasure with the policies of General James Oglethorpe and the Georgia Trustees during the early years of Georgia's settlement.

-The leaders of the group, composed primarily of Scottish settlers near Savannah, included Patrick Tailfer and Thomas Stephens.

-In particular, this group objected to the Trustees' limits on landownership and prohibitions on slavery and rum.

-When the Trustees passed a law in 1750 allowing slavery, many credited the change to the actions and writings of this group.

Royal Georgia

-Refers to the period between the termination of Trustee governance of Georgia and the colony's declaration of independence at the beginning of the American Revolution (1775-83)

-John Reynolds, the first royal governor of Georgia.

-The second royal governor, Henry Ellis, established a sound foundation for government during his four-year administration.

James Wright

-Third and last royal governor of Georgia, serving from 1760 to 1782, with a brief interruption early in the American Revolution (1775-83)

-a popular and able administrator and servant of the crown.

-played a key role in delaying the flame of revolution in Georgia long after it had flared violently in every other colony

Salzburgers

-a group of German-speaking Protestant colonists, founded the town of Ebenezer in what is now Effingham County.

-Arrived in 1734

-Expelled from their home, which is now known as Austria

Rice

-Georgia's first staple crop, was the most important commercial agricultural commodity in the Lowcountry from the middle of the eighteenth century until the early twentieth century

-Arrived as part of the Columbian Exchange

Revolutionary War in Georgia

-Though Georgians opposed British trade regulations, many hesitated to join the revolutionary movement because the colony had prospered under royal rule, and many Georgians thought that they needed the protection of British troops against a possible Indian attack.

-Georgia did not send representatives to the First Continental Congress that met in Philadelphia, but Lyman Hall was sent to the second.

-Georgia became the first, and ultimately the only one, of the thirteen states in rebellion to be restored to royal allegiance

-Siege of Savannah failed (British win)

-On January 7, 1783, the Georgia General Assembly elected Lyman Hall governor.

-The newly independent state of Georgia, though poor in every other respect, claimed a virtual empire of territory reaching to the Mississippi River. The Georgians' immediate problem consisted in their inability to convince the Creek Indians, who actually possessed the land, of Georgia's right to this empire.

Button Gwinnett

-one of three Georgia signers of the Declaration of Independence.

-He served in Georgia's colonial legislature, in the Second Continental Congress, and as president of Georgia's Revolutionary Council of Safety.

-Supported separation from England

Lachlan McIntosh

-a member of a prominent eighteenth-century Scottish Highland family that was among the earliest settlers of the Georgia colony, played an important role in the cause of American independence.

-Enemy of Button Gwinnett, killed him in a duel

Mary Musgrove

-Known as Coosaponakeesa among the Creek Indians and served as a cultural liaison (translator) between colonial Georgia and Native American community in the mid-eighteenth century.

-is more often remembered for her controversial land claims in Georgia.

Yazoo Land Fraud

-Scheme where Georgia legislators were bribed in 1795 to sell most of the land now making up the state of Mississippi to four land companies for the sum of $500,000, far below its potential market value.

-In 1789, the legislature sold about 25 million acres to three companies, only to torpedo the sale six months later by insisting that payment be made in gold and silver rather than in depreciated paper currency.

-Post Revolutionary war significant event

-Governor James Jackson resigned his seat and returned home to handle the Yazoo land fraud scandal in 1795.

-In Fletcher v. Peck, John Marshall ruled the Yazoo Rescinding Act by Governor James Jackson was unconstitutional

Major Ridge

-This Cherokee leader is primarily known for signing the Treaty of New Echota (1835), which led to the Trail of Tears. Before this tragic period in Cherokee history, however, he was one of the most prominent leaders of the Cherokee nation.

-Joined Andrew Jackson in fighting the Creeks and the British in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend during the War of 1812

-helped establish a Cherokee Nation with three branches of government in 1827 with John Ross

-his grandson John Rollin would be known as the first Native American novelist.

Eli Whitney

-Invented the cotton gin in Georgia

-This revolutionized the southern economy and deepened the region's commitment to slave labor and ultimately placed the country on the path to the Civil War (1861-65).

Nancy Hart

-Georgia's most acclaimed female participant during the Revolutionary War (1775-83).

-As a Patriot spy, she gained notoriety during the revolution for her determined efforts to rid the area of Tories, English soldiers, and British sympathizers.

