-
Jan 1, 1000
Paleo
By the close of the Paleoindian Period, around 9000 or 8000 B.C., sea level was within a few meters of its present elevation, and climate and biota approached modern conditions.During this interval massive extinctions of such animals as elephants, horses, camels, and other megafauna took place, and plant communities shifted location and composition in dramatic fashion. -
Jan 1, 1000
Archaic
The Early Archaic Period in Georgia and elsewhere in the eastern United States was approximately 10,000 to 8,000 years ago. At that time most of Georgia was covered with oak-hickory hardwood forests -
Jan 1, 1000
Woodland
The Woodland Period of Georgia prehistory is broadly dated from around 1000 B.C. to A.D. 900. This period witnessed the development of many trends that began during the preceding Late Archaic Period (3000–1000 B.C.) and reached a climax during the subsequent Mississippian Period (A.D. 800–1600). -
Capital moved to louisville
After the British left, the capital was moved to Augusta, then Louisville while a new city was being built on the Oconee River, reflecting the western move of Georgia's populace. But by 1847 some were unhappy with Milledgeville and called for an election to move the capital to Atlanta. -
University of Georgia
When the University of Georgia was incorporated by an act of the General Assembly on January 27, 1785, Georgia became the first state to charter a state-supported university. In 1784 the General Assembly had set aside 40,000 acres of land to endow a college or seminary of learning. -
Eli Whitney and the cotton gin
In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. By the mid-19th century, cotton had become America’s leading export. Despite its success, the gin made little money for Whitney due to patent-infringement issues. -
Period: to
Yazoo Land Fraud
Yazoo land fraud, in U.S. history, scheme by which Georgia legislators were bribed in 1795 to sell most of the land now making up the state of Mississippi (then a part of Georgia's western claims) to four land companies for the sum of $500,000, far below its potential market value. -
Missouri compromise
In the years leading up to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, tensions began to rise between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions within the U.S. Congress and across the country. They reached a boiling point after Missouri’s 1819 request for admission to the Union as a slave state, which threatened to upset the delicate balance between slave states and free states. -
Period: to
dahlonega Gold rush
The Georgia Gold Rush was the second significant gold rush in the United States, and overshadowed the previous rush in North Carolina. It started in 1828 in present-day Lumpkin County near the county seat, Dahlonega, and soon spread through the North Georgia mountains, following the Georgia Gold Belt. -
worcester v georgia
the U.S. Supreme Court held in 1832 that the Cherokee Indians
Samuel Worcester, a missionary, defied Georgia through peaceful means to protest the state's handling of Cherokee lands. He was arrested several times as a result. With a team of lawyers, Worcester filed a lawsuit against the state that went all the way to the Supreme Court, where he finally won his case.
Samuel Worcester
constituted a nation holding distinct sovereign powers. Although the decision became the foundation of the princi -
Period: to
Trail of Tears
In 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy, the Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate to an area in present-day Oklahoma. The Cherokee people called this journey the "Trail of Tears," because of its devastating effects. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). -
Tom Watson and the Populists
The public life of Thomas E. Watson is perhaps one of the more perplexing and controversial among Georgia politicians. 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 -
Period: to
lnternational Cotton Exposition
Atlanta held its first exposition, named the International Cotton Exposition, in Oglethorpe Park in 1881. The city then had fewer than 40,000. -
William B. Hartsfield
The youngest of three sons, William Berry Hartsfield was born March 1, 1890, to Charles Green Hartsfield and Victoria Dagnall Hartsfield in Atlanta. He was educated in the Atlanta public school system but did not finish high school or attend college. -
Benjamin Mays
Perhaps best known as the longtime president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Benjamin Mays was a distinguished African American minister, educator, scholar, and social activist. -
Atlanta Riot
During the Atlanta race riot that occurred September 22-24, 1906, white mobs killed dozens of blacks, wounded scores of others, and inflicted considerable property damage. Local newspaper reports of assaults by black males on white females were the catalyst for the riot, but a number of underlying causes lay behind the outbreak of the mob violence. -
Herman Talmadge
Herman Eugene Talmadge was born on August 9, 1913, in Telfair County. Talmadge was the only son of Eugene and Mattie Thurmond Talmadge. -
Lester Maddox
The tumultuous political and social change in Georgia during the 1960s yielded perhaps the state's most unlikely governor, Lester Maddox. Brought to office in 1966 by widespread dissatisfaction with desegregation, Maddox surprised many by serving as an able and unquestionably colorful chief executive. -
Jimmy Carter in Georgia
