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| July in Georgia History |
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In July 1733 the founders of Congregation Mickve Israel, the South's oldest Jewish congregation, arrived in Savannah. This
month also marks the anniversary of the Battle of Bloody Marsh, a skirmish between English and Spanish forces on St. Simons
Island in 1742.
During the Revolutionary War, Georgians George Walton, Lyman Hall, and Button Gwinnett signed the Declaration of Independence
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. Following their defeat in the war, the British army left Savannah on July
11, 1782.
Wesleyan College in Macon, the first degree-granting women's college in the world, graduated its first class in July 1840.
The Georgia Military Institute opened in Marietta in July 1851 and remained open through the end of the Civil War. In 1873
Thomasville native Henry O. Flipper enrolled in the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, later becoming the first
African American to graduate from that institution. And on July 16, 1914, Asa Candler, former president of the Coca-Cola Company,
offered a gift of $1 million to open a new Methodist college. This donation led to the creation of what would become Emory
University in Atlanta.
During the Civil War the Battle of Atlanta took place on July 22, 1864. That same month Union general William T. Sherman ordered
approximately 400 mill workers, mostly women, in Roswell to be arrested as traitors and shipped with their children as prisoners
to the North.
On July 20, 1869, the Atlanta Constitution published the first Uncle Remus story by Joel Chandler Harris. More than a century later, Celestine Sibley's final column
for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran on July 25, 1999.
Mormon missionary Joseph Standing was murdered in Whitfield County on July 21, 1879, while traveling to a church conference.
One of the most notorious trials in Georgia history began on July 28, 1913, when Leo Frank was charged in Fulton County Superior
Court with the first-degree murder of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan.
Souther Field, the site of aviator Charles Lindbergh's first solo flight, was built in Sumter County in July 1918, during
World War I.
On July 6, 1889, Elberton was christened the "Granite City" by the Elberton Star newspaper.
Communist organizer Angelo Herndon was arrested in 1932 on charges of attempting to incite insurrection in Atlanta.
In July 1936 Margaret Mitchell sold the movie rights to Gone With the Wind for $50,000, an unprecedented sum for a first novel.
On July 4, 1944, Primus E. King challenged the white primary system in Georgia by attempting to vote at the Muscogee County
Courthouse in Columbus. The Albany Movement to protest segregation in that city began with marches against the Martin Theater
in July 1963. The following year Martin Luther King Jr. attended the July 2 signing ceremony for the Civil Rights Act of 1964
at the White House, and a little more than thirteen years later U.S. president Jimmy Carter awarded King the Presidential
Medal of Freedom.
The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta was established on July 1, 1946.
The Georgia Agrirama opened in Tifton on July 1, 1976, and the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base at St. Marys was commissioned
two years later.
In sports, golfing great Bobby Jones won the U.S. Open in July 1930, on his way to becoming the first golfer to claim a Grand
Slam. The Atlanta International Raceway (later Atlanta Motor Speedway) hosted its first race on July 31, 1960. Hank Aaron,
hitting his 755th and final home run, set the all-time record for career home runs on July 20, 1976.
In 1983 Georgia's present constitution went into effect.
In 1986 the first Goodwill Games, sponsored by Ted Turner, began in Moscow, Russia. On July 10, 1993, the groundbreaking ceremony
for Centennial Olympic Stadium took place in Atlanta, where the 1996 Olympic Games would commence three years and nine days
later.
The Flint River overflowed its banks in July 1994, when tropical storm Alberto stalled over western Georgia.
Events held around the state in July include the Freedom Celebration in Butts County and the Watermelon Days Festival in Crisp County.
