The Atlanta Journal-Constitution began as two separate newspapers: the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution. Both ran for over a hundred years before combining in 2001. Now the Journal-Constitution is the largest daily newspaper in the southeast. 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.

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The oldest newspaper in Georgia and one of the oldest in America, the Augusta Chronicle began in 1785. In the beginning, the goal of the paper was to criticize the British and rival newspapers. During the Civil War, ownership of the paper transferred to Connecticut native and southern sympathizer, Nathan Morse. Morse grew to dislike the president of the Confederacy and changed the tone of the paper to support an end to the war.

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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.

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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.

Continue reading about Civil War journals, diaries, and memoirs in the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

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

Continue reading about the Great Speckled Bird in the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

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.

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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 Riot, lynchings in Georgia, and a 1990s police scandal.

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Testimonies produced by enslaved Africans 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.

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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.

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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.

Continue reading about WSB Radio in the New Georgia Encyclopedia.