Ed Jackson and Charly Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

June 26

1794 Having traveled to the U.S. capital city of Philadelphia, Cherokee Indians signed the Treaty of Philadelphia, which affirmed the boundaries set forth by cessions in the 1791 Treaty of Holston.

1840 At Fort Gibson in the Cherokee Indian Territory, members of the faction of Cherokees that had voluntarily migrated west in the years prior to the Trail of Tears ratified the Sept. 6, 1839 act reuniting the two groups.

1858 Alonzo Herndon, the first major black entrepreneur in Atlanta history, was born into slavery in Walton County, Georgia. After the Civil War, he moved to Jonesboro, where he opened a barber shop. Within a few months, he moved to Atlanta and began working in a downtown barber shop for blacks. Before long, Herndon owned several Atlanta barbershops , though the most famous was the "A. F. Herndon's Tonsorial Palace" which opened in 1902 on 66 Peachtree St. With mirror-lined walls, this glamorous facility was the most famous barber shop in the South -- and some would say the world. Its all-black staff served an all-white clientele that included Atlanta's leading citizens. Herndon's real success, however, came in insurance. By the time of his death in 1927, his Atlanta Life Insurance Company served the black community in eight states. Eventually it would become the largest black-owned insurance company in the U.S.

1891 Sidney Howard was born. Though he has no direct Georgia connection, we remember him as the playwright who wrote the screenplay for the movie version of Margaret Mitchell's epic novel, Gone with the Wind.

1918 The Georgia General Assembly ratified the 18th Amendment establishing national prohibition. Gov. Hugh Dorsey signed the joint resolution on July 1, but the U.S. Secretary of State considers the date the second house of a legislature approves an amendment as the official date of its ratification -- regardless of whether the governor signs the resolution.

1934 Former Atlanta University professor W.E.B. Du Bois resigned his position with the NAACP as a result of a dispute over policy.

1938 Noted African-American poet and Atlanta University graduate James Weldon Johnson died during a thunderstorm in Wiscasset, Maine, when the car he was riding in was hit be a train. [For a brief biographical profile, see the June 17 entry.]

1944 Albany-born trumpet great Harry James and his band reached the top of the music charts with their recording of "I'll Get By."

1962 Ray Charles topped the music charts with his version of the country music hit, "I Can't Stop Loving You."

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1734 In his personal diary, the Earl of Egmont (a leading member of the Georgia Trustees in London) recorded of preparations being made at Trustees' offices for boarding Tomochichi and the other Georgia Indians who had arrived in England ten days earlier:

"I went with my wife to town and dined at home. In the evening I went to the Georgia Board, where we ordered 200 blank bank forms of receipt to be printed, and that the Indians should be brought from Gravesend [a port city on the Thames River about 25 miles downstream from London] to our office, viz. Toma-Chihy [sic], Chief of the Yamacrees [sic], his chief warrior, Toma-Chihi's wife and grand nephew, the Chief of the _____ nation, and four others. We ordered eight blankets to be bought for their bedding, and that our accountant should go to the Custom House to desire the wine they brought over should not pay duty."

Source: Historical Manuscripts Commission [U.K.] Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont: Diary of the First Earl of Egmont (Viscount Percival), (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1923, Vol. II, p. 113.

1869 Gertrude Thomas had some radical ideas for her day, which she knew would be unacceptable to her society, but which she confided to her journal:

"The laws of our state permit Negroes to vote & hold offices but forbid their marriages with white persons. I sometime think I am ahead of my time -- that my ideas are more liberal, more advanced than they ought to be but blood is blood and I predict that in the next generation, that which I confess to me would be a stigma of disgrace will then be no especial drawback in matrimonial alliances. The bright mulatto man & especially woman who has coursing in his or her veins the blood of the first men in the South, first in talent. I don't say anything about the morality side of the questions. I am handling the subject fearlessly as a great social problem. I predict that these persons never having known the weight of bondage & having received the equalizing influence of education will be received socially into some familys [sic]. I make this prediction because already I see social equality between our uneducated women & our late servants, & I see the contrast between black as well as mulatto women who have (without the education of books) been trained under the most refined associations. I am forced to see the difference between them & some white help I have employed. It is for this reason I would cry aloud for education for our children thorough and complete. . . . Sometimes I think our people are blind. They do not see the handwriting upon the wall. There must always be a strong affinity for the two races. . . ."

Source: Virginia Ingraham Burr (ed.), The Secret Eye: The Journal of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, 1848-1889 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 320-321.

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