The Politics Of Change In Georgia

This biography of Ellis Arnall follows the life and political career of the former governor from his rural Georgia upbringing through his service as state representative, attorney general, and governor to his subsequent political exile. Arnall assumed the governorship of Georgia in 1943, becoming the youngest person in the United States ever elected to that position. In his single term (1943-1947) he initiated a series of remarkable reforms that elevated Georgia above its Tobacco Road image and stood it alongside North Carolina, then the South's most progressive state. Unlike most of his colleagues, Arnall refused to "play it safe" in the state's political arena. Though still a segregationist and a traditionalist in many ways, Arnall had no patience for provincialism and cared deeply about Georgia and how it was viewed by the rest of the nation. Boldly confronting the demagoguery of his predecessor Eugene Talmadge, Arnall, who called himself "a democrat with a small 'd'," united the state's liberal and conservative factions to deliver the promise of the New South to all of Georgia's citizens: biracial voting, government reform, economic development, and an improved standard of living. So sweeping and farsighted were Arnall's accomplishments that, to a great extent, the structure of Georgia's present-day government evolved under his guidance and has changed little since. In 1985, a Georgia Association of Historians survey ranked Arnall's leadership, responsiveness to issues, and national reputation the highest among governors who served from 1943-1983. Successful as it was, his career, begun a decade earlier in the state house of representatives, was cut short. Many Georgians felt that Arnall was too liberal and, worse, that he had catered to the national media, enhancing his own image by discussing the state's problems with outsiders. By Arnall's own estimation, his political career ended when he decided to abide by a 1945 federal court decision that invalidated Georgia's white-voters-only primary elections. Arnall left politics in 1947, returning briefly in 1966 for a spirited, but unsuccessful, primary bid for governor. Written with Ellis Arnall's full cooperation and filled with fascinating details of the final days of Old South politics, this book recounts the political career of one of the region's most accomplished and energetic leaders. The Politics of Change in Georgia is based on the former governor's speeches and public writings, critical and supportive newspapers accounts, and interviews both with Arnall and with other prominent Georgians such as Herman E. Talmadge, S. Ernest Vandiver, Jr., Lester G. Maddox, Carl E. Sanders, Jr., James H. Gray, Sr., Howard H. Callaway, and Ivan Allen, Jr.

This Georgia Rising is a study of Georgia's political changes in the decade of the Second World War and in the postwar years of the 1940s. Georgia's political establishment underwent challenges in the 1940s in everything from Georgians defending the state's university system from attacks by Governor Eugene Talmadge to challenges by Georgia's larger cities and towns to the state's county unit system to the early postwar stirrings of the modern civil rights movement. An array of progressive forces--including Georgia's veterans of the Second World War, college and university students, newspaper editors and reporters in the state's larger circulating newspapers and smaller town newspapers--fought for change in some of the state's political institutions, culminating in the 1942 election of Governor Ellis Arnall and in 1945 the changes to the state constitution. This Georgia Rising is a detailed study of the gubernatorial races of the 1940s as they are interwoven with the larger political and social changes of wartime and then postwar Georgia. This book draws not only from Georgia's larger circulation newspapers but also focuses on its smaller circulation newspapers and especially its African-American newspapers, including The Atlanta Daily World and The Savannah Tribune. This Georgia Rising offers a detailed and rich narrative of a decade of far-reaching change in twentieth-century Georgia. --Publisher description.

This multidisciplinary collection provides a unique insiders' perspective on the major issues in Georgian politics, society, and economics in the twenty-five years since its independence from the Soviet Union.

Beginning with the inauguration of Ellis Arnall as governor in 1943, Georgia Governors in an Age of Change traces the gubernatorial leadership of Georgia through four decades, chronicling the state's rise from bastion of southern provincialism to a dynamic and progressive state.

No history of the civil rights era in the South would be complete without an account of the remarkable life and career of Grace Towns Hamilton, the first African American woman in the Deep South to be elected to a state legislature. A national official of the Young Women's Christian Association early in her career, Hamilton later headed the Atlanta Urban League, where she worked within the confines of segregation to equalize African American access to education, health care, and voting rights. In the Georgia legislature from 1965 until 1984, she exercised considerable power as a leader in the black struggle for local, state, and national offices, promoting interracial cooperation as the key to racial justice. Her probity and moderation paved the way for the election of other black women, and by the end of her political career no southern legislature was without women members of her race. Lorraine Nelson Spritzer and Jean B. Bergmark examine two generations of African American history to give the long view of Hamilton's activism. The life spans of Hamilton and her father, an Atlanta University professor who was her greatest mentor, encompassed the best and worst of the African American experience, inevitably shaping Hamilton's outlook and achievements.

Updated in its 2nd edition,Georgia Politics in a State of Change, explores Georgia's constitution, politics, and government. It combines historical background and the most current scholarship to tell the story of Georgia politics from the state's founding to the institutions, policies, and people changing Georgia today. Written with an entertaining, conversational style, this concise text provides expansive treatment of Georgia politics and covers new ground not available in any other book on the subject.

Stressing the relevance of The Transformation of Southern Politics as a background for understanding the South into the next century, Jack Bass and Walter De Vries write that the "themes of change in southern politics still involve the rise of the Republican Party, black political development and the Democratic response to it--and the interaction of these forces with social and economic issues." The Transformation of Southern Politics examines the post-World War II political evolution of the eleven southern states and traces the effects of such influences as Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, urban migration, the growth of the Republican Party, and the rise of African Americans in the political landscape. Relying on the methodology that V. O. Key used in his 1949 classic Southern Politics in State and Nation, the work draws on interviews with more than 360 politicians, scholars, journalists, and labor leaders, and includes a wealth of data on voting trends, political perceptions, and population flow to present a comprehensive portrait of the region up to the 1976 presidential election. In the preface to the Brown Thrasher edition, Bass and De Vries offer an overview of the region's current political climate, including an analysis of the 1994 mid-term elections. They also provide excerpts from their interview with Bill Clinton during his first campaign for political office.