USG Georgia History Exemption Exam

Native American population center @ Stallings Island in the Savannah River

Kolomoki Mounds built in Early County: remains of one of the most populous Woodland settlements north of Mexico.

Only Spanish attempt to est. a permanent settlement within the region that would become GA -- Led by Lúcas Vázquez de Ayllón. -- Only lasted 6 weeks.

Mid-1600s: English settlers from South Carolina made forays across the Savannah River and into northeast GA, engaging 1st in a thriving slave trade of NAs and later in the even more lucrative deerskin trade, which continued well beyond the British colonization of GA.

By 1880: 45% of GA's farmers, black and white, had been driven into tenancy

By 1920: 2/3 of GA's farmers, worked on land they did not own, most often as sharecroppers

1892: Populist Party organized, under leadership of Thomas E. Watson Offered platform of banking & RR reform, as well as cooperative farm exchange

Mid 1870s: Farmers' Alliance began in TX

For many elite white & politically entrenched GAans, the true danger of Populism lay not in its econ policies but in its racial inclusiveness, as black farmers were encouraged to participate in the new 3rd-party movement. Watsonachieved nat'l status as a Populist leader, gaining party's nom for VP in 1896, becoming 1st GAn to run on a nat'l ticket since William Harris Crawford in 1824. .

Even as Watson received this recognition, however, the Populists lost ground nationally when the Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan, co-opted their advocacy of the unlimited coinage of silver. Ultimately, the election was lost to the Republican candidate William McKinley.

1908: Amendment to GA state constitution est. literacy and property requirements to supplement the poll tax, effectively barring voting by blacks (and many poor whites as well). DISINFRANCHISEMENT

September 1906: brutal 3 day race riot in ATL

August 1915: Leo Frank lynching

1906/7 (few months after ATL race riot): KKK resurreccted on Stone Mtn

1915: Boll weevil intro'd to the state, led to a precipitous drop in cotton production, with the number of bales produced in 1923 only about 1/4 of the # produced 5 years earlier.

1933: Roosevelt inaugurated

1923: Charles Lindbergh flew his first solo flight at Souther Field in Americus

1925: William B. Hartsfield, who later became mayor of Atlanta, established Hartsfield Airport

1941: Delta moved its HQ to ATL

1954: Supreme Court ruled on Brown v. Board of Education: Plessy v Ferguson overturned, "seperate but equal unconstitutional"

1956: inclusion of the Confederate battle flag in the state flag redesign (in response to events subsequent BvBB)

1960-61 GA makes decision on and then implements integration of schools, as ATL gains more power over the state **Sibley Commission**

1962: Federal district court struck down county unit system

1961-2: Albany Movement

1962: Racial moderate Carl Sanders elected governor

1965: Voting Rights Act

1966: Lester Maddox elected governor of GA, a segregationist, proving many whites in the state still resisted social/ political reform of the era

1976: Jimmy Carter elected Pres. broke the GA Republican reign (temporarily) carrying the state and the nation Carter won a majority of GA's black vote but NOT the white

1732: GEORGIA IS ESTABLISHED Georgia was the last of the 13 colonies to be founded. (50 years after the 12th colony)

1733: Savannah settled

New event

1742: Rum legalized

1751: Slavery legalized: Georgians moved quickly to establish a coastal plantation economy based on rice and Sea Island cotton.

July 7, 1742: Battle of Bloody Marsh

July 4, 1776: Declaration of Independence -- 3 Georgians signed: ---- Button Gwinnett ---- Lyman Hall ---- George Walton

1787: Constitution signed -- 2 Georgians signed: ---- Abraham Baldwin ---- William Few Jr.

1779: Siege of Savannah: Most serious military confrontation between British and American troops, as the latter, with help from French forces, tried unsuccessfully to liberate the city from its yearlong occupation by British troops.

1779: Capital moved from Savannah to Augusta

1793: Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in GA Led to the development of the Black Belt in the Deep South

1830s: Gold rushin N GA mountains Most extensive/profitable gold rush east of the Mississippi River

1790s: Yazoo Land Fraud

1801: University of GA opens

1785: University of GA established via charter 1st university in the nation established by a state government (copy)

1836: Wesleyan College in Macon est. 1st degree-granting women's college in the world

1838-1839: the Trail of Tears Cherokees' forced exile from GA's NW territory, a particularly potent symbol of the trauma and suffering that all such removals of Native people entailed during the period, as white colonists moved to remove native presences. (In GA's case, the Creeks and Cherokees.)

1832: Worcester v. Georgia Supreme Court case GA only Southern state challenged over Indian sovereignty. 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.

1837: Atlanta founded (Originally called Terminus)

Increasingly industrialized Georgia, 2nd- largest state in area east of the Mississippi River.