-Inspired myths, legends, and folklore

Slavery in Revolutionary Georgia

-The disruption of the Revolutionary war offered the prospect of freedom to many thousands of slaves, but ultimately the reestablishment of the plantation economy after 1782 ensured that general emancipation remained a hope rather than a reality.

-Some slaves were killed in war; many more fled to try to find a better life for themselves

War of 1812 and Georgia

-Georgia's role in the war has been largely overshadowed.

-Three main theaters of operation deserve recognition:

1. the Creek War of 1813-14

2. the British blockade

3. the British occupation of St. Marys and Cumberland Island in 1814-15.

-Effects:

1. The freeing of slaves by the British occupation became a legal issue for years after the treaty ratification.

2. Towns like Sunbury suffered a tremendous decline because of the damage inflicted on Georgia's coastal trading fleet by the British blockade

3. the question of what to do with lands ceded by the Creeks and other tribes would lead to major debates over state land policy.

Cherokee Removal

-In 1838 and 1839 U.S. troops, prompted by the state of Georgia, expelled the Cherokee Indians from their ancestral homeland in the Southeast and removed them to the Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma.

-Done over the demand for arable land for cotton, the discovery of gold on Cherokee land, and the racial prejudice that many white southerners harbored toward American Indians.

-Led to the trail of tears

-President Andrew Jackson passed the Indian Removal Act, after it being secretely signed by leader of the Cherokees, Major Ridge

Gold Rush

-late 1829 north Georgia, known at the time as the Cherokee Nation, was flooded by thousands of prospectors lusting for gold.

-Niles' Register reported in the spring of 1830 that there were four thousand miners working along Yahoola Creek alone.

-The sudden influx of miners into the Cherokee Nation was known even at the time as the Great Intrusion

Cotton

-From the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century, there was no more important single factor in Georgia's agricultural economy

-Cash crop, encouraged/needed slavery, one of the main causes of the Civil War

-In 2014, GA ranked second in this crop production in the United States, behind Texas, planting 1.4 million acres.

William Harris Crawford

-A two-time U.S. presidential nominee and the only Georgian to run for the presidency prior to Jimmy Carter

-best known nationally for his 1824 bid for the presidency, the most controversial presidential election

served as a U.S. senator, cabinet member under two presidents, and foreign diplomat.

John Ross

-principal chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1827

-helped establish a Cherokee Nation with three branches of government in 1827 with Major Ridge

-presided over the nation during the apex of its development in the Southeast, the tragic Trail of Tears, and the subsequent rebuilding of the nation in Indian Territory

Wilson Lumpkin

-his major accomplishment was his cardinal role in the removal of the Cherokee Indians from north Georgia.

-one of Georgia's most prominent political leaders of the antebellum period.

-he was elected to Congress four times, serving 1815-17 and 1827-31;

-Elected governor for two terms, then went on to serve as a U.S. commissioner to the Cherokee Indians (1836-37), as a U.S. senator (1837-41), and as a surveyor of Georgia's boundaries and an advocate of improved transportation

-Trustee of UGA

Sequoyah

-the legendary creator of the Cherokee syllabary, which enabled the Cherokees to read, write, record their laws, and publish newspapers in their own language.

-Also called George Gist or George Guess

-syllabary was used to print some articles in the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper, published in New Echota, Georgia

Howell Cobb

-served as congressman, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, governor of Georgia, and secretary of the treasury.

-Following Georgia's secession from the Union in 1861, he served as president of the Provisional Confederate Congress and a major general of the Confederate army.

Robert Toombs

-one of the most ardent secessionists in the U.S. Senate, helped to lead Georgia out of the Union on the eve of the Civil War

-Became secretary of state for the Confederacy.

-concluded his political leadership as one of the major architects of the state Constitution of 1877.

-the political lion of nineteenth-century Georgia politics

Alexander Stephens

-the vice president of the Confederacy during the Civil War (1861-65)

-Delivered the "Cornerstone Speech." In the speech, he explained fundamental differences between the Confederate and U.S. constitutions and the reasons for Southern secession

-Bestie of Robert Toombs

Crawford Long

A north Georgia physician, is credited with the discovery of anesthesia.

William and Ellen Craft

Slaves from Macon who gained celebrity after a very daring and public escape in December 1848. Ellen posed as a white slave owner, while William acted as her slave valet.

Mark Anthony Cooper

-A soldier, lawyer, politician, farmer, and entrepreneur

- best remembered as an industrialist whose ironworks was one of the leading businesses in antebellum northwest Georgia

-involved with railroads

-owned and operated the Western Insurance and Trust Company.

