Fort Valley
Fort Valley

Author: Gilda E. Stanbery

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 0738590894

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

As early as 1822, James Abbington Everett established a trading post at the convergence of Native American trails, which became known as Fort Valley and eventually the world's "Peach Paradise." The 1856 charter established city limits as one mile in each direction from the railroad depot, and large cotton plantations devoted to peaches, asparagus, and pecans lay beyond. By the 1860s, more than 30 percent of Georgia's cotton traveled on rail lines through Fort Valley. During the Civil War, there were multiple Buckner and Gamble field hospitals, as well as temporary ones in what are now Fort Valley's historic homes and structures. The development of the Elberta peach, the refrigerated railroad car, hydro-cooling, and rail connections to transport fragile peaches combined to make Fort Valley the peach-growing center of the South. People prospered, and thousands celebrated the peach at the Peach Blossom Festivals of the 1920s. Fort Valley became home to the Blue Bird Body Co., Wanderlodge, the American Camellia Society, and Fort Valley State University. Motorists traveling on the Old Dixie Highway, Andersonville Trail, Presidential Parkway, or the Golden Isles Parkway are still treated to the warm hospitality of Fort Valley.

Echoes from the Valley
Echoes from the Valley

Author: Billy Powell

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2006-06-15

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 9781514338186

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Echoes from the Valley" steps back into history to relive the storied past of one of Georgia's most unique cities--Fort Valley, U. S. A. Once the "Peach Capital of the World," Fort Valley was renowned for its peach festivals during the 1920s. During that era, 40 to 50 thousand visitors converged on Fort Valley annually to behold the vast sea of peach blossoms, to witness extravagant parades, and to eat free barbeque. The railroad arrived during the 1850s, establishing Fort Valley as a railroad community and populating the Byron and Powersville whistle stops along its path. Fort Valley proudly boasts of Blue Bird Body Company, the nation's premier bus manufacturer, started when Lawrence Luce built his first school bus in 1927, and Fort Valley State University, founded in 1895. Fort Valley is replete with historic landmarks such as Everett Square, Bliss, Sylvan Dell, and Dope Hill. The book also chronicles the founding of Fort Valley, Byron, Powersville and the creation of Peach County As historical research unfolded, it became increasingly apparent that Fort Valley, during its early days, was not the sleepy, tranquil, uneventful, little hamlet that had been envisioned, but at times was a community where murders, criminal acts, and misdeeds were occurring with appalling frequency. Murders committed during the 1930s and 1940s were so sensational and shockingly gruesome that they remain hot topics of conversation to this day. Covered in-depth, based on police records, is the horrific 1986 slaying of Denise Murray Allison, whose needless murder, the most savage and brutal killing in Peach County history, has never been prosecuted. Her demonic, yet unknown killer walks among the citizens of Fort Valley.

The Lost Education of Horace Tate
The Lost Education of Horace Tate

Author: Vanessa Siddle Walker

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2018-07-31

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 1620971062

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018 “An important contribution to our understanding of how ordinary people found the strength to fight for equality for schoolchildren and their teachers.” —Wall Street Journal In the epic tradition of Eyes on the Prize and with the cultural significance of John Lewis's March trilogy, an ambitious and harrowing account of the devoted black educators who battled southern school segregation and inequality For two years an aging Dr. Horace Tate—a former teacher, principal, and state senator—told Emory University professor Vanessa Siddle Walker about his clandestine travels on unpaved roads under the cover of night, meeting with other educators and with Dr. King, Georgia politicians, and even U.S. presidents. Sometimes he and Walker spoke by phone, sometimes in his office, sometimes in his home; always Tate shared fascinating stories of the times leading up to and following Brown v. Board of Education. Dramatically, on his deathbed, he asked Walker to return to his office in Atlanta, in a building that was once the headquarters of another kind of southern strategy, one driven by integrity and equality. Just days after Dr. Tate's passing in 2002, Walker honored his wish. Up a dusty, rickety staircase, locked in a concealed attic, she found the collection: a massive archive documenting the underground actors and covert strategies behind the most significant era of the fight for educational justice. Thus began Walker's sixteen-year project to uncover the network of educators behind countless battles—in courtrooms, schools, and communities—for the education of black children. Until now, the courageous story of how black Americans in the South won so much and subsequently fell so far has been incomplete. The Lost Education of Horace Tate is a monumental work that offers fresh insight into the southern struggle for human rights, revealing little-known accounts of leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson, as well as hidden provocateurs like Horace Tate.