Georgia Education

Georgia has an extensive educational system, many cultural institutions, and a variety of historical places.

Education
In the colonial era, Georgia's children were educated in one-room rural schools and in a few church-supported academies. Publicly financed elementary schools were organized in 1872, and the state supported high schools beginning in 1912. In the late 1980s, Georgia's public educational facilities included 1732 public elementary and secondary schools, which each year enrolled about 828,400 elementary pupils and 298,100 secondary students. In addition, some 82,800 students attended private schools.

In the same period, Georgia had 95 institutions of higher education, with a combined annual enrollment of about 239,200 students. These institutions included the University of Georgia, at Athens, and Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Georgia State University (1913), all at Atlanta.

Georgia (state), one of the South Atlantic states of the United States, bounded on the north by Tennessee and North Carolina, on the east by South Carolina and the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by Florida, and on the west by Alabama. The Savannah River forms part of the eastern border and the Chattahoochee River part of the western border.

Georgia entered the Union on January 2, 1788, as the fourth state. During the American Civil War it was a member of the Confederate States of America. Once principally a farming state, known for its considerable cotton output, Georgia in the early 1990s had an economy centered on manufacturing and service industries. Atlanta, the state capital, serves as a major economic center for the South. Georgia is named for George II of England and is known as the Empire State of the South.

Land and Resources
Georgia, with an area of 153,953 sq km (59,441 sq mi), is the 24st largest U.S. state and the biggest in land area east of the Mississippi River; 4 percent of its land area is owned by the federal government. The state is roughly rectangular in shape, and its extreme dimensions are about 515 km (about 320 mi) from north to south and about 410 km (about 255 mi) from east to west. Elevations range from sea level, along the Atlantic Ocean, to 1458 m (4784 ft), atop Brasstown Bald, near the northern boundary. The mean elevation of the state is 183 m (600 ft). The coastline along the Atlantic is 161 km (100 mi) long.

Physical Geography
Encompassing parts of six geographical regions, Georgia has a varied landscape. The southern half of the state is made up of sections of the Atlantic Coastal Plain and the East Gulf Coastal Plain. The two regions had similar origins and are much alike. Each is underlain mainly by soft, unconsolidated sedimentary beds of sand and clay. A substantial part of the East Gulf Coastal Plain is underlain by limestone, which is studded with water-filled holes (sinkholes). The Atlantic Coastal Plain has richer topsoil. The two regions gradually increase in elevation toward the interior. The Atlantic coast is broken by many inlets and contains much marsh and swamp; offshore are the Sea Islands (a chain that continues north into South Carolina and south into Florida). Straddling the southern border of the two coastal plains is the Okefenokee Swamp, which is also partly in Florida.
Most of the northern half of Georgia is made up of a part of the Piedmont Plateau, an area of rolling hills underlain by hard crystalline rocks such as granite. The fall line is at the southern edge of this region. Rivers flowing from the Piedmont Plateau onto the coastal plains descend in falls and rapids at the fall line. Elevations in the Piedmont section increase to the north, from about 150 m (about 500 ft) at the fall line to about 365 m (about 1200 ft) at its northern edge.
Three regions of the Appalachian Mountains make up northern Georgia. The most elevated of the regions is the Blue Ridge, in the northeast, an area of rounded, forested mountains separated by narrow valleys. The Blue Ridge is underlain by extremely hard crystalline rocks such as gneiss. To the west of the Blue Ridge is the Valley and Ridge Region, where wide, flat, fertile valleys extending northeast to southwest are separated by narrow, steep-sided ridges. The northwestern corner of Georgia, made up of a section of the Cumberland Plateau, contains narrow, relatively infertile valleys bordered by ridges.

Rivers and Lakes
One group of Georgia rivers flows to the Atlantic Ocean. The Savannah and Altamaha are the main rivers in this group. The Altamaha collects the waters of two important central Georgia rivers, the Ocmulgee and Oconee. A second group of Georgia rivers flows toward the Gulf of Mexico. The Chattahoochee and the Flint are the principal rivers of this group.
Georgia has no large natural lakes, but dams on rivers have formed a number of large bodies of water. These include Lake Seminole, Walter F. George Lake, and Lake Sidney Lanier, on the Chattahoochee River; Lake Sinclair, on the Oconee River; Hartwell and Strom Thurmond lakes, on the Savannah River; and Allatoona Lake, on the Etowah River. Parts of some lakes are in neighboring states.

