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.”
Courtesy of Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.
1885
“Georgia Wonder” Annie Abbott gave her first performance.
1888
John Stith Pemberton filed papers for the incorporation of the Coca-Cola Company.
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
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.
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 Puckett, with fiddler Gid Tanner, became the first country music artist to record for the Columbia Phonograph Company.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
