Courtesy of Archives Division, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System
Literature and Media
What’s black, white, and read all over? Explore the papers and publications that wrote the first draft of Georgia’s history.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution began as two separate newspapers: the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution. Both ran for over a hundred years before merging in 2001. Now the Journal-Constitution is the largest daily newspaper in the South. Throughout its history, the paper has won multiple Pulitzer Prizes and reported on events from the antebellum period, the turn of two centuries, and the civil rights era.
Sample Primary Sources
Digital Library of Georgia
Georgia Historic Newspapers
The Cherokee Phoenix
The Cherokee Phoenix was the leading news source for the Cherokee Nation during the nineteenth century. First printed in 1828 in New Echota, Georgia—the capital of the Cherokee Nation—the newspaper published local and international news along with works of fiction in Cherokee. The paper would become central to keeping the Cherokee community informed as the impending removal acts forced them off their ancestral lands.
Sample Primary Sources
Digital Library of Georgia – Cherokee Phoenix
Digital Library of Georgia – Elias Boudinot
Georgia Historic Newspapers
Civil War Journals, Diaries, and Memoirs
The Civil War has been called the “written war” due to the large number of personal accounts composed during the conflict. Letters, memoirs, first-hand accounts, and other documents gave dimension and gravity to a traumatic event. Many of these accounts were published, beginning in the 1870s. Events such as the Atlanta Campaign and Sherman’s March are covered, and the reports also give a voice to the numerous women who assisted at home and at the battlefront.
Sample Primary Sources
Digital Library of Georgia – Civil War diaries
Digital Library of Georgia – Civil War personal narratives
The George Foster Peabody Awards
The George Foster Peabody Award, given by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, recognizes excellence in storytelling across television, streaming, radio, and digital media. Thirty awards are given annually in categories including children and youth programming, documentary, entertainment, news, podcast and radio, and public service programming, as well as awards of lifetime and institutional achievement.
Sample Primary Sources
Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
The Great Speckled Bird
The Great Speckled Bird was an underground student newspaper ahead of its time. Started by college students at Emory and other universities in Atlanta in 1968, the paper represented the city’s New Left community. Articles covered antiwar protests, the women’s movement, abortion rights, and gay liberation. The newspaper was so popular that in six months, it went from being a biweekly newspaper to a weekly publication.
Sample Primary Sources
Digital Library of Georgia
Pulitzer Prizes of Georgia
The Pulitzer Prize was created to recognize excellence in literature, journalism, and music. From classics like Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind to Jack Nelson’s exposé on conditions inside mental health facilities, many Georgians have won Pulitzer Prizes for works that shaped our state.
Sample Primary Sources
Digital Library of Georgia
The Savannah Tribune
The Savannah Tribune has been covering news and issues related to Savannah’s Black communities since 1875. Its founder, John H. Deveaux, established the paper to defend the rights of Black people and help elevate their social status. Since then, the paper has covered significant topics, including the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre, lynchings in Georgia, and a 1990s police scandal.
Sample Primary Sources
Digital Library of Georgia- Savannah Tribune
Digital Library of Georgia – John H. Deveaux
Georgia Historic Newspapers – Sol C. Johnson
Georgia Historic Newspapers – Colored Tribune
Slave Narratives
Testimonies produced by enslaved men and women to share their personal experiences, slave narratives are an important and personal window into slavery in the American South. These testimonies include memoirs and autobiographies written by fugitives from slavery who fled North and twentieth-century interviews with formerly enslaved people who recorded their memories of life during slavery and the circumstances of their emancipation.
Sample Primary Sources
Digital Library of Georgia
Turner Broadcasting System
Georgia magnate Ted Turner changed the television game in the 1970s when he abandoned his family’s billboard business to launch station WTCG. Turner purchased the Braves baseball team, turned WTCG into the first true superstation, and started the Cable News Network (CNN), the first twenty-four-hour news network. Turner’s bold business moves grew Turner Broadcasting from a single station to several globally recognized brands.
Sample Primary Sources
Digital Library of Georgia – TBS
Digital Library of Georgia – TBS/ CNN/ Turner, Te
WERD
WERD was the nation’s first Black-owned radio station. Jesse B. Blayton bought WERD in 1949 and hired his son, Jesse B. Blayton Jr., to be the station manager. The station had an all-Black staff and played music and programming that interested Black listeners and communities. Located on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, the station shared a building with Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Its DJs would collaborate with King and often invited him to speak on the air.
Sample Primary Sources
Digital Library of Georgia
Georgia Historic Newspapers
WSB Radio
WSB, whose call letters stood for “Welcome South, Brother,” first broadcast in 1922 in Atlanta. In its early years, the station installed radios in public schools and broadcast educational programs. Today, WSB can be heard throughout much of the eastern and midwestern United States as well as parts of Canada.
Sample Primary Sources
Digital Library of Georgia
Georgia Historic Newspapers
