Byron Herbert Reece was the author of four books of poetry and two novels. During his short career he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, earned two Guggenheim awards, and served as writer-in-residence at the University of California at Los Angeles, Emory University in Atlanta, and Young Harris College in Towns County. Lauded by the Atlanta Constitution editor Ralph McGill as “one of the really great poets of our time, and one to stand with those of any other time,” Reece never achieved wide recognition.

The canal era in the United States represented a major phase of the nineteenth-century economic boom known as the market revolution. Canals lowered transport costs, connected eastern and western markets, fueled economic growth, and in some cases generated waterpower for manufacturing. In Georgia good transportation facilities were essential to growth and prosperity. Until the 1820s most Georgia citizens relied upon rivers to fulfill their long-distance transportation needs, but rivers proved inadequate as the population expanded into the state’s interior Piedmont region.

In  early May 1865 the Confederate States of America was greatly disorganized, largely because of the frenetic events of the previous month. General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Confederate armies at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, and most Americans believed the Civil War (1861-65) was over. The assassination of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., by John Wilkes Booth and other sympathizers with the Southern cause, cast suspicion over many in the Confederate government.

CARE is one of the largest private humanitarian organizations in the world. The nonprofit organization, which is based in Atlanta, works with poor communities worldwide to find a lasting solution to the problem of poverty through education, economic security, and civic participation. CARE employs about 12,000 people globally, including approximately 300 staff members who work at CARE’s Atlanta headquarters. CARE’s poverty-fighting work reaches about 55 million people through 861 projects in 66 countries.

Carrie Steele Logan founded the Carrie Steele Orphan Home in Atlanta, recognized as the oldest predominantly Black orphanage in Georgia and possibly the oldest organization of its type in the country. She was born enslaved in Georgia in 1829, according to interviews; as with many formerly enslaved people, there is no birth certificate and no information about her parents. Unlike many African Americans of her time, however, she learned to read and write.