Jan 19, 1861 GA 5th state to seceed from the Union

The state's geographical diversity and the dominance of its nonslaveholding white populace made its selection of delegates to the 1861 secession convention one of the most divided (in terms of delegates for and against secession) within the first wave of southern states to leave the Union. The final vote to secede, however, was supported by a sizeable majority of those delegates.

Summer of 1864: William T. Sherman's campaign from Chattanooga, TN to ATL

Sep. 1864: Fall of Atlanta to Sherman

Subsequent to fall of Atlanta: -- Sherman's March to the Sea -- December: occupation of Savannah

16 Jan 1865: Sherman's Field Order No, 15 "40 acres and a mule" Confiscated as Union property a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, SC, to the St. John's River in FL, including GA's Sea Islands and the mainland thirty miles in from the coast. The order redistributed the roughly 400,000 acres of land to newly freed black families in forty-acre segments. Ultimately though, only offered false hopes.

September 1868: General Assembly's expulsion of 27 duly elected black Repub. legislators, despite the fact that Republicans then held both the governorship, in Rufus Bullock, and a majority in the state senate.

19 Sep 1868: Camilla Massacre March in response to expulsion of black legislators from the General Assembly. Whites opened fire, leaving ~a dozen black protestors dead and thirty wounded

15 July 1870: After being banned from doing so as a punishment by the US Congress for GA's role in the Camilla Massacre/etc., GA congressmen are finally allowed to take their seats in GA

Late 1871: State government returned to the full control of white conservative Democrats, known as "Redeemers," thereby ushering in what white southerners once termed the "Redemption era."

1868: State cap. moves from Milledgeville to Atlanta

Proclamation of 1763: Forced move back from Appalachian Mts.

May 1, 1776: Archibald Bulloch elected Pres. of the Council of Safety

1847: Gov. George W. Towns Whigs lost gov. of GA to Dem.s & never got it back

Late Archaic Period: More permanent Native American settlements began being constructed during this time.

Woodland Period: NA groups in GA became increasingly sedentary, establishing villages and developing horticulture.

Mississippian Period: Complex native cultures, organized as chiefdoms, emerged and developed lifeways in response to the particular features of their physical surroundings.

GA's unique geographical & geological position (Blue Ridge Mountains + 2 different costal plains touching the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico) drew a large variety of people to the region, leading to a greater diversity of early NA cultures than found elsewhere in the Southeast.

Towns with defensive structures built in this period, as were numerous mounds, as evident today @ Etowah, Ocmulgee, and Nacoochee. (copy)

With the arrival of Eurpean explorers and settlers, the Mississippian culture began to decline, and remnants of various chiefdoms coalesced to form larger societies, including those of the CREEKS and CHEROKEES.

Spanish expeditions moved through GA. 1540: Most notable, Hernando de Soto's. Provided some of the best documentation of NA life in GA prior to 18c. The Spanish presence also included Catholic missionaries, who established Santa Catalina de Guale and other short-lived missions at points along Georgia's coast from 1568 through 1684. These missions played a key role in assimilating the Native American populations of the region into the colonial system.

GA was the only colony founded and ruled by a Board of Trustees, which was based in London, England, with no governor or governing body within the colony itself for the first two decades of its existence.

1732-1751: GA ruled by Board of Trustees

1752-1776: Royal Georgia GA ruled by royally appointed governors

1775-1783: Revolutionary War

As the colony with the shortest col. experience, smallest pop., and least development, GA remained largely on the periphery of Revolutionary War politics and wartime action. Though Georgians resisted British trade regulation, they tended to sympathize with British interests bc royal rule had brought prosperity for many colonists and because they desired the presence of British troops to stem the threat of Indian attacks.

The construction of railroads connecting Athens, Augusta, Macon, and Savannah was an important development in Georgia during the 1830s.

1861-65: Civil War

1850s: By the 1850s GA claimed more miles of rail lines than did any of its southern neighbors, positioning GA as an important home front during the Civil War

1865 - 1871: Reconstruction Though relatively brief, Reconstruction transformed the state politically, socially, and economically.

1900-1920: Progressive Era A period of varied reforms that took place throughout the US over the first two decades of the 20th century. While 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— it was also a movement that generated a variety of changes at the state and local levels as well.

1941-1945: WORLD WAR II Southern states were critical to the war effort with GA peak among them. Experiences of some 320,000 GAs that served in the arm forces during WWII were pivotal to determining the state's future development & the war itself was a watershed moment in GA's history.

Because it occurred when important shifts in the state's politics, race relations, and economy were already under way, the war accelerated Georgia's modernization, lifting it out of the Great Depression & ushering it into the mainstream of American life.