Born this month in Georgia history: politicians Oliver H. Prince (1782), Nelson Tift (1810), Robert Toombs (1810), and Culver Kidd (1914); governors Charles McDonald (1793), William J. Northen (1835), Hugh M. Dorsey (1871), Clifford Walker (1877), and Ernest Vandiver Jr. (1918); religious figures Patrick Hues Mell (1814), E. K. Love (1850), Charles McCartney ("Goat Man"; 1901), and Clarence Jordan (1912); judges Logan Bleckley (1827) and Elbert Parr Tuttle (1897); businessmen Joel Hurt (1850) and James H. Blanchard (1941); Confederate memorialist Mildred Lewis Rutherford (1851); philanthropist George Foster Peabody (1852); writers Will Harben (1858), Olive Ann Burns (1924), Greg Johnson (1953), and Margaret Edson (1961); civil rights activists Walter White (1893), Slater King (1927), Horace T. Ward (1927), Leroy Johnson (1928), Hamilton Holmes (1941), and Earl T. Shinhoster (1950); landscape architect William C. Pauley (1893); artists Alexander Brook (1898), Nellie Mae Rowe (1900), Ben Shute (1905), St. EOM (1908), and R. A. Miller (1912); architect Ellamae Ellis League (1899); musicians "Georgia Tom" Dorsey (1899), Mattiwilda Dobbs (1925), Francine Reed (1947), and Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls (1963); journalist Walter J. Brown (1903); and historian Edward J. Cashin (1927).
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Congregation Mickve Israel
Congregation Mickve Israel in Savannah is America's third-oldest Jewish congregation, and the oldest...
Savannah
Founded in 1733 by colonists led by James Edward Oglethorpe, Savannah is the oldest city in Georgia and...
St. Simons Island
The second-largest and most developed of Georgia's barrier islands, St. Simons is approximately twelve...
George Walton (ca. 1749-1804)
George Walton was one of three Georgians to sign the Declaration of Independence. He served in numerous...
Button Gwinnett (1735-1777)
Button Gwinnett was one of three Georgia signers of the Declaration of Independence. He served in Georgia's...
Macon
Macon, the seat of Bibb County, is the retail, medical, financial, educational, and cultural center of...
Marietta
Located in metropolitan Atlanta just north of the Chattahoochee River, the city of Marietta has a population...
Henry O. Flipper (1856-1940)
Henry O. Flipper was the first African American to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point,...
Coca-Cola Company
The registered trademark of this multinational soft drink firm represents arguably the most widely recognized...
Emory University
As one of the fastest-growing research universities in the United States, Emory University has established...
Atlanta Campaign
By early 1864 most Confederate Southerners had probably given up hopes of winning the Civil War (1861-65)...
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Few cities in America have a daily newspaper that has published continuously for more than 100 years....
Joel Chandler Harris (1845-1908)
One of the South's most treasured authors, Joel Chandler Harris gained national prominence for his numerous...
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), whose adherents are known as Latter-day...
Whitfield County
Whitfield County is located in northwest Georgia at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains, about...
Souther Field
Souther Field is the oldest continuously operating civilian airport in the United States that has participated,...
Sumter County
Sumter County, in southwest Georgia, was established by an act of the state legislature on December 26,...
Elberton
The county seat of Elbert County in Georgia's Piedmont region is Elberton. Officially incorporated in...
Communists
During the late 1920s and 1930s the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) waged an...
Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949)
Margaret Mitchell was the author of Gone With the Wind, one of the most popular books of all time. The...
Gone With the Wind (Film)
Few films are so closely identified with a geographical region as Gone With the Wind is identified with...
Muscogee County
Muscogee County, located in west central Georgia, was established by the state legislature on June 9,...
Albany Movement
According to traditional accounts the Albany Movement began in fall 1961 and ended in summer 1962. It...
Jimmy Carter (b. 1924)
Jimmy Carter, the only Georgian elected president of the United States, held the office for one term,...
Georgia Agrirama
The Georgia Agrirama, the state's official museum of agriculture, is a living history museum located...
Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base
Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, located at St. Marys, in Camden County on the south Georgia coast, is...
Bobby Jones (1902-1971)
The greatest amateur golfer ever, Bobby Jones dominated his sport in the 1920s. In the eight seasons...