Climate
The two Coastal Plain regions of Georgia and the Piedmont Plateau area have a humid subtropical climate. The southern location, relatively low elevation, and nearness to the comparatively warm waters of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico produce a climate with long, hot summers, short, mild winters, and rainfall at all times of year. The climate is classified as humid continental in the Blue Ridge, Valley and Ridge, and Cumberland Plateau regions of the north. Summer temperatures in these areas are cooler than in southern Georgia, and winters are colder, although not severe. Some winter snowfall occurs in the northern regions. Because moist marine air is forced to rise when it meets the mountains, the Blue Ridge receives the most precipitation in the state. In Georgia as a whole, the rainier times of the year are in winter and summer; the average yearly precipitation is about 1270 mm (about 50 in). The recorded temperature in the state has ranged from -27.2° C (-17° F), in 1940 near Rome in the northwest, to 44.4° C (112° F), in 1952 at Louisville in the east.

Plants and Animals
About 60 percent of Georgia's land area is covered with forest. In the Coastal Plain regions the woodland, part of the Southeastern Pine Forest of the U.S., is dominated by slash and longleaf pine. Hardwood trees, notably the large live oak, are intermixed with the pine. Swamp trees, such as cypress and tupelo, and marsh grasses grow in some low-lying areas. The forest in the Piedmont region is mainly a mixture of oak and pine. In northern Georgia the forest covering the mountains is composed principally of oak, hickory, maple, and other hardwood trees. The state's forest, particularly in the north, also contains many beautiful flowering trees and shrubs such as redbud, dogwood, and azalea.
Wild animals in Georgia include many deer, raccoon, opossum, fox, and squirrel, plus small numbers of black bear in the mountains and the southeastern forest. Ducks, geese, and quail are numerous, as are songbirds such as the mockingbird and wood thrush. Georgia's freshwater rivers and lakes contain many bass, bream, trout, perch, crappie, and catfish, and crabs, oysters, shrimp, and shad are to be found in the state's coastal marine waters.

Mineral Resources
Georgia contains sizable deposits of several important minerals. The inner Coastal Plain regions have deposits of kaolin, a high-grade white clay. Beautiful marble is found on the Piedmont Plateau north of Atlanta, and Stone Mountain, east of Atlanta, is one of the largest known single masses of exposed granite in the world. Other minerals found in the state include coal, sand and gravel, talc, soapstone, barite, manganese, and bentonite. Much of the state's soil has a reddish tint because of its high clay content.

Population
According to the 1990 census, Georgia had 6,478,216 inhabitants, an increase of 18.6 percent over 1980. The average population density in 1990 was 42 people per sq km (109 per sq mi). Whites made up 71 percent of the population and blacks 27 percent; other groups included 15,275 persons of Korean origin, 13,926 persons of Asian Indian background, 12,926 Native Americans, 12,657 persons of Chinese ancestry. About 109,000 persons were of Hispanic origin. Baptists made up 50.8 percent of the state population, followed by Methodists (11.5 percent) and Roman Catholics (6.3 percent). In 1990 approximately 63 percent of all Georgians lived in areas defined as urban, and the rest in rural areas. The state's biggest cities were Atlanta, the capital; Columbus; Savannah; Macon; and Albany.


Cultural Institutions
Georgia has an extensive public library system. The state's largest libraries are located in Atlanta, Columbus, Macon, and Savannah. Outstanding collections on Georgia's history are available at historical societies in Atlanta and Savannah. The Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta houses Jimmy Carter's presidential papers.
Notable museums are the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, in Savannah; the Atlanta Museum and the High Museum of Art, in Atlanta; the Georgia Museum of Art, in Athens; the National Infantry Museum, at Fort Benning; and the Museum of Coastal History, on Saint Simons Island. Atlanta and Savannah support symphony orchestras, and Atlanta and Augusta have opera companies.

Historical Sites
Many historical sites and monuments are located in Georgia. The remains of old Native American mounds and villages are in Ocmulgee National Monument, near Macon, and Fort Frederica National Monument, on Saint Simons Island, includes a fort constructed in the 18th century by the British. Civil War battle sites are in Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, in the northwestern corner of the state; and in Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, near Marietta. Andersonville National Historic Site encompasses a Civil War prisoner-of-war camp, and Fort Pulaski National Monument, on Tybee Island, includes a fort attacked by Union forces in 1862. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's “Little White House” is in Warm Springs.

