Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

July 11

1733 A shipload of forty-two Jewish immigrants from Europe arrived at the new settlement of Savannah. Against Trustee policy, James Oglethorpe allowed them to land--due in part to the fact that among the new colonists was Dr. Samuel Nunes. The colony's only doctor had died earlier, so the need for a physician overrode Trustee reluctance to allow Jewish colonists.

1742 Three Spanish ships sailed up the Frederica River on the back side of St. Simons Island looking for a location to land troops to launch a land and river attack on Fort Frederica, which guarded the river. Oglethorpe's forces opened fire, forcing the ships to retreat back down the river. This marked the last Spanish offensive against the fort, the island, and Georgia.

1782 British officers formally surrendered Savannah to Col. James Jackson. The last British troops and officials boarded ships and departed, thus ending the American Revolution for Georgia.

1864 Union Army engineers and work crews were busy rebuilding a 650-foot-long wooden bridge across the Chattahoochee River at Roswell which had been burned by retreating Confederate forces. This would be one of several sites where Sherman's army crossed the Chattahoochee during the coming six days.

1877 A convention of 185 delegates to draft a new state constitution convened in the state capitol (Kimball Opera House) in Atlanta. Their intent was to complete the "redemption" of Georgia by replacing the Reconstruction-era Constitution of 1868. The most prominent voice in the convention proved to be "unreconstructed rebel" Robert Toombs.

1905 Atlanta University professor and civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois organized the Niagara Movement, which met July 11-13 in Fort Erie, Ontario, and led to the formation of the NAACP four years later.

1925 Opera soprano Mattiwilda Dobbs was born in Atlanta. After graduating from Spelman College in 1946, she won an international music competition in 1951. In 1955 she became the first black artist to perform a major role with the San Franscisco Opera, and the following year the first to play a romantic lead role with the Metropolitan Opera. She later refused to perform for segregated audiences in Atlanta, but did sing at the inauguration of her nephew Maynard Jackson in 1974.

1943 Capt. Charles Dobbins was reported missing in action, when his plane failed to return to its North African base from a raid on Sicily. He was assigned to an Air Force paratroopers division as a pilot. A member of a prominent Marietta family, Capt. Dobbins belonged to the Marietta Country Club and the First United Methodist Church, where he had been a member of the choir and a leader in youth work. After the war Dobbins Air Base in Marietta would be named in his memory. [Contributed by Dr. Tom Scott, Kennesaw State University] For more information on Dobbins' death, click here.

1964 While driving through Madison County, Ga., Lemuel Penn, a black U.S. Army Reserve officer, was killed by a shotgun blast from a passing car. Penn had been on annual summer active duty at Fort Benning and was returning to his home in Washington, D.C. The driver of the car from which the blast occurred signed a statement admitting his role and identifying two members of the Klan -- Howard Sims and Cecil Myers -- as being the ones who actually fired the shots that killed Penn. Sims and Myers were subsequently tried in state superior court, but an all-white jury found them innocent. Federal prosecutors subsequently charged Sims and Myers with violating Penn's civil rights. A federal district court jury found them guilty, and the two served about six years in federal prison.

1977 President Jimmy Carter posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Martin Luther King nine years after his death. This is the nation's highest civilian award given to citizens who have enriched America through their achievements and service. It is bestowed at the sole discretion of the president.

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1738 George Whitefield noted both the material and moral success of the Salzburgers in Georgia, and hoped to duplicate one of their accomplishments in Savannah (which he did ultimately):

"Tuesday, July 11. Returned this evening from Ebenezer (whither I went Yesterday) the Place where the Saltzburgers [sic] are settled; and was wonderfully pleased with their Order and Industry. Their Lands are improved surprisingly for the Time they have been there, and I believe they have far the best crop of any in the Colony -- They are bless'd with two such pious Ministers, as I have not often seen: They have no Courts of Judicature, but all little Differences are immediately and implicitly decided by their Ministers, whom they look upon and love as their Fathers. They have likewise an Orphan-House, in which are seventeen children, and one Widow, and I was much delighted to see the Regularity wherewith it is managed, -- Oh that GOD may stir up the Hearts of his Servants to contribute towards that and another which we hope to have erected at Savannah. . . ."

Source: [no author or editor cited], Our First Visit in America: Early Reports from the Colony of Georgia, 1732-1740 (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1974), pp. 291-292.

1739 From Ebenezer, John Martin Boltzius recorded in his journal what he saw as selfless traits of the Yamacraw Indians:

". . . Two Indians visited my room today; and I again had occasion to observe a trait I had recently observed in some others: i.e. what is given to one of them, particularly the oldest, he shares in equal parts so that each may have a share, and this custom is observed for every little thing as long as it can at all be divided up. This particularly impressed me; no greed, egoism, or jealousy is noticeable in these people, but everyone wants his comrade to have as much as he himself wishes for."

Source: George Fenwick Jones and Renate Wilson (ed. and trans.), Detailed Reports on the Salzburger Emigrants Who Settled in America. . . Edited by Samuel Urlsperger (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981), p. 149.

1775 Meeting at Tondee's Tavern in Savannah, a committee of Georgia's Provincial Congress composed a letter to royal governor Sir James Wright stating that Georgia would no longer be the weak link among American colonies in opposition to Parliaments attempts to unconstitutionally tax colonists:

". . . Although there is no doubt but a great majority of the inhabitants of this Province always looked upon the claim of Parliament to take away the property of Americans as illegal and oppressive, yet, from a variety of causes, not unknown to your Excellency, this Province in the American chain has hitherto been the defaulting link. We have now joined with the other Provinces in the Continental Congress, and have sent a petition to his majesty, appointed delegates to the American Congress, and entered into such resolutions -- which we mean inviolably to adhere to -- as will convince the friends and foes of America that we would not live unworthy of the name of Britons, as labour under the suspicion of being unconcerned for the rights and freedom of America. . . ."

Source: George White, Historical Collections of Georgia (New York: Pudney & Russell, 1855), p. 75.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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