-bacon scandal - he refused to surrender the bacon to federal authorities, reiterating his states' rights views

Roswell King

-He established textile mills in the late 1830s and enticed wealthy coastal families to join his enterprise, thus changing the economy and the population mix of northern Fulton County.

-Had one of the largest cotton mills in North Georgia

-Native New Englander, manager of the Pierce Butler coastal plantations, and industrialist and businessman in Glynn and McIntosh counties

Land Lottery System

-public lands in the interior of the state were dispersed to small yeoman farmers (i.e., farmers who cultivate their own land) based on a system of eligibility and chance.

-Georgia sold approximately three-quarters of the state to about 100,000 families and individuals for minuscule amounts of money.

-Land originally used for tobacco, then shifted to cotton

Worcester v. Georgia

-the U.S. Supreme Court held in 1832 that the Cherokee Indians constituted a nation holding distinct sovereign powers.

-Although the decision became the foundation of the principle of tribal sovereignty in the twentieth century, it did not protect the Cherokees from being removed from their ancestral homeland in the Southeast.

-the case decision became the Indian nations' most powerful weapon against state and local encroachments on their tribal powers.

Georgia in 1860

-A geographic lynchpin that linked Atlantic seaboard and Deep South states, the "Empire State" was the second-largest state in area east of the Mississippi River

-In population, enslaved and free, Georgia was the largest in the Deep South. Georgia's population passed 1 million residents for the first time in 1860.

-Georgia remained a sharply divided society in terms of wealth and resources, with a pronounced hierarchical social structure dictated by the institution of slavery.

-Nearly 75 percent of Georgia's white male populace between the ages of twenty and seventy, and more than 90 percent of its enslaved populace were directly engaged in agricultural pursuits in 1860 - King Cotton

-forms of industry in late antebellum Georgia remained those most closely tied to agriculture and timber

Georgia and the Sectional Crisis

-Led to the outbreak of the Civil War. Southern politicians struggled during the crisis to prevent northern abolitionists from weakening constitutional protections for slavery. Georgians maintained a relatively moderate political course, often frustrating the schemes of southern radicals.

-The passage in 1850 of the Georgia Platform, which endorsed the Compromise of 1850, helped to avert secession for a decade.

-Upon learning of Lincoln's victory, Governor Brown recommended the allocation of $1 million for the state's defense, which was appropriated by the state legislature, and scheduled January 2 elections for a special state convention to discuss secession.

Battle of Kennesaw Mountain

-June 27, 1864

-located about twenty miles northwest of Atlanta in Cobb County, became the scene for one of the Atlanta campaign's major actions in the Civil War

-At Cheatham Hill, the heaviest fighting occurred along a salient stretch in the Confederate line dubbed "Dead Angle" by Confederate defenders.

-General Sherman (Union) vs. Johnston (Confederacy)

-Union loss

-one of the bloodiest single days in the campaign for Atlanta.

-Battle site is now turned into a park

Sherman's March to the Sea

-the most destructive campaign against a civilian population during the Civil War (1861-65), began in Atlanta on November 15, 1864, and concluded in Savannah on December 21, 1864.

-Union general William T. Sherman abandoned his supply line and marched across Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean to prove to the Confederate population that its government could not protect the people from invaders (Psychological warfare)

-Sherman telegraphed President Lincoln on December 22 that the city had fallen. He offered Savannah and its 25,000 bales of cotton to the president as a Christmas present.

Deportation of Roswell Mill Women

-during the Atlanta campaign General William T. Sherman ordered the approximately 400 Roswell mill workers, mostly women, arrested as traitors and shipped as prisoners to the North with their children.

- little evidence that more than a few of the women ever returned home.

Atlanta Campaign

-Name given by historians to the military operations that took place in north Georgia during the Civil War in the spring and summer of 1864.

-Confederate adopted a win-by-not-losing strategy

the Atlanta campaign began with the skirmish at Tunnel Hill in north Georgia.

-Sherman had won the campaign. Lincoln's reelection was assured, and the Confederacy was doomed.

Unionists

-Group of white southerners who played a substantial part in sowing discontent and undermining the Confederate war effort.

-Against the Confederacy

-three essential traits:

1. an "uncompromising devotion" to the Union

2. an "unmitigated hostility" to the Confederacy

3. a willingness to risk life and property "in defense of the Glorious Stars and Stripes."