Sports and Recreation
Georgia's best-known sports event is the Masters, a golf tournament held at Augusta every April. Atlanta is the site of the annual Peach Bowl postseason college football game. The city also is the home of major league baseball, basketball, and football teams. Popular outdoor-recreation activities in Georgia include swimming, fishing, hunting, hiking, and golfing. Cumberland Island National Seashore includes unspoiled beaches, dunes, and marshes.

Communications
Georgia is served by a broad range of communications media. In the early 1990s the state had 196 AM and 184 FM radiobroadcasting stations and 46 television stations. The state's first radio station, WSB, began operation in Atlanta in 1922. Atlanta is the headquarters of the Turner Broadcasting System, a major cable-television company that in 1980 established the Cable News Network.
Georgia was served by 36 daily newspapers with a combined daily circulation of about 1.2 million copies in the early 1990s. Among the leading dailies were the Constitution and the Journal, published in Atlanta; the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer; the Macon Telegraph; and the Savannah Morning News. The oldest newspaper was the Chronicle, first published in Augusta in 1785.

Government and Politics
Georgia is governed under a constitution that was adopted in 1982; previous constitutions had been adopted in 1777, 1789, 1798, 1861, 1865, 1868, 1877, 1945, and 1976. State constitutional amendments may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of the legislature or by a constitutional convention; to take effect, an amendment must be ratified by a majority of the persons voting on the issue in a general election.

Executive
Georgia's chief executive is a governor, who is popularly elected to a 4-year term and is prohibited from serving more than two successive terms. The same regulations apply to the lieutenant governor, who succeeds the governor should the latter resign, die, or be removed from office. Other officials popularly elected to 4-year terms are the secretary of state, attorney general, commissioner of agriculture, commissioner of labor, commissioner of insurance (who also serves as comptroller general), and superintendent of schools.

Legislature
The bicameral Georgia legislature is the General Assembly, and it consists of a house of representatives, which has 180 members, and a senate, which has 56 members. All state representatives and state senators are popularly elected to 2-year terms.

Judiciary
Georgia's highest tribunal is the supreme court, made up of seven justices popularly elected to 6-year terms. The chief justice is elected by the court for the duration of the justice's term of office. The second highest court is the court of appeals, consisting of nine judges popularly elected to 6-year terms. The principal trial courts are the superior courts, which have 148 judges.

Local Government
County government is important in Georgia. In the early 1990s the state had 159 counties, almost all of which were administered by boards of commissioners. Most cities and towns were governed by popularly elected mayors and councils.

National Representation
Georgia is represented in the U.S. Congress by 2 senators and 11 representatives. The state has 13 electoral votes in presidential elections.

Politics
The Democratic party has dominated state and local politics in Georgia. Democrats have held the governorship continuously in the state since 1872, and they retain control of both houses of the state legislature by large majorities. The Democratic party also dominated national politics in the state from 1872 through 1960. In 1964, however, Georgia for the first time cast its electoral votes for a Republican presidential candidate. George C. Wallace, running as the nominee of the American Independent party, carried the state in 1968. Jimmy Carter, a one-term governor (1971-75), became in 1976 the first native Georgian to win election to the U.S. presidency.

Economy
Georgia was primarily an agricultural state until the mid-20th century. In the early 1990s, manufacturing was a leading economic sector, and Atlanta was a major commercial, financial, transportation, and manufacturing center for the southeastern U.S. Several large federal military facilities, such as Fort Benning, near Columbus, were major contributors to the state's economy.

Agriculture
The Georgia economy has an important agricultural sector. Sales of livestock and livestock products account for nearly 60 percent of the yearly farm income and sales of crops for the rest. The output is produced on about 46,000 farms, averaging 106 hectares (263 acres) in size. Leading agricultural products include broiler chickens, chicken eggs, peanuts, corn, soybeans, and cattle. Georgia usually ranks with Arkansas and Alabama as the top three U.S. producers of broiler chickens; most broilers are raised in the northeastern part of the state. Georgia typically leads all states in peanut and pecan production and ranks fifth in the volume of tobacco output; these three crops are grown mainly in the southern half of the state. Other major crops include cotton, hay, beans, and peas. In addition, Georgia produces large quantities of peaches, especially in Peach County, near Macon. Many hogs are raised in the state.

