Attempting to live out the principles of pacifism, simplicity, and racial integration, a pair of white Baptist ministers and their wives, Mabel and Martin England and Florence and Clarence Jordan, established Koinonia Farm on 400 acres in rural Sumter County in 1942. The ministers also hoped to teach improved farm practices. Named after the Greek word for fellowship and based on the early Christian church, Koinonia was to be a Christian community in which members pooled their resources into a common treasury and treated all persons as equals, regardless of race or class.

Large Oak Tree (1985) by William T. Livesay is part of Georgia's State Art Collection. Print (intaglio), 13 3/4 x 24 inches 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. Requests for permission to publish or reproduce the resource should be submitted to the Georgia Council for the Arts.

One of the most produced playwrights in the United States, Lauren Gunderson’s oeuvre includes plays, musicals, screenplays, and picture books. Many of her works focus on the lives of real and imagined heroines, particularly women in the sciences, and explore themes of innovation, morality, and discovery. Lauren Gunderson was born in Decatur to parents with careers in both the arts and sciences—influences that would later inform her work as a playwright.

Poet, novelist, intellectual, and literary critic, Marion Montgomery taught composition, literature, and creative writing at the University of Georgia for thirty-three years. He also wrote hundreds of poems, dozens of short stories, three novels, one novella, and more than twenty books of literary and cultural criticism. Montgomery received numerous awards for his fiction and verse in the 1960s and early 1970s. In 2001 he received the Stanley W. Lindberg Award (named for longtime Georgia Review editor Stanley Lindberg) for outstanding contributions to Georgia’s literary heritage.

The old courthouse in Wilkes County, pictured circa 1890, was constructed in 1817 and served until 1904. 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. Requests for permission to publish or reproduce the resource should be submitted to the Georgia Archives. ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qLHOq56imZWjsLqvy6innpyZlnuwvsZomKusmZi5pr%2BOnKaupqSesrR5wqKrop2jYrumtcahmaiqmKS8pb%2BOsKClo5WoeqS71KersmedYn5xfphqZg%3D%3D