-This loyalty was expressed in myriad ways, ranging from the passive aiding and abetting of Union prisoners or hospital patients, to the aggressive joining of Union ranks.

Joseph E. Brown

-The Civil War governor of Georgia and one of the most successful politicians in the state's history.

-Soon after his election to the Georgia state senate in 1849 he emerged as a leader of the Democratic Party, and his influence continued after he was elected a state circuit judge in 1855.

-generally championed the common white people of Georgia

-an ardent secessionist, but resisted central Confederate government

-served as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia for two years post-Civil War

-Part of the Bourbon Triumvirate

Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era

-From 1868 through the early 1870s they functioned as a loosely organized group of political and social terrorists. Goals included the political defeat of the Republican Party and the maintenance of absolute white supremacy.

-Created in response to newly gained civil and political rights by southern blacks after the Civil War

-more successful in achieving their political goals than they were with their social goals during the Reconstruction era.

-The Klan's organized terrorism began most notably on March 31, 1868, when Republican organizer George Ashburn was murdered in Columbus, Georgia.

Amos T Akerman

-He joined the Republican Party after the war and served on the state convention that drew up the Constitution of 1868.

-biggest issue he faced was that of federal land subsidies to railroad companies constructing lines in the West. His ruling that the railroads' commitments had to be fulfilled before the land could be granted earned him the enmity of the railroad "robber barons."

-As attorney general he strenuously investigated and prosecuted Klan activities, and under his leadership the Klan was effectively ended.

Rufus Bullock

-First Republican to be elected to Georgia's highest political office, serving as governor from 1868 to 1871.

-most hated man in the state during Reconstruction; stood up for African American rights

-was forced from office by the Ku Klux Klan

-recovered enough of his reputation to become president of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.

-His significant role in organizing the Atlanta Exposition of 1895 included persuading Booker T. Washington to give a keynote address and acting as master of ceremonies for the opening day speeches.

Atlanta Compromise Speech

-On September 18, 1895

-the African American educator and leader Booker T. Washington delivered this famous speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta.

-Considered the definitive statement of what Washington termed the "accommodationist" strategy of black response to southern racial tensions, it is widely regarded as one of the most significant speeches in American history.

-Washington's speech responded to the "Negro problem"—the question of what to do about the abysmal social and economic conditions of Blacks and the relationship between Blacks and whites in the economically shifting South.

-Acknowledged by both Blacks and Whites

-Biggest critic, W.E.B. Du Bois

Andersonville Prison

-Confederate prison was established in Macon County to provide relief for the large number of Union prisoners concentrated in and around Richmond, Virginia.

-Officially named Camp Sumter

-Earned a reputation as the most notorious of Confederate atrocities inflicted on Union troops.

had the highest mortality rate of any Civil War prison

-The prison site was preserved as a national cemetery soon after it closed, largely due to efforts by Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross

Secession

-Followed nearly two decades of increasingly intense sectional conflict over the status of slavery in western territories and over the future of slavery in the United States.

-Georgia's state legislature set January 2, 1861, as the election date for a state convention to discuss secession, which was to meet on January 16.

-The secession of southern states hastened the outbreak of the Civil War (1861-65).

-The Confederate government named Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as president and Georgia's Alexander Stephens as vice president.

Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as president and Georgia's Alexander Stephens as vice president.

Who was the Confederate President and Vice President?

Carpetbaggers

northerners who came south after the war to seek their fortune through politics, under a system in which a one-year residence in any southern state brought voting and office-holding rights.

Reconstruction in Georgia

-As a defeated Confederate state, Georgia underwent Reconstruction from 1865, when the Civil War (1861-65) ended, until 1871, when Republican government and military occupation in the state ended. Though relatively brief, Reconstruction transformed the state politically, socially, and economically.

-As the Civil War ended in early May 1865, Georgia's Confederate governor, Joseph E. Brown, surrendered to Union authorities and was paroled.

-The widely anticipated "forty acres and a mule" for formerly enslaved individuals stemmed from Union general William T. Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15, issued from Savannah. Under that order, federal authorities confiscated "abandoned lands" along the coast and distributed them to freedpeople.

-in the fall of 1865 the Freedmen's Bureau became active in administering the land program in Georgia and returned much Black labor to the fields, mediating a contract-labor system between white landowners and their Black workers, many of whom they formerly enslaved.