Forestry
A substantial amount of timber is cut each year from Georgia's extensive commercial timberland. Approximately two-thirds of the annual harvest is softwood, much of which is used to make paper. Naval stores such as turpentine, pitch, and rosin are produced from the pine trees of the southwestern part of the state.

Fishing
The relatively small commercial fishing industry of Georgia operates mainly in the coastal waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The yearly marine catch is about 7300 metric tons and has a total value of approximately $20 million. Edible shellfish make up the bulk of the catch in terms of both volume and value, and shrimp is the leading variety landed. Crabs, oysters, and clams also are caught.

Mining
The principal minerals recovered in Georgia are clays, stone, and sand and gravel. Georgia is the leading state in the production of clay, and kaolin—a clay used in producing china, paint, paper, and other goods—is the most important single mineral product. It is mined chiefly along the fall line, from Columbus to Augusta. Fuller's earth is another major type of clay produced in the state. Granite and marble are quarried in great quantities in northern Georgia. Other important mineral products include barite, feldspar, and mica.

Manufacturing
Georgia contains more than 9000 manufacturing establishments, which together are responsible for the employment of over 500,000 workers. Manufacturing accounts for about 19 percent of the annual gross state product. The leading types of manufactures, based on annual payroll, are apparel and textiles, transportation equipment, processed foods, and paper and kindred products. The principal textiles produced are woven cotton fiber, floor covering, and yarn and thread. Northwestern Georgia contains the largest concentration of tufted-carpet producers in the U.S. and accounts for more than 50 percent of the nation's output. Many other textile mills, as well as clothing factories, are in the Piedmont Plateau region of the state, especially in small towns.
The state produces a great variety of foodstuffs, notably processed peanuts and fruit, dressed broilers, and frozen shrimp. The manufacture of transportation equipment, mainly motor vehicles and aircraft, is concentrated in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The state has many paper mills, and cellophane and rayon are made from the cellulose of pine trees. Much pine lumber and hardwood flooring also are produced, and an important furniture industry is centered at Toccoa. Other fabricated goods made in Georgia include industrial machinery, electronic equipment, chemicals, metal products, and bricks and tiles.

Tourism
In the early 1990s, more than 32 million travelers visited Georgia each year, and the state annually earned over $10 billion from tourism. The major tourist attractions of Georgia include the mountains of the northern part of the state, the Atlanta area, and the Atlantic coast. Near Atlanta is Stone Mountain State Park, which features the equestrian figures of the Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis carved on the northern face of the granite mountain. Points of interest in the coastal area include Savannah, one of the oldest cities in the U.S., and Cumberland, Saint Simons, and Jekyll islands. Among the notable attractions of the western part of the state are Warm Springs, which was frequented by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Plains, the hometown of Jimmy Carter.

Transportation
Georgia has an extensive system of modern transportation facilities. Among them are about 176,380 km (about 109,600 mi) of federal, state, and local roads, including 1931 km (1200 mi) of the interstate highway system. The first railroad in Georgia was opened in 1837; in the early 1990s the state was served by some 6470 km (some 4020 mi) of operated Class I railroad track. The Atlanta area is a major rail hub as well as the site of William B. Hartsfield International Airport, one of the busiest in the U.S. Georgia has 275 airports and 89 heliports. Its principal seaports are Savannah and Brunswick; along the coast is a section of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. Parts of the Chattahoochee, Flint, and Savannah rivers are used to transport freight.

Energy
In the early 1990s, Georgia had an installed electricity generating capacity of about 20.7 million kw, and its annual electricity production was about 97.6 billion kw. Approximately 70 percent of the electricity was generated from fossil fuels, about 25 percent by nuclear power plants, and about 5 percent by hydroelectric installations (mainly on the Chattahoochee, Etowah, and Savannah rivers).

History
The major Native American groups in Georgia at the time of European settlement were the Lower Creeks and the Cherokees, both of which had established cultures. The earliest known European settlement in Georgia was the Spanish mission of Santa Catalina, established in 1566 on Saint Catherines Island. The mission was overrun in 1680 by the British and their Native American allies.

