A number of significant historical events have occurred in Georgia during the month of March.

1500-1549

1540 

Hernando de Soto and his army reached the southern border of what is now Georgia.


1700-1749

1734

The  first group of Salzburgers, German-speaking Protestants who founded the town of Ebenezer, arrived in Savannah.


1750-1799

1776

During the Revolutionary War, British warships seized rice-laden merchant ships in the Battle of the Rice Boats.


1779

The royal government in Georgia was restored when, under the command of Archibald Campbell, the British won the Battle of Briar Creek.


1800-1849

1817

The  first prisoner arrived at the Georgia Penitentiary at Milledgeville.


1825

The Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette, of France, visited Georgia.


1836

Mexican forces executed more than 330 Georgia volunteers under the command of James Walker Fannin Jr. during the Texas Revolution.


1842

Crawford Long performed in Jackson County the first surgical procedure using an anesthetic.


1850-1899

1859

The  largest sale of human beings in the history of the United States occurred when Pierce Mease Butler sold 429 enslaved individuals in Savannah.


1862

During the Civil War, Joseph Addison Turner published the first issue of The Countryman newspaper.


1868

During Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan murdered Republican organizer George Ashburn in Columbus, marking the group’s first instance of organized terrorism.


1874

Journalist   Henry W. Grady published his influential editorial “The New South.”


1885

Georgia Wonder” Annie Abbott gave her first performance.


1888

John Stith Pemberton  filed papers for the incorporation of the Coca-Cola Company.

Georgia State Capitol
Georgia State Capitol

Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.


1889

Construction of the gold-domed state capitol building was completed.


1898

Atlanta businessman George V. Gress donated the Cyclorama painting depicting the Battle of Atlanta to the city.


1900-1949

Juliette Gordon Low
Juliette Gordon Low

Courtesy of Girl Scouts of the USA

1904

Emory University Hospital in Atlanta opened as Wesley Memorial Hospital.

1912

Eighteen girls held the first Girl Scouts meeting at the home of Juliette Gordon Low in Savannah.


1914

Pro-suffrage  women held their first rally in Atlanta.

Parade Vehicle
Parade Vehicle

Courtesy of Georgia Archives.


1920

The Atlanta Black Crackers minor league baseball team joined the Negro Southern League.


1922

WSB, the first commercial radio station in the South, began broadcasting on March 15, under the ownership of the Atlanta Journal. WGM, owned by rival paper the Atlanta Constitution, followed WSB onto the air one day later.


1924

Riley Puckettwith fiddler Gid Tanner, became the first country music artist to record for the Columbia Phonograph Company.

Riley Puckett
Riley Puckett

Courtesy of Juanita McMichen Lynch


1934

The Masters Tournament golf championship began in Augusta.


1937

Angelo Herndon’s autobiography, Let Me Live, was published.


1944

Trappist  monks from Kentucky founded the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers.

Monastery of the Holy Spirit
Monastery of the Holy Spirit

Courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development.


1946

Carson McCullers’s novel The Member of the Wedding was published.


1947

The “three governors controversy” came to an end when the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that Melvin E. Thompson was the rightful governor.


1950-1999

1955

Wallingford Riegger first performed his classical composition Dance Rhythms in Albany.


1956

James Brown’s  first single, “Please Please Please,” was released.

James Brown and Aretha Franklin
James Brown and Aretha Franklin

Courtesy of Atlanta University Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library Archives.


1959

Peachtree City, considered the most successful planned community in the nation, was incorporated.


1960

Students from Atlanta’s historically Black colleges and universities organized a series of sit-ins around the city to protest segregation.


1961

During  the centennial of the Civil War, Atlanta hosted a “re-premiere” of the film Gone With the Wind (1939).

C-141A
C-141A

Courtesy of Robins Air Force Base

U.S. president John F. Kennedy announced that the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in Marietta had been awarded the contract to build the C-141 Starlifter. Seven years later, the company began production of the first C-5 Galaxy aircraft.


1967

The first issue of Foxfire magazine, a project by students at the Rabun Gap–Nacoochee School, was released.