1872-1890: "Bourbon Triumvirate," consisting of former Confederate governor Joseph E. Brown and former Confederate generals John B. Gordon and Alfred H. Colquitt. These three politicians maintained power within Georgia as governors and/or U.S. senators from 1872 until 1890, capitalizing on their positions to industrialize the state, often for their own profit. The triumvirate's efforts were bolstered by Henry W. Grady.

Henry W. Grady, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, spearheaded a crusade to build a prosperous "New South" centered around Atlanta. Using his considerable journalistic and oratorical skills, Grady fashioned an emotional portrait of Atlanta rising phoenix-like from the ashes of war to become the capital of a dynamic and progressive New South. The vision he articulated for much of the 1880s stood very much at odds with both the reality and the broad national impression of Atlanta, as well as

1892-1896 (Late 19th c.): Rise of the Farmers' Alliance & the Populist Party in GA Allowed farmers to protest situation

GA remained pred. rural, w/ most of its citizens attempting to survive as farmers. The loss of the slave labor force dealt a severe blow to cotton production, which, compounded by a decline in the demand for cotton worldwide, left GA agriculture in dire financial circumstances. Neglected by a gov focused on industrial & business opportunities, farmers had no choice but to participate in the tenant and crop lien systems, which imposed an exploitative and stifling credit system.

A fraternal org of white farmers and other rural southerners, including teachers, ministers, and physicians, the Farmers' Alliance began in TX in the mid-1870s and swept across the entire South during the late 1880s. The organization attempted to solve the mounting financial probs of southern farmers by forming coop purchasing & marketing enterprises. It advocated a federal farm-credit and marketing scheme called the subtreasury plan.

When these efforts failed, the Alliance played a leading role in est. a national 3rd party, the People's or Populist Party, in the early 1890s. This bold entry into partisan politics, however, split the Alliance's membership and contributed to the organization's rapid demise.

Demise of the Populist Party had consequences: their unsuccessful effort to challenge the established racial hierarchy led to the heirs of the Bourbon Triumvirate working to curtail the political power of blacks, as well as formalize the convention of social segregation.

1889-1918: More lynchings took place in GA than anywhere else in the US

Late 1870s-mid 1960s: JIM CROW ERA

1929-1939: GREAT DEPRESSION During the 1920s more than 400,000 GAns, almost all black, migrated to other parts of the country, & b/t 1910 & 1930 nearly 1/2 the state's agricultural workers had abandoned farming.

Roosevelt created the Agricultural Adjustment Admin during his first 100 days in office as an attempt to raise crop prices by lowering agricultural production. An unintended consequence of the policy, however, was to put farmers out of work, causing even greater numbers to seek other means of employment.

As a result, rural communities struggled to maintain their populations in the face of dwindling farming income and the lack of industrial job opportunities. Promising a surplus of cheap, nonunion labor and relying on a variety of inducements, some of which were financed by public subscription or deductions from workers' checks, several GA towns succeeded in attracting small, low-wage employers— mostly textile mills —in the 1930s.

WWII brought the Great Depression to an end, as industrial production for the war effort created thousands of new jobs around the nation. Georgia in particular felt these economic benefits, as soldiers arrived for training at Fort Benning in Columbus, at that time the largest infantry training post in the world. The Bell Aircraft Corporation in Marietta, known as Bell Bomber, produced B-29 airplanes from 1943 until the end of the war, and by early 1945 the factory employed more than 28,000 worker

The ports of Savannah and Brunswick produced nearly 200 "Liberty Ships" between 1942 and 1945. The Southeastern Shipbuilding Corporation, based at a site on the Savannah River, employed more than 15,000 workers.

The economic effect of such war activities across Georgia was significant, with annual personal income rising from less than $350 in 1940 to more than $1,000 by 1950, surpassing the national average. After the war the state continued to prosper, with Atlanta in particular experiencing a growth in industry and population. A transportation hub since its origins as a railroad town, the city was well positioned to accommodate this growth with the development of Hartsfield Airport from a regional fa

1950s-1960s: CIVIL RIGHTS ERA Asthe civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s unfolded, the interests, aims, and ambitions of Atlanta's political and economic leaders diverged dramatically in many ways from those that prevailed in the state at large. As the city's population surged, Atlanta voters chafed under the state's county unit system.

1752-1754: Provincial council runs GA while GA charter passes thru parliamentary committees and received the royal signature

1754-1757: Gov. John Reynolds

1757-1760: Gov. Henry Ellis

1760-1776 Gov. James Wright

1754-63: French and Indian War

1843-47 Gov. George W. Crawford

1846-48: Mexican War

1847-51 Gov. George W. Towns [states right Dem]

1851-1853 Gov. Howell Cobb [Unionist Dem]