The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods
In 1732, the British philanthropists James Oglethorpe and John Percival secured a royal charter to establish a colony in the area, providing for a board of trustees to govern it. The early settlers included many English debtors, but also Scots, Germans, Swiss, and some German Jews. Oglethorpe arrived with the first group and founded Savannah in 1733. The British desired a buffer between South Carolina and the Spanish in Florida and the French in Louisiana. Georgia served this purpose well. It did not begin to prosper economically, however, until the charter expired in 1753, and economic growth became pronounced after the appointment of James Wright as royal governor in 1760. Relations between the colonists and the Native Americans were generally friendly, and slavery was prohibited until 1749.
Although loyalty to the British crown was strong in Georgia, the colony joined the American Revolution and sent representatives to the Second Continental Congress. The British seized Savannah in 1778, but guerrilla fighters prevented them from gaining control of the interior, and they evacuated the state in 1782.

Disputes with the Federal Government
After the Revolution, Georgia supported a strong central government and was one of three states to ratify the Constitution unanimously. This popular support, however, did not prevent conflict with the new national government. Georgia claimed virtually all of what is now Mississippi and much of Alabama, and granted this territory to private land companies. These grants (the Yazoo Land Frauds) were declared invalid in 1800 by the U.S. Congress. Georgia agreed in 1802 to cede these lands to the U.S. and received a federal commitment to remove the Native Americans to the West. After a series of constitutional squabbles involving the state, the president of the U.S., and the U.S. Supreme Court, by 1838 the Creeks and Cherokees were largely removed from Georgia, thus opening up vast new cotton lands that were quickly settled by whites.

Antebellum Politics and the American Civil War
Two factions dominated Georgia politics in the early 19th century, one representing the coastal communities and the slaveholders and the other including the up-country people and the nonslaveholders. Nonslaveholders frequently failed to support the coastal planters in their struggles with the North over slavery. Nevertheless, when the final showdown came in 1861, a majority voted to secede from the Union. Federal forces quickly blockaded the state and captured many offshore islands. Georgia provided large numbers of troops for the Confederate army, but Governor Joseph E. Brown also resisted the authority of the Confederate government in Montgomery on the basis of states' rights. In 1864 Georgia was invaded by Union forces under General William Tecumseh Sherman, which took Atlanta on September 2 and then proceeded on the famous “March to the Sea,” ending in Savannah in December.

The Post-Civil War Period
Georgia adopted a new constitution and ratified the 13th amendment abolishing slavery in 1865, but was nevertheless placed under federal military control by terms of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. Because of continuing resistance by state officials to the political conditions established by the federal government, however, Georgia was not restored to the Union until July 1870.
State politics were staunchly Democratic after Reconstruction. The Bourbons (conservative Democrats) dominated from 1872 until 1890, combining support for business interests with low taxes and limited public services. In Atlanta, the journalist and lecturer Henry W. Grady led the “New South” movement, which advocated industrial development and urbanization for the region. Poor agricultural conditions created widespread support for the Populists, who challenged the Bourbons for political power in the 1890s but quickly faded thereafter.

White Supremacy
In 1908 new voter registration requirements virtually disenfranchised blacks, and the county unit system of Democratic primary voting (1917) placed political power firmly in the hands of rural white voters. Eugene Talmadge, elected governor in 1933, opposed most New Deal measures, especially those promoting social and racial equality. The election of Ellis Arnall as governor in 1942 ushered in a period of reform, which included abolition of the poll tax and adoption of a new constitution in 1945. Talmadge was again elected governor in 1946, but he died before he could take office. The General Assembly declared his son, Herman E. Talmadge, governor, but this action was nullified by the state supreme court. Talmadge eventually won election, however, in 1948.
Georgia was very much a part of southern resistance to the civil rights movement. In response to the 1954 Supreme Court decision declaring public school racial segregation unconstitutional, an amendment was adopted permitting state support of private education as an alternative to public schools. The state legislature passed a law in 1955 to implement this tactic if federal courts ordered any public school to integrate. After 1959, however, closing schools to avoid integration became a local option.

Racial Compromise and Economic Growth
In 1961 the University of Georgia and the Atlanta public school system were integrated. White and black leaders in Atlanta worked to avoid violence and meet black demands, while the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a major civil rights organization led by Martin Luther King, Jr., made its headquarters in the city.
Georgia's population increased rapidly in the 1960s and '70s. Atlanta, the state capital, became the leading financial and transportation hub of the Southeast, with one of the country's busiest commercial airports and, by 1990, a metropolitan area population of approximately 2.8 million. Light industry, tourism, and military and defense installations far outdistanced agriculture in contributions to the state's economy.