A Georgia congressman and one of the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington and a Georgia Congressman, John Lewis was born on February 21, 1940. Born into a rural sharecropping family, Lewis grew to participate in the sit-ins in Nashville, the Freedom Rides, voter registration in Mississippi, and Bloody Sunday in Selma. He also served as a chairman for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.  

Author of the famous book The Color Purple,  which was popularized  by the 1985 film starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, Alice Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia on February 9, 1944. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author published her first work at age 23 in a collection edited by renowned Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. 

Hired by the  Atlanta Constitution in 1929, Harry McGill eventually became the editor in 1941. As a white man he challenged Governor Eugene Talmadge and the Ku Klux Klan, encouraged Georgians to obey the federal government's inclusive laws, and disavowed the sweeping racial violence of the time. McGill passed on February 3, 1969, but not before his journalistic efforts earned him a Pulitzer Prize. 

Although born in Massachusetts on February 23, 1868 just after the end of the Civil War, Dr. W.E.B. DuBois taught at Atlanta University for nearly a quarter of a century. The first African-American to earn a PhD from Harvard, he wrote some of his most prominent works, including The Souls of Black Folk,  while in Atlanta. DuBois was also powerfully influenced by the Atlanta Race Riot of 1906--which led him to help found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. 

For more on these individuals, Today in Georgia History has a calendar of short videos, some of which are summarized here.  

Georgia played a central role in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapters 20 and 21 cover Georgia's role in civil rights through the early 1970s. The  Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in 1960 (p. 547).  In January of 1961 Georgia saw the admission of Hamilton Holmes and Charlene Hunter to the University of Georgia  (539). Later that year, SNCC and local organizations formed the Albany Movement (549-50). A graphic and video can help students dive deeper into the history. 

After years of struggle, leaders from the NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, SNCC, and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) agreed to March on Washington in August of 1963 to demonstrate the tremendous support behind the civil rights movement (563-64). Graphics and a video offer a further look at King's "I Have a Dream" Speech and the Washington march (551-52). The National Archives has a series of activities focusing on primary documents. Dr. King's biography is available in a special "Georgians in History" with graphics and audio of the historic speech (553-55). Students could also read Dr. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (558). The eventual Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed by Lyndon B. Johnson (546). 

In 1973, as more African-Americans were elected to the highest offices in Georgia,  Maynard Jackson was elected Atlanta's first African-American Mayor (558). Yet, at the same time that Georgia was making strides towards equality, Lester Maddox, an outspoken segregationist, was elected governor. A graphic offers a close up of his personality (571-72) .