-Georgia stood alone in not creating a harsh Black Code

-KKK rose to power

-Joseph E. Brown, Democrat again and soon-to-be U.S. senator, was increasing the profits of his northwest Georgia coal mines by using the convict lease system, one of the least humane innovations of Reconstruction.

-Black Georgia voters, first manipulated, were ultimately disfranchised, beginning in the 1890s.

-the major legacy of Reconstruction would be a sharecropping life

Scalawags

southern-born white Republicans or, by a broader definition, any white Republicans who had lived in the South before the war.

Georgia's Historic Capitals

Georgia has had five different state capitals: Savannah (1776), Augusta (1785), Louisville (1786), Milledgeville (1806), and Atlanta (1868)

Henry W. Grady

-the "Spokesman of the New South," served as managing editor for the Atlanta Constitution in the 1880s.

-used his office and influence to promote a New South program of northern investment, southern industrial growth, diversified farming, and white supremacy.

-In 1887 he successfully lobbied for the establishment in Atlanta of the Georgia Tech

Atlanta Race Riot of 1906

-September 22-24, 1906

-white mobs killed dozens of blacks, wounded scores of others, and inflicted considerable property damage.

-alleged assaults by black males on white females were the catalyst for the riot, but there are a number of underlying causes like:

1. Job competition between blacks and whites

2. class distinctions

3.expansion of Jim Crow segregation

-The incident was a defining moment for Walter White, who went on to become secretary of the [NAACP]

-The riot contributed to the passage of statewide prohibition and Black suffrage restriction by 1908.

Thomas E. Watson

-Elected to the Georgia General Assembly (1882), the U.S. House of Representatives (1890), and the U.S. Senate (1920), where he served for only a short time before his death.

-In his early years he was characterized as a liberal, especially for his time. In later years he emerged as a force for white supremacy and anti-Catholic rhetoric.

Nominated by the Populist Party as its vice presidential candidate in 1896, he achieved national recognition for his egalitarian, agrarian agenda.

-He is remembered for being a voice for Populism and the disenfranchised, and later in life, as a southern demagogue and bigot.

-Became a powerful leader in the Farmers' Alliance

John B. Gordon

-One of Georgia's most renowned political and military figures of the nineteenth century

-an outspoken opponent of Radical Reconstruction and the alleged leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia.

-enhanced his own reputation as a soldier by publishing his highly successful memoir, Reminiscences of the Civil War, in 1903.

-Part of the Bourbon Triumvirate with Joseph E. Brown and Alfred H. Colquitt

-Living embodiment of the Confederacy

Rebecca Latimer Felton

-Writer and tireless campaigner for Progressive Era reforms, especially women's suffrage

-she was the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate.

-also known for her conservative racial view, encouraged lynchings

Lynching

-The illegal killing of a person by a group of others. It does not refer to the method of killing.

-Between 1882 and 1930 the American South experienced an epidemic of fatal mob violence that produced more than 3,000 victims, the vast majority of whom were African Americans.

-More than 450 documented lynchings occurred in Georgia alone.

-the most common justification for mob violence was the alleged murder of a white person. The second most frequent justification was the purported rape or attempted rape of a white woman. Essentially violations of the racial code of conduct.

-Decatur County witnessed most lynching activity, less common in northeast GA

-the bloodiest episode in the state's lynching history, however, took place in Watkinsville when a mob invaded the Oconee County jail and forcibly removed eight inmates, seven Black men and one white man.

Sam Hose Lynching

tortured, mutilated, and lit on fire, 2000 people witnessed his lynching as a spectacle and took home souvenirs (his body parts)

Mary Turner Lynching

she was hung by her feet and her unborn baby was sliced otu of her and killed

Moore's Ford Lynching

added fuel to the fire of civil rights activism, inspired a renewed call for federal anti-lynching legislation in Congress, and helped stir Truman to create the President's Committee on Civil Rights.

County Unit System

-Voting system that allotted votes based on county size. 159 counties split into three categories. The urban counties received 6 unit votes each, the town counties received 4 unit votes each, and the rural counties received 2 unit votes each.

-established in 1917 when the Georgia legislature, overwhelmingly dominated by the Democratic Party, passed the Neill Primary Act.

-allowed rural counties to control Georgia elections by minimizing the impact of the growing urban centers, particularly Atlanta.

-In Gray V. Sanders, a lawsuit filed in Georgia, judge declared the system was indeed invalid and declared declared that every vote was to be given equal weight regardless of where in the state a voter lived. Essentially helped abolish the system.

