Ed Jackson and Charly Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

March 9

1736 Charles Wesley arrived in Frederica on St. Simons Island to serve as James Oglethorpe's secretary.

1818 On the west bank of the Ocmulgee River in what today is Wilcox County, 34 members members of the Telfair County Militia engaged about 60 Creek Indians in the Battle of Breakfast Branch. The battle occurred in an area ceded to Georgia less than two months earlier in the Treaty of the Creek Agency. Four Creeks and five militia members were killed in what proved to be the last battle between Creeks and whites in the area.

1866 Gov. Charles Jenkins signed two acts of the General Assembly relative to "persons of color."

• One act granted the legal status of marriage to persons of color living together as husband and wife. In the event, either the man or woman had two or more reputed spouses, such person immediately was to select one of such reputed spouses--and with their permission undertake the ceremony of marriage. Failure to do so could lead to charges of adultery or fornication.
• The second act provided that among persons of color, the parent of child be required to maintain his or her children -- whether legitimate or not -- to the same extent as white persons. The act also such child born prior to passage of the act be declared the legitimate child of his or her mother -- and also of his or her father, if acknowledged by the father.

1931 Atlanta native and civil rights leader Walter F. White was named executive secretary of the NAACP.

1945 Gov. Ellis Arnall signed a joint resolution of the General Assembly proposing a new state constitution for Georgia. In a special election held on Aug. 7, 1945, Georgia voters approved what would be known as the Constitution of 1945 (although technically the entire new constitution was adopted as a single amendment to the Constitution of 1877).

1945 Gov. Ellis Arnall signed legislation creating the Georgia Ports Authority with power to finance, build, and operate seaports along Georgia's coast. The authority's first project would be to expand the port facilities at Savannah.

1945 Gov. Ellis Arnall signed a joint resolution of the General Assembly stating the legislature's "continuing sympathy with the movement to abolish all measures restricting Jewish immigration into Palestine, so that all seeking a new life of freedom and dignity after this war, may settle on the soil of the ancestral homeland with a view of developing it as a free and democratic Jewish Commonwealth."

1946 A conference initiating a World Bank and monetary fund, attended by over 600 delegates from around the world, convened in Savannah.

1956 Gov. Marvin Griffin signed a second series of bills and resolutions that were part of his "massive resistance" package of legislation at the 1956 session of the General Assembly in response to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 and 1955 decisions in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. These included:

• H.R. 185, an Interposition Resolution, which declared that "decisions and orders of the Supreme Court of the United States relating to separation of the races in the public institutions of a State as announced and promulgated by said court on May 17, 1954, and May 31, 1955, are null, void and of no force or effect."
• H.B. 267, which provided that all common carriers of passengers for intrastate travel provide a separate waiting room for white passengers, to be labeled "White Waiting Room, Intrastate Passengers." The act further provided that for all other passengers traveling in intrastate or interstate travel, a separate waiting room be provided, to be labeled "Waiting Room, Interstate Passengers and Colored Intrastate Passengers."
• S.B. 152, which authorized the Department of Public Safety to allow members of the State Patrol to make arrests and otherwise enforce Georgia's segregation laws when requested by a citizen or official of any city or county.
• H.B. 243, the general appropriation act for FY 1957, which included provisions in the appropriations to the State Department of Education and the State Board of Regents requiring that state appropriations could only be made to segregated schools and colleges in Georgia.

1956 Gov. Marvin Griffin signed S.R. 30, a joint resolution of the General Assembly creating the All-South Centennial Committee. Although the resolution does not directly mention the Civil War, it does note that the purpose of the committee is to plan for the centennial of the dates 1861-1865, which the resolution describes as "one of the most momentous period in American history." [Click here to read text of resolution.] Interestingly, S.R. 30 was not one of the bills in Griffin's legislative package. Also, several of the authors of S.R. 30 were also sponsors of the 1956 bill changing Georgia's state flag.

1960 Led by Lonnie King and Julian Bond, a group of Atlanta black students known as the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights published "An Appeal for Human Rights" in Atlanta newspapers. The appeal, critical of both white and black leaders, was in response to white reaction to the first "sit-in" that had occurred days before in Greensboro, N.C.

1970 Gov. Lester Maddox signed an act setting Georgia's minimum wage at $1.25 per hour. Exempted from this minimum were: (a) employers with annual sales of not more than $40,000, or who had 5 or fewer employees; (b) employees who were paid in part or whole by gratuities; (c) employees who were students in high school or college; and (d) newspaper carriers.

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1871 Once again, the financial failures of her husband caused humiliation for Gertrude Thomas; not only her but other family members were involved, furthering her feelings of despair:

". . . The scenes have shifted. Again I am advertised in the daily papers and -- but oh the subject is so painful I dislike to talk about, or write of it. Today is a sale of the Cows, Mules, Horses, Ploughs, and & takes place at Cotton Town. 'All sold by consent of parties as the property of JJ Thomas,. . . .' I think of Mr. Thomas, and my heart bleeds for him -- How proud he was of that plantation. I had no love for Burke but I am sorry for him -- I may be a strange woman but I do not dislike the loss of property as much as I do the fact that it is my own family who are having my husband sold out. . . . This time one year ago (see March 6 entry) Cousin Polly had the house sold at the market at Sheriff's sale. Has it only been one year ago? It seems as if it might have been ten years ago. I have no bitter feelings for her. She acted legally -- and I have only to remember that through my husband, her daughter is threatened with bankruptcy. . . ."

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. 362-363.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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