As premises of equality embedded in the nation’s founding documents arise anew in discussion, a rare copy of the Declaration that has a connection to Georgia has sold for a record price. And a related document is coming back on the market.
Tag: Slavery
Posted inStories of Atlanta
Ignored Laws
Atlanta’s population in 1850 was around 2,500 people, of which 493 were slaves. Unlike the southern part of the state where large landowners utilized slave labor to tend and harvest crops, the bulk of Atlanta’s slave population was utilized for domestic labor, carpentry and blacksmithing. Unlike their southern counterparts, many of Atlanta’s enslaved peoples lived […]
Posted inStories of Atlanta
Hired Out
When the colony of Georgia was first founded, slavery was banned. The board of trustees that oversaw the new colony wanted to avoid creating a plantation-based society dependent on slave labor. The decision was one of practicality and not moral imperative. Georgia would serve as a barrier against Spanish encroachment in the new world and […]
Posted inSean Keenan
Despite Confederate monument removals, debate over effigies in Georgia still red-hot
Georgia has exorcised some of its Confederate ghosts in recent years, although many still haunt the state’s public spaces, casting shadows in communities that have largely matured since the horrors of the Civil War.
Posted inColumns
The national anthem and its racist content
By Guest Columnist JOE BEASLEY, a human rights activist in Atlanta and founder of the Joe Beasley Foundation
“Ooh-oh, say can you see…” begins our national anthem, the music and lyrics we’ve grown up with as the incantation of individual and collective deep loyalty to the United States of America, its democratic tenets and ideals. But prompted by recent headlines, we once again face and examine the difference between how the words of the national anthem resonate differently for some Americans.