Hoke Smith

-Trial attorney and publisher of the Atlanta Journal, was most influential as the leader of Georgia's Progressive movement during his years as governor (1907-9, 1911) and as a U.S. senator (1911-21)

-greatly strengthened the Railroad Commission's power to regulate railroads, increased public school funding, established the juvenile court system, and abolished the notorious convict lease system.

-led the adoption of a constitutional amendment to impose a grandfather clause that effectively disenfranchised Black Georgians.

-the led the passage of the Smith-Lever Act (1914) to create a national agricultural extension system and the Smith-Hughes Act (1917) for vocational education in secondary schools

The Progressive Era

-a period of varied reforms that took place throughout the United States over the first two decades of the twentieth century.

-much of that change was enacted by the U.S. Congress under the leadership of three consecutive presidents—Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson

-generated a variety of changes at the state and local levels as well including prohibition, woman suffrage, the regulation of child labor, campaigns to abolish the convict lease system and reform the penal system, and expansion of educational opportunities and social services for marginalized groups.

Women's Suffrage

-Even though the Nineteenth Amendment, known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, became federal law on August 26, 1920, Georgia women could not vote until 1922.

-amendment was not officially ratified and approved by the state legislature until 1970.

-In Georgia all branches of the various suffrage societies and leagues merged into the League of Women Voters of Georgia.

Railroads

-Georgia's first railroad tracks were laid in the mid-1830s, leading from Athens, Augusta, Macon, and Savannah.

Some twenty-five years later, the state not only could claim more rail miles than any other in the Deep South but also had linked its major towns and created a new rail center, Atlanta.

-Today, the state's rail system is a strong, 5,000-mile network anchored by two major lines, Norfolk Southern and CSX, and a couple dozen shortlines.

World War II in Georgia

-Southern states were critical to the war effort and none more so than Georgia. Some 320,000 Georgians served in the U.S. Armed Forces and countless others found employment in burgeoning wartime industries.

-the war accelerated Georgia's modernization, lifting it out of the Great Depression and ushering it into the mainstream of American life.

-Increased women and black employment with higher paying jobs

Ku Klux Klan in the Twentieth Century

-its violent activities were increasingly rationalized and even romanticized, most notably in Thomas Dixon's popular novels, The Leopard's Spots (1902) and The Clansman (1905).

-The popularity of The Birth of a Nation, a film that solidified the emerging image of the Klan as a noble organization that had saved the post-Civil War South from the tyranny and corruption of southern Blacks and northern Republicans, and specifically its appearance in Atlanta in December 1915, proved the major impetus for the reemergence of the Klan.

-In the 1980s and 1990s the militant racism and anti-Semitism of these Klansmen led them into a close relationship with such organizations as the Aryan Nations and other neo-Nazi factions.

-Knights of the KKK rose

Corra Harris

-One of the most celebrated women from Georgia for nearly three decades in the early twentieth century.

She is best known for her first novel, A Circuit Rider's Wife

-Published essays in the Independent, a highly reputable New York-based periodical known for its political, social, and literary critiques.

-She established a reputation as a humorist, southern apologist, polemicist, and upholder of premodern agrarian values.

-criticized southern writers who sentimentalized a past that never existed.

-the first female war correspondent to go abroad in World War I (1917-18).

Walter White

-Native of Atlanta, Served as chief secretary of the NAACP from 1929 to 1955. During the years preceding the Brown v. Board of Education decision, he was one of the most prominent African American figures and spokespeople in the country.

-Investigated lynchings and race riots

-Published two novels during the Harlem Renaissance

Convict Lease System

-After emancipation and ratification of the 13th amendment, landowners had a difficult time finding, and controlling, a labor force

-Officials during Reconstruction approved the leasing of prisoners to private citizens. A workforce that could be firmly controlled.

-The prisoners were supposed to be treated, but were often overworks and abused

-When convict leasing was abolished, the use of roadside chain gangs took its place. The chain gang system relied upon the idea that prisoners were repaying their debts to society through labor on public projects, which the state government supported because it could be done "on the cheap."

-Convict labor in Georgia no longer endangers the health of prisoners. However, Georgia's convicts are still expected to work on various projects, including roadside beautification.

Leo Frank Case

-A Jewish man in Atlanta was placed on trial and convicted of raping and murdering a thirteen-year-old girl, Mary Phagan, who worked for the National Pencil Company, which he managed.