1968

The  first issue of the Great Speckled Bird, an underground newspaper in Atlanta, was published.

Great Speckled Bird
Great Speckled Bird

Photograph by Carter Tomassi

Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” topped the pop music charts nationwide.


1969

The Allman Brothers Band debuted.


1970

James Dickey’s novel Deliverance was published.


1977

U.S. president Jimmy Carter participated in the first “Dial-a-President” radio broadcast.


1980

The   Georgia Guidestones granite monument was unveiled in Elberton.

Georgia Guidestones
Georgia Guidestones

Photograph by Melinda Smith Mullikin, New Georgia Encyclopedia

Athens rock band R.E.M. formed.


1987

Delta Air Lines offered its first transpacific service to Tokyo, Japan, from Portland, Oregon.


1992

Wesleyan College hosted the first induction ceremony for Georgia Women of Achievement.


2000-Present

2004

During  a statewide referendum, Georgians voted for a new state flag design.

USS Georgia
USS Georgia

Photograph by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Regina L. Brown. Courtesy of the United States Navy


2008

The USS Georgia, a renovated guided-missile submarine, arrived at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, becoming the only submarine to reside in the same state for which it is named.


March Birthdays

March 6, 1745                        Casimir Pulaski, Revolutionary War hero

March [25, 26], 1774              Thomas Spalding, antebellum planter

March 8, 1822                        Richard Malcolm Johnston, writer

March 19, 1827                      John Rollin Ridge, writer

March 27, 1827                      William Louis Jones, science professor and journalist

March 28, 1834                      Rufus Bullock, governor

March 3, 1836                        Jefferson Franklin Long, politician

March 16, 1841                      Henry Tift, business leader

March 21, 1856                      Henry O. Flipper, first African American graduate from the

U.S. Military Academy at West Point

March 23, [1868]                    Fiddlin’ John Carson, musician

March 17, 1869                      Corra Harris, writer

March 1, 1876                        Ivan Allen Sr., Atlanta booster

March 12, 1888                      Hall Johnson, musician

March 21, 1889                      Mildred Seydell, writer

March 1, 1890                        William B. Hartsfield, politician

March 17, 1890                      Hattie Saussy, artist

March 3, 1891                        Grace Lumpkin, writer

March 13, 1902                      Jesse Jewell, business leader

March 17, 1902                      Bobby Jones, golfer

March 20, 1907                      Ellis Arnall, governor

March 15, 1911                      Ivan Allen Jr., politician

March 11, 1913                      Malcolm Bell Jr., historian

March 1, 1916                        Paul Broun Sr., politician

March 15, 1916                      Harry James, musician

March 14, 1918                      Cecil Alexander, architect

March 14, 1921                      Truett Cathy, business leader

March 10, 1924                      Tom Murphy, politician

March 25, 1925                      Flannery O’Connor, writer

March 26, 1925                      James Moody, musician

March 11, 1926                      Ralph David Abernathy, civil rights figure

March 20, 1927                      Leon Neel, ecologist

March 1, 1929                        Dorothy Felton, politician

March 8, 1930                        Millard Grimes, writer

March 12, 1932                      Andrew Young, civil rights figure

March 3, 1936                        Preston King, civil rights figure

March 20, 1937                      Jerry Reed, musician

March 2, 1938                        Tom Buck, politician

March 10, 1938                      Norman Blake, musician

March 16, 1938                      Emma Amos, artist

March 23, 1938                      Maynard Jackson, politician

March 21, 1939                      Martha Hudson, track and field Olympian

March 23, 1940                      John Blassingame, historian

March 2, 1941                        David Satcher, U.S. surgeon general

March 29, 1942                      Scott Wilson, actor

March 29, 1945                      Walt Frazier, basketball player

March 4, 1947                        Pam Durban, writer

March 11, 1948                      Roy Barnes, governor

March 20, 1958                      Holly Hunter, actor

March 3, 1962                        Herschel Walker, football player

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Parade Vehicle

Parade Vehicle

Riding in a car decorated as a float, representatives of the Georgia Young People Suffrage Association participate in a 1920 parade.

Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
geo088.

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