GAGeorgia Famous People

Capital: Atlanta · South · Admitted 1788

Plains, population under a thousand, sent a man to Washington

Jimmy Carter was born on 1 October 1924 in Plains, the first US president delivered in a hospital. He left the Navy's nuclear submarine programme to run the family peanut warehouse, served one term as governor from 1971, and won in 1976 partly because nobody in Washington knew him. He was president from 1977 to 1981, took the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, taught Sunday school in Plains into his nineties, and died on 29 December 2024 at 100, older than any president before him. Woodrow Wilson is the near miss: born in Staunton, Virginia, he spent his boyhood in the Augusta manse where his father preached and practised law briefly in Atlanta. Clarence Thomas grew up speaking Gullah in Pin Point outside Savannah and joined the Supreme Court in 1991.

Auburn Avenue

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on 15 January 1929 in an upstairs bedroom at 501 Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, entered Morehouse College at 15, and was ordained at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where his father and his maternal grandfather had preached and where he later served as co-pastor. Raphael Warnock has held that pulpit since 2005 and has represented Georgia in the Senate since 2021. John Lewis was born to sharecroppers near Troy, Alabama, but Georgia sent him to Congress for 33 years from the fifth district, which covers Auburn Avenue, and Andrew Young, a New Orleans native, was ambassador to the United Nations and then mayor of Atlanta from 1982.

Eatonton produced two very different storytellers

Joel Chandler Harris, born in Eatonton in 1848, took the Br'er Rabbit tales he heard from enslaved men on a nearby plantation and published them in dialect as Uncle Remus, a book argued over ever since. Alice Walker was born in the same town in 1944, the eighth child of sharecroppers, blinded in one eye by a brother's BB gun, and became the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer for fiction with The Color Purple in 1983. Flannery O'Connor, born in Savannah in 1925, wrote her stories at Andalusia farm outside Milledgeville while lupus killed her at 39. Margaret Mitchell finished Gone with the Wind in a cramped Atlanta apartment she called the Dump, took the 1937 Pulitzer, and was struck by a speeding car on Peachtree Street in 1949. Carson McCullers of Columbus published The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter at 23.

Macon, Albany, Dawson, Athens

Little Richard was born in Macon in 1932, one of twelve children, and cut Tutti Frutti in New Orleans in 1955. Otis Redding was born in Dawson in 1941 and raised in Macon's Tindall Heights; he recorded Sittin' On The Dock of the Bay three days before his plane went into a Wisconsin lake in December 1967, at 26. Ray Charles was born in Albany in 1930, and in 1979 the legislature adopted his recording of Georgia on My Mind as the state song after he performed it in the chamber. James Brown was born in South Carolina and raised in Augusta, where he danced for coins outside the army base. Gladys Knight was born in Atlanta in 1944 and sang at Mount Moriah Baptist at four. Athens produced the B-52s in 1976 and R.E.M. in 1980, and Atlanta produced OutKast in 1992.

Born in Georgia, made elsewhere

Jackie Robinson was born in Cairo, in the far southwest corner of the state, on 31 January 1919, and his mother moved the family to Pasadena before his second birthday, so California claims him. Jim Brown was born on St. Simons Island in 1936 and raised on Long Island. Oliver Hardy was born in the town of Harlem, Georgia, in 1892 and ran a cinema in Milledgeville before he went to Florida to make pictures. Kanye West was born in Atlanta in 1977 and left for Chicago at three. Doc Holliday was born in Griffin in 1851 and qualified as a dentist before tuberculosis sent him west, and Julia Roberts grew up in Smyrna, where her parents ran an acting workshop.

Ether, cola and the Georgia Peach

Crawford Long, a doctor in Jefferson, removed a neck tumour from James Venable on 30 March 1842 using ether, the first recorded surgical anaesthesia, and then sat on the result for seven years without publishing. American Doctors' Day, 30 March, began in Winder in his memory. John Pemberton, born in Knoxville, Georgia, mixed the first Coca-Cola syrup in Atlanta in 1886 and sold out before it was worth anything. Juliette Gordon Low, born in Savannah in 1860 and by then largely deaf, gathered 18 girls in the city in March 1912 and started the Girl Scouts. Ty Cobb of Narrows finished with the highest career batting average in baseball and entered the first Hall of Fame class in 1936. Bobby Jones of Atlanta won all four majors in 1930, retired at 28, and built Augusta National.

What people ask about famous Georgians

Which president came from Georgia?

Jimmy Carter, born in Plains on 1 October 1924 and president from 1977 to 1981. He was the first president born in a hospital and, at 100, the longest lived.

Was Martin Luther King Jr. born in Georgia?

Yes, at 501 Auburn Avenue in Atlanta on 15 January 1929. He entered Morehouse College at 15 and later co-pastored Ebenezer Baptist Church with his father.

Was Jackie Robinson from Georgia?

He was born in Cairo, Georgia, on 31 January 1919, but his mother moved the family to Pasadena, California, before he was two, so California usually claims him.

Which musicians were born in Georgia?

Ray Charles in Albany, Little Richard in Macon, Otis Redding in Dawson, and Gladys Knight and Kanye West in Atlanta. James Brown was born in South Carolina and raised in Augusta.

Why is Georgia on My Mind the state song?

The legislature adopted Ray Charles's recording in 1979 after he performed it for the assembly. Charles was born in Albany, Georgia, in 1930.

One state, a very long roll call

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