Lexington, the seat of Oglethorpe County in northeast Georgia, is eighty-five miles east of Atlanta and seventeen miles east of Athens. An act of the Georgia legislature, dated December 1793, created Oglethorpe County from Wilkes County and authorized the establishment of a county seat. The town that would become Lexington, however, was not built for several years. An argument among county residents over the choice of two locations, less than two miles apart, delayed construction of the courthouse by appointed commissioners.

Lugenia Burns Hope was a prominent community organizer and civil rights activist, at both local and national levels, in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1908 she founded the Neighborhood Union to provide assistance to Atlanta's impoverished Black neighborhoods, and in 1932 she became the first vice president of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP. ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qLHOq56imZWjsLqvy6innpyZlnuwvsZomKusmZi5pr%2BOoaCsrJ%2Bnxm6t0Zyfmp2fobyoxY6lrKCdnp6ubq7Uq6WsZZikvaZ5kHFuamVhboF4e8xmaGppYG58

Legend holds that Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism and the Lutheran Church, nailed ninety-five theses, or opinions, of dissent to the door of the Catholic church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division 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.

Illustration of the life cycle of the parasites of the genus Plasmodium, which are the causal agents of malaria. Courtesy of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services 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.

Located in west central Georgia, about seventy-five miles southwest of Atlanta and forty miles northeast of Columbus, Manchester sits at the intersection of Georgia 85 and U.S. 27 in the southern tip of Meriwether County. According to the 2020 U.S. census, Manchester has a population of 3,584, making it the largest city in the county. Named for the industrial city in England, Manchester was incorporated in 1909. The planned city had come into existence in 1907 when the Atlanta, Birmingham, and Atlantic (AB&A) Railroad chose the site as the junction of its main rail lines to Atlanta and Birmingham, Alabama, and built extensive rail yards and shops there.