Famous People of Georgia

Aiken was born in Savannah, Georgia. When Aiken was eleven years of age, his physician father killed his mother, then himself. According to his own writings, Aiken found the bodies of his parents. He was raised by his great-great-aunt in Massachusetts. Aiken was educated at private schools and at Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, then at Harvard University where he edited the Advocate with T. S. Eliot who became a lifelong friend and associate.

Aiken's earliest poetry was written partly under the influence of a beloved teacher, the philosopher George Santayana. This relation shaped Aiken as a poet who was deeply musical in his approach and, at the same time, philosophical in seeking answers to his own problems and the problems of the modern world. • Conrad Aiken Books

Born in Kentucky, Bowie spent most of his life in Louisiana, where he was raised and later worked as a land speculator. His rise to fame began in 1827 on reports of the Sandbar Fight. What began as a duel between two other men deteriorated into a melee in which Bowie, having been shot and stabbed, killed the sheriff of Rapides Parish with a large knife. This, and other stories of Bowie's prowess with the knife, led to the widespread popularity of the Bowie knife. • James Bowie Books

James Nathaniel Brown was born to Theresa (a housekeeper) and Swinton Brown (a professional boxer).

At Manhasset High School, Brown earned 13 letters playing football, lacrosse, baseball, basketball and running track.

"Mr. Brown credits his self-reliance to having grown up on St. Simons's island, an all-black community off the coast of Georgia where he was raised by his grandmother and where racism did not affect him directly. At the age of 8 he moved to Manhasset, N.Y., where his mother worked as a domestic. It was at Manhasset High School that he became a football star and athletic legend" He averaged a then-Long Island record 38 points per game for his basketball team. His career island scoring mark was later broken by future Boston Red Sox star Carl Yastrzemski of Bridgehampton. • Jim Brown Books • Jim Brown Movies

Caldwell was born in a house in the woods outside Moreland, Georgia, the son of a minister in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. His early childhood was spent moving from state to state across the South, as his father found a position in one church after another.

Later, he attended, but did not graduate from, Erskine College. He was athletic, played football, stood six feet tall, and has been described by one of his publishers to have an unusually kind face and otherwise angelic appearance. His political sympathies lay with blue collar workers, and as he went from job to job in his younger days, drew on his experiences with common workers to write books that extolled the simple life of those less fortunate than he was. Later in life, he gave seminars on low income tenant-sharecroppers in the American South.

His first and second published works were Bastard (1929) and Poor Fool (1930) but the works for which he is most famous are his novels Tobacco Road (1932) and God's Little Acre (1933). • Erskine Caldwell Books

In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Charles number ten on their list of "The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time" and voted him number two on their November 2008 list of "The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time Charles was the son of Aretha Williams, a share cropper, and Bailey Robinson, a railroad repair man, mechanic and handyman.[6] Williams was very religious and the family attended the New Shiloh Baptist Church. When Ray was an infant the family moved from his native Albany, Georgia to the poor black community of Jellyroll on the western side of Greenville, Florida. In his early years, Charles showed a curiosity for mechanical things and he often watched the neighborhood men working on their cars and farm machinery. His musical curiosity was sparked at Mr. Wiley Pit's Red Wing Cafe when Pit played boogie woogie on an old upright piano. Pit would care for George, Ray's younger brother, to take the burden off Williams. Tragically, George drowned in Williams' wash tub at age four. • Ray Charles Website • Ray Charles Discography • Ray Charles Books

Clay was born in Marietta, Georgia, the sixth and last child of Alexander Stephens Clay, who served in the U.S. Senate from 1897 to 1910, but contrary to popular belief, this branch of the Clay family is not at all closely related to the famous statesman Henry Clay. Lucius Clay graduated from West Point in 1918 and held various civil and military engineering posts during the 1920s and 1930s, including teaching at West Point, directing the construction of dams and civilian airports, and by 1942 rising to the position of the youngest brigadier general in the Army. All the while he acquired a reputation for bringing order and operational efficiency out of chaos, and for being an exceptionally hard and disciplined worker, going long hours and refusing to even stop to eat during his workdays. • Lucius D. Clay Books

After his wife's death in 1937, Coburn relocated to Los Angeles, California and began acting in films. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a retired millionaire playing Cupid in The More the Merrier in 1943. He was also nominated for The Devil and Miss Jones in 1941 and The Green Years in 1946. Other notable film credits include Of Human Hearts (1938), The Lady Eve (1941), Kings Row (1942), The Constant Nymph (1943), Heaven Can Wait (1943), Wilson (1944), Impact (1949), The Paradine Case (1947), Everybody Does It (1950), Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and John Paul Jones (1959). He usually played comedic parts, but Kings Row and Wilson were dramatic parts, showing his versatility. For his contributions to motion pictures, Coburn has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6240 Hollywood Boulevard. • Charles Coburn Books • Charles Coburn Movies

