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Georgia



  • Gullah Geechee of Sea Islands Fight for their Post-Slavery Legacy

    by DeNeen L Brown

    The Gullah Geechee people were chosen for enslavement in the Sea Islands because of their experience cultivating rice in Africa, and maintained a distinctive culture with strong African elements through slavery and emancipation. Development and gentrification threaten that legacy today. 



  • The Racist Origins of Georgia's Runoff System

    by Steven F. Lawson

    Runoff elections were installed in Georgia to ensure that Black voters could not elect their preferred candidates, allowing white voters a second chance to consolidate support around white candidates. 



  • Charles Sherrod: An Unheralded Giant of the Civil Rights Struggle

    by Ansley L. Quiros

    "Charles Sherrod is the most important civil rights figure you've never heard of"--fighting for six decades in southwest Georgia, persevering through incremental gains after the publicity of the Albany Movement faded. 



  • The Odd Place of one Savannah Neighborhood in the History of Redlining

    by Todd Michney

    The history of the Cuyler-Brownville area shows that HOLC risk assessments and Federal lending practices were responsive to local banks' perception of lending risk and desire for profit, factors which resulted in the rarity of an African American community retaining a "green" rating. 


  • Under Columbus, Georgia: What Folklore Erases

    by Bryan Banks

    Subterranean tunnels under Columbus, Georgia have been repurposed as part of dramatic stories of crime, emancipation, and war, tales which obscure the more prosaic and violent aspects of the town's history. 



  • Her Family Owned Slaves. How Can She Make Amends?

    "For almost three years now, with the fervor of the newly converted, Ms. Marshall has been on a quest that from the outside may seem quixotic and even naïve. She is diving into her family’s past and trying to chip away at racism in the Deep South, where every white family with roots here benefited from slavery and almost every Black family had enslaved ancestors."