President Jimmy Carter's boyhood home in Plains officially became part of the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in 2000. In the background is the family store and a windmill Carter's father erected in 1935 that supplied running water for the family for the first time.Jimmy Carter Carter's journey to the Oval Office began in the small Sumter County town of Plains. Born on October 1, 1924, James Earl Carter Jr. later adopted the more informal "Jimmy" as his official designation. -
Martin Luther King Jr
Family, church, and education shaped King's life from an early age. Michael Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta on January 15, 1929, to Alberta Williams and Michael Luther King Sr. -
Andrew Young
Andrew Young's lifelong work as a politician, human rights activist, and businessman has been in great measure responsible for the development of Atlanta's reputation as an international city. -
Maynard Jackson elected Mayor
Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr. was born on March 23, 1938, in Dallas, Texas, where his father, Maynard H. Jackson Sr., was a minister. The family moved to Atlanta in 1945, when Maynard Sr. took the pastorship at Friendship Baptist Church. -
Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter
Hamilton Holmes is best known for desegregating Georgia's universities. One of the first two African American students admitted to the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens in 1961, Holmes was also the first black student admitted to the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta two years later. -
Atlanta Hawks
The story of the Atlanta Hawks begins in 1946, when the franchise known as the Tri-Cities Blackhawks was shared by three cities along the Mississippi River: Moline, Illinois; Rock Island, Illinois; and Davenport, Iowa. The team moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, then to St. Louis, Missouri, where the St. Louis Hawks won the franchise's only championship in 1958. -
1946 Governor's Race
For a brief period of time in 1947, Georgia had three governors. Eugene Talmadge won election to a fourth term as Georgia's governor in 1946, but died before his inauguration. To fill the vacancy, Eugene's son, Herman, was appointed by the state Legislature. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), now acknowledged as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century, unanimously held that the racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Although the decision did not succeed in fully desegregating public education in the United States, it put the Constitution on the side of racial equality and galvanized the nascent civil rights movement into a full revolution. -
1956 State Flag
The new banner became effective immediately, giving Georgia its third state flag in only twenty-seven months—a national record. Georgia also leads the nation in the number and variety of different state flags. -
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in April 1960, by young people who had emerged as leaders of the sit-in protest movement initiated on February 1 of that year by four black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina. Although Martin Luther King, Jr. and others had hoped that SNCC would serve as the youth wing of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the students remained fiercely independent of King and SCLC, generating their own projects. -
Sibley Commission
Despite Sibley's efforts to minimize support for resistance, 60 percent of witnesses favored total segregation. On April 28, 1960, Sibley, ignoring the results of the hearings, presented the commission's report to state leaders, in which he recommended accepting Hooper's decision while offering several measures that would allow schools to remain largely segregated. -
The Albany Movement
According to traditional accounts, the Albany Movemen began in fall 1961 and ended in summer 1962. It was the first mass movement in the modern civil rights era to have as its goal the desegregation of an entire community, and resulted in the jailing of more than 1,000 African Americans in Albany and surrounding rural counties. -
Ivan Allen Jr.
Allen ran for mayor in 1961 and defeated Lester Maddox. He took office in 1962 and later that year flew to Paris, France, to help identify the bodies of the Atlantans who perished in the Orly plane crash. -
March on Washington
On August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 Americans gathered in Washington, D.C., for a political rally known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Organized by number of civil rights and religious groups, the event was designed to shed light on the political and social challenges African Americans continued to face across the country. The march, which became a key moment in the growing struggle for civil rights in the United States, culminated in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream" -
Atlanta Falcons
In 1965 the Atlanta Falcons became the first professional football team in the city of Atlanta and the fifteenth National Football League (NFL) franchise in existence.Since the team's first preseason game against Philadelphia at Atlanta Stadium (later Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium), the Falcons have become a mainstay in Atlanta's sports culture. -
Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. -
Period: to
1996 Olymic Games
From July 19 until August 4, 1996, Atlanta hosted the Centennial Summer Olympic Games, an event that was without doubt the largest undertaking in the city's history. -
Atlanta Braves
On April 12, 1966, the Braves played their first regular season game in Atlanta Stadium before a sellout crowd of more than 50,000 enthusiastic fans. Mayor Ivan Allen Jr., who had worked tirelessly to bring the Braves to Atlanta, threw out the ceremonial first ball.
