The Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters Tournament, was established by golfer Bobby Jones on the former grounds of Berckmans Nursery in 1931. The landscaping of the golf course includes many of the ornamental plants propagated between 1858 and 1918 by Louis and Prosper Berckmans. The New Georgia Encyclopedia does not hold the copyright for this media resource and can neither grant nor deny permission to republish or reproduce the image online or in print.

Beaulieu of America, located in Dalton, was the third largest tufted-carpet company in America. An offshoot of a major European carpet manufacturer, the company was the creation of Carl Bouckaert, an industry and community leader. Bouckaert, the oldest of seven children, was born in 1954 in Waregem, Belgium. The son of a surgeon, he was educated in rigorous Jesuit schools and then studied engineering at Louvain University. He married the daughter of Roger De Clerck, owner of Beaulieu Belgium, the largest carpet business in Europe.

Part of the Sweet Auburn district, Big Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is believed to be the oldest predominantly African American congregation in the metropolitan Atlanta area. A pillar of the Auburn Avenue community, the church is known nationally and internationally for its religious pageant, Heaven Bound. Founding Big Bethel AME has congregational roots dating back to 1847. The original congregation was made up of enslaved men and women who were given permission to worship in the white Union Church.

Georgia’s Black cemeteries reflect the pervasive influence of racial segregation as well as the enduring significance of African and African American cultural practices. Despite recent efforts at preservation, many remain vulnerable to the vagaries of time, and most do not enjoy the financial support afforded white burial grounds.  Enslaved People and Death  Georgia’s European and African burial grounds date to the colonial era. In the eighteenth century, the South’s rural population buried most of their dead in family plots or rural burial grounds.

Black men participated in Georgia politics for the first time during Congressional Reconstruction (1867-76). Between 1867 and 1872 sixty-nine African Americans served as delegates to the constitutional convention (1867-68) or as members of the state legislature. Jefferson Franklin Long, a tailor from Bibb County, sat in the U.S. Congress from December 1870 to March 1871. The three most prominent Black state legislators were Henry McNeal Turner, Tunis Campbell, and Aaron A.