Hank Aaron (b. 1934)
"Hammerin' Hank" Aaron, a player for the Atlanta Braves, hit 755 home runs, a record that stood unchallenged...
Ted Turner (b. 1938)
In the last three decades of the twentieth century, Ted Turner transformed himself into a modern-day...
Georgia Constitution
State constitutions are best understood with reference to their historical roots. A review of the history...
Segregation
Beginning in the 1890s, Georgia and other southern states passed a wide variety of Jim Crow laws that...
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Judaism and Jews in Georgia
Historian Ralph Melnick has written that "nearly everything one concludes from a study of Southern Jewry...
Battle of Bloody Marsh
On July 7, 1742, English and Spanish forces skirmished on St. Simons Island in an encounter later known...
Revolutionary War in Georgia
Though Georgians opposed British trade regulations, many hesitated to join the revolutionary movement...
Lyman Hall (1724-1790)
Lyman Hall was one of three Georgians to sign the Declaration of Independence. He served as a representative...
Wesleyan College
Chartered in 1836 as the first degree-granting women's college in the world, Wesleyan College is a private...
Georgia Military Institute
Established in Marietta and opened to students in July 1851, the Georgia Military Institute (GMI) was...
Civil War: Overview
The South, like the rest of the country, was forever altered by the dramatic events of the Civil War...
Asa Candler (1851-1929)
Asa Griggs Candler, founder of the Coca-Cola Company, was also a banker and real estate developer and...
Methodist Church: Overview
Georgia's deep roots in Methodism reach back to the founders of the Methodist movement. Methodism is...
Atlanta
Atlanta is the capital of Georgia and the state's largest city. It is also one of the most important...
Deportation of Roswell Mill Women
In July 1864 during the Atlanta campaign General William T. Sherman ordered the approximately 400 Roswell...
Uncle Remus Tales
The Uncle Remus tales are African American trickster stories about the exploits of Brer Rabbit, Brer...
Celestine Sibley (1914-1999)
Celestine Sibley, a renowned southern author, journalist, and syndicated columnist, reported for the...
Joseph Standing (1854-1879)
Mormon missionary Joseph Standing, an an elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS...
Leo Frank Case
The Leo Frank case is one of the most notorious and highly publicized cases in the legal annals of Georgia....
Charles Lindbergh in Georgia
In 1923 Charles Lindbergh flew his first solo flight at Souther Field in Americus. He visited Georgia...
World War I in Georgia
Georgia played a significant role during America's participation in World War I (1917-18). The state...
Granite
Tucked away in the northeastern Georgia Piedmont between the Savannah and Broad rivers lies the city...
Angelo Herndon Case
An African American member of the Communist Party, Angelo Herndon won national and international fame...
Gone With the Wind (Novel)
Atlanta native Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel of the Civil War (1861-65) and Reconstruction in Georgia,...
Primus E. King (1900-1986)
On the morning of July 4, 1944, Primus E. King, an African American duly registered to vote in Georgia,...
Columbus
The lure of making money from cotton and the waterpower of the Chattahoochee River shaped the Muscogee...
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
Martin Luther King Jr., Baptist minister and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference...
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with headquarters in Atlanta, has been a key factor...
Tifton
Tifton, the county seat of Tift County, is located on the coastal plain in south central Georgia some...
St. Marys
St. Marys has been described at different times over the centuries as a bustling seaport, a sleepy tourist...
Atlanta Motor Speedway
Atlanta Motor Speedway is one of the oldest and most popular stops on NASCAR's Winston Cup circuit. ...
Goodwill Games
CNN founder Ted Turner established the Goodwill Games in response to the United States' boycott of the...
Olympic Games in 1996
From July 19 until August 4, 1996, Atlanta hosted the Centennial Summer Olympic Games, an event that...
Flint River
The Flint River, which stretches from the Piedmont to the Chattahoochee River in southwest Georgia, is...
Thomasville
Thomasville, the county seat of Thomas County, is located in southwest Georgia's wiregrass region. The...
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