Davis was born Raiford Chatman Davis in Cogdell, Clinch County, Georgia. The name Ossie came from a county clerk who misheard his mother's pronunciation of his initials "R.C." when he was born. Following the wishes of his parents, he attended Howard University but dropped out in 1939 to fulfill his acting career in New York; he later attended Columbia University School of General Studies. His acting career, which spanned seven decades, began in 1939 with the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem. He made his film debut in 1950 in the Sidney Poitier film No Way Out. He voiced Anansi the spider on the PBS series Sesame Street in its animation segments. • Ossie Davis Books • Ossie Davis Movies

Dickey was born to lawyer, Eugene Dickey, and Maibelle Swift in Atlanta, Georgia where he attended North Fulton High School in Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood. In 1942 he enrolled at Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina and played on the football team as a tailback. After one semester, he left school to enlist in the Army Air Corps. Dickey served in the U.S. Army night fighter squadrons during the Second World War, and in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. Between the wars he attended Vanderbilt University, graduating with degrees in English and philosophy, as well as minoring in astronomy. He also taught at the University of Florida. • James Dickey Books

Douglas developed his acting skills with stock companies in Sioux City, Iowa; Evansville, Indiana; Madison, Wisconsin, and Detroit, Michigan. He had a long theatre, film and television career as a lead player, stretching from his 1930 Broadway role in Tonight or Never (opposite his future wife, Helen Gahagan) until just before his death. He was the hero in the 1932 horror film The Vampire Bat and the sophisticated leading man in 1935's She Married Her Boss. He played opposite Joan Crawford in several films, most notably A Woman's Face (1941), and with Greta Garbo in three films: As You Desire Me (1932), Ninotchka (1939) and Garbo's final film Two-Faced Woman (1941).

During World War II, Douglas served first as a director of the Arts Council in the Office of Civilian Defense, and then in the United States Army. He returned to play more mature roles in The Sea of Grass and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. In 1959 he made his musical debut playing Captain Boyle in the ill-fated Marc Blitzstein musical Juno, based on Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock. • Melvyn Douglas Books • Melvyn Douglas Movies

One of the most sought-after backup musicians of the 1960s, Drake played on such hits as Lynn Anderson's "Rose Garden", Charlie Rich's "Behind Closed Doors"' Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay"' and Tammy Wynette's "Stand by Your Man". (Drake's work on this last tune is debatable, in that some sources claim Sonny Curtis to be the steel guitar player on that record.) • Pete Drake Books

Felton was a White supremacist, as were most White Americans during those times. She claimed, for instance, that the more money that Georgia spent on black education, the more crimes blacks committed. For the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition, she "proposed a southern exhibit 'illustrating the slave period,' with a cabin and 'real colored folks making mats, shuck collars, and baskets--a woman to spin and card cotton--and another to play banjo and show the actual life of [the] slave--not the Uncle Tom sort.'" She wanted to display "the ignorant contented darky--as distinguished from [Harriet Beecher] Stowe's monstrosities."

As with most White Americans then, she considered "young blacks" who sought equal treatment "half-civilized gorillas" and ascribed to them a "brutal lust" for white women. While seeking suffrage for women, she decried black suffrage, averring that it led directly to the rape of white women. • Rebecca Latimer Felton Books

After his father's death he was raised by his mother in Athens, Georgia. He was educated in the classical tradition of a southern gentleman of the time at the University of Georgia (Bachelor of Arts in 1868) where he was a charter member of Eta Chapter of the Chi Phi Fraternity. In 1867, he became a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society, and later attended the University of Virginia to study law, but became especially interested in Greek and Anglo-Saxon languages, history, and literature, which led to a career in journalism.

Grady was a life-long devoted member of the Chi Phi Fraternity. He was a charter member of the Eta Chapter of Chi Phi at the University of Georgia. In 1882 he was elected as the first Grand Alpha (National President) from the south after the union of the Northern and Southern Orders of Chi Phi in 1874. • Henry W. Grady Books

Grant made her debut as a teenager, and gained fame in Contemporary Christian music during the 1980s with such hits as "Father's Eyes," "El Shaddai," and "Angels." During the late 1980s and 1990s she become one of the first gospel artists to cross over into mainstream pop, on the heels of her successful albums Unguarded and Heart in Motion, the latter of which included the number-one single "Baby Baby."

As of 2009, Grant remains the best-selling Contemporary Christian music singer, having sold over 30 million units worldwide. Grant has won six Grammy Awards, 25 Gospel Music Association Dove Awards, and had the first Christian album ever to go, "Platinum." Heart in Motion is her highest selling album, with over five million copies sold. She was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005. • Amy Grant Books • Amy Grant Discography