-The degree of anti-Semitism involved in Frank's conviction and subsequent lynching was enough of a factor to have inspired Jews, and others, throughout the country to protest the conviction of an innocent man.

-Georgia governor John Slaton determined Frank was innocent, and instead condemned him to life in prison, but his decision lead to riots throughout Atlanta, and The governor declared martial law and called out the National Guard.

-The Knights of Mary Phagan, affiliated with the KKK, lynched Leo Frank in Phagan's hometown for "justice"

-In the end, it was the janitor, Jim Conley, who had killed Mary.

Boll Weevil

-Feeds on cotton buds and flowers. Decimation of the cotton industry in the South had implications for the entire region.

-greatly affected Georgia's long history of cotton production between 1915, when the insect was introduced to Georgia, and the early 1990s, when it was eliminated as an economic pest

-The pest was a driving force behind the "great migration" of poor tenant farmers into northern cities, and the state's dependence on cash-crop production left its soil depleted and prone to erosion.

-reinfestation continues to be a threat to the cotton industry

Franklin D. Roosevelt in Georgia

-After being elected as the 32nd president of the United States in 1932, he used his new home at Warm Springs, "The Little White House," as a retreat from the rigors of leading a nation through the Great Depression

Visited Warm Springs and Georgia forty-one times and died there in 1945

-To Georgians, he was both the president and a trusted friend who could be seen waving as he passed by in his convertible or rode by in a train on his way to the nation's capital.

-In 1927 he established the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation. Known today as the Roosevelt Warm Springs Rehabilitation Center, the facility serves patients suffering from the effects of polio.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee SNCC

-One of the key organizations in the American civil rights movement of the 1960s.

-Sought to coordinate youth-led nonviolent, direct-action campaigns against segregation and other forms of racism.

-Emerging from the student-led sit-ins to protest segregated lunch counters in Greensboro, NC and Nashville, TN

-members played an integral role in sit-ins, Freedom Rides, the 1963 March on Washington, and such voter education projects as the Mississippi Freedom Summer.

In Georgia, they concentrated its efforts in Albany and Atlanta.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

-Started in 1917, this organization has been the most effective and consistent advocate for African American civil rights in twentieth-century Georgia.

-Youth branches of this organization in Georgia have nurtured many future leaders of various major civil rights organizations, and the state has provided many native sons and daughters to the national leadership over their long history.

-State and local leadership under Governor Herman Talmadge was extremely hostile toward the organization, and violence and economic reprisals against members were common.

-More recently, the organization has focused on discrimination in the private sector, especially where it hinders economic opportunities for minorities.

Martin Luther King Jr

-A 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.

-Born in Atlanta

-Head of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), a new organization formed to run the bus boycott

-250,000 participants at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. King's "I Have a Dream" speech was the most memorable event of the day and confirmed him as Black America's most prominent spokesperson.

on April 4, 1968, he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was supporting striking sanitation workers.

W. W. Law

-A crusader for justice and the civil rights of African Americans.

-He served as president of the Savannah chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1950 to 1976

-came to be widely known as "Mr. Civil Rights."

-advocated passive resistance to segregation

-turned his attention to the preservation of African American history and historic buildings.

Sibley Commission

-In 1960, Governor Vandiver was forced to decide between closing public schools or complying with a federal order to desegregate them, so he encouraged State Representative George Busbee to create a Committee charged with gathering state residents' sentiments regarding desegregation and reporting back to the governor.

-laid the foundation for ending massive resistance to desegregation in the state and helped avoid a showdown between Vandiver and the federal government.

Civil Rights Movement

-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 myriad 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 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

Carpet Industry

-The craft spread like wildfire, and by the 1920s thousands of men and women in north Georgia.

-Dalton, Georgia, became the center of production for this new industry,as the growing number of manufacturers encouraged the development of specialized machine shops

-new tufting machines speeded the industry's conversion from home manufacture to factories and encouraged it to move toward mass production.

-This industry remains heavily concentrated in Georgia in the twenty-first century

Margaret Mitchell

-Author of Gone With the Wind, set during the Civil War, one of the most popular books of all time.

-Born in Atlanta

Lillian Smith

-One of the first prominent white southerners/writers to denounce racial segregation openly and to work actively against Jim Crow.

-argued that Jim Crow was evil ("Segregation is spiritual lynching," she said) and that it leads to social and moral retardation.

