The Macon Telegraph was housed in this building, pictured in the early 1950s, during the editorship of Peyton Anderson Jr. Courtesy of Peyton Anderson Foundation 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. All requests for permission to publish or reproduce the resource must be submitted to the rights holder.

Marvin Griffin served as governor of Georgia from 1955 to 1959. Griffin was one of the first governors to serve as a “good will ambassador” to attract industries to Georgia. Griffin, a Democrat, was also a segregationist and promised to close the state’s public school system if federal authorities tried to enforce desegregation. He left office under a cloud of suspicion for corruption in his administration and failed in an attempted gubernatorial comeback in 1962.

A member of the distinguished Telfair family of Georgia, Mary Telfair is perhaps best remembered as the benefactor of Telfair Museums in Savannah. Upon her death, Telfair bequeathed her Regency-style home, located on Savannah’s St. James Square (renamed Telfair Square in 1883), and the books, furniture, and works of art located therein to the Georgia Historical Society. The society opened the house, built by architect William Jay, to the public in 1886, making Telfair the oldest public art museum in the South.

In Gregg v. Georgia (1976), the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the argument that capital sentencing was in its nature “cruel and unusual punishment” banned by the Eighth Amendment. Even so, in ensuing cases litigants have raised a host of constitutional challenges directed at particular features of death-penalty laws and their operation. The most far-reaching post-Gregg challenge to capital sentencing came in McCleskey v. Kemp (1987). Warren McCleskey was a Black man convicted of murdering a white police officer in Fulton County.

Miller County, the state’s 117th county, was created by the state legislature in 1856 out of portions of Early and Baker counties. Located in southwest Georgia, close to the Alabama border, it is bounded by Baker, Decatur, Early, Mitchell, and Seminole counties and encompasses 283 square miles. The county was named for attorney Andrew Miller, who served in the state senate and later became president of the Medical College of Georgia (later Georgia Health Sciences University) in Augusta.