-gained national recognition—and regional denunciation—by writing Strange Fruit (1944), a bold novel of illicit interracial love. Five years later she hurled another thunderbolt against racism in Killers of the Dream (1949)

Joel Chandler Harris

-One of the South's most treasured authors, he gained national prominence for his numerous volumes of Uncle Remus folktales.

-he invented an engaging black character named Uncle Remus, who liked dropping by the Constitution offices to share humorous anecdotes and sardonic insights about life on the streets of bustling postwar Atlanta.

-His legacy as a "progressive conservative" New South journalist, folklorist, fiction writer, and children's author continues to influence our society today.

Ellis Arnal

-Four years as governor of Georgia (1943-47) are considered to be among the most progressive and effective in the modern history of the state, and paid off a state debt of $36 million.

-He undertook an ambitious ten-point reform program that was approved by the legislature within twenty-four days of his assuming the governorship—a record still unequalled in Georgia.

-credited for restoring accreditation to GA institutions of higher education (which were lost due to the Cocking Affair by Talmadge), lowering the voting age, revising the state constitution, reforming the state penal system, established a teachers' retirement system, and repealed the poll tax

-Youngest governor in the nation, beat Talmadge who was seeking to re-elect

-Involved in the three governors controversy (refused to vacate the governor's office until the dispute was settled)

Eugene Talmadge

-A controversial politician, he played a leading role in the state's politics from 1926 to 1946. During his three terms as state commissioner of agriculture and three terms as governor, his personality and actions polarized voters into factions in the state's one-party politics of that era.

-a leading critic of the New Deal in the South, opposed the renomination of FDR in 1936

-Caused the Cocking Affair

-Death resulted in the Three Governors Controversy

Three Governors Controversy

-In 1946, governor-elect Eugene Talmadge died, and since the state constitution did not state who would replace him, Herman Talmadge (his son), Melvin E. Thompson (lieutenant governor), and Ellis Arnall (current governor) all claimed to be governor.

-Ellis Arnall, refused to leave office until the dispute was settled.

-The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that Thompson was the successor.

Jimmy Carter

-The only Georgian elected president of the United States, held the office for one term, 1977-81. His previous public service included a stint in the U.S. Navy, two senate terms in the Georgia General Assembly, and one term as governor of Georgia (1971-75).

-his policies contained a unique blend of liberal social values and fiscal conservatism.

-championed equal rights for all Americans, especially women and minorities, and basic human rights for all people.

-won the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian efforts in 2002

-Inherited the problem of stagflation, which he could not combat and cost him his Democratic supporters

Cocking Affair

-the summer of 1941

-the most devastating assault on higher education in the history of Georgia.

-Governor Eugene Talmadge's firing of professors, administrators, and members of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia generated a storm of adverse publicity throughout the nation and led the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to withdraw accreditation from all of Georgia's state-supported colleges for whites.

-Walter Cocking, dean of the College of Education at the University of Georgia, was a key target in the Talmadge purge because he wanted to integrate a school in Athens.

-Ellis Arnall, the next governor, won the election against Talmadge and reclaimed accreditation

State Flags of Georgia

-The 1956-2001 GA state flag had the Confederate Flag in its design, and it was a greatly divided issue in the state upon changing it.

-Governor Roy Barnes tried to change the 1956 flag, but had much hardship

-Last one signed into effect in 2003 by Governor Sonny Perdue, which was its third state flag in only 27 months (a national record)

-the new flag recognizes Georgia's Confederate heritage by placing Georgia's coat of arms and "In God We Trust" on the first national flag of the Confederacy

-some Georgians have intense feelings of loyalty to the Confederate battle symbol, and the 1956 state flag will doubtless be displayed on private property—particularly in rural areas—for years to come.

Dixiecrats

-Members of the States' Rights Democratic Party, which splintered from the Democratic Party in 1948.

=Consisted of malcontented southern delegates to the Democratic Party who protested the insertion of a civil rights plank in the party platform

-opposed Truman's position on civil rights

they caused a split in the Democratic party.

-Goals:

1. hoped to deny both the Democrats and Republicans a majority in the electoral college, forcing the election into the U.S. House of Representatives.

2.leaders maneuvered to have the Thurmond-Wright ticket declared the "official" Democratic Party ticket on the ballots of all southern states

-Georgia was the lone Deep South state to remain loyal to the national Democratic Party (had the dixiecrats as a third-party party on the ballot)

-immediately dissolved after the 1948 election; but paved the way for the rise of the modern Republican Party in the South.