This fascinating story of Amanda America Dickson, born the privileged daughter of a white planter and an unconsenting slave in antebellum Georgia, shows how strong-willed individuals defied racial strictures for the sake of family. Kent Anderson Leslie uses the events of Dickson's life to explore the forces driving southern race and gender relations from the days of King Cotton through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and New South eras. Although legally a slave herself well into her adolescence, Dickson was much favored by her father and lived comfortably in his house, receiving a genteel upbringing and education. After her father died in 1885 Dickson inherited most of his half-million dollar estate, sparking off two years of legal battles with white relatives. When the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the will, Dickson became the largest landowner in Hancock County, Georgia, and the wealthiest black woman in the post-Civil War South. Kent Anderson Leslie's portrayal of Dickson is enhanced by a wealth of details about plantation life; the elaborate codes of behavior for men and women, blacks and whites in the South; and the equally complicated circumstances under which racial transgressions were sometimes ignored, tolerated, or even accepted.

John McCown was a black civil rights worker who achieved great political power and whose career, and life, ended in a swirl of controversy. In 1968, Georgia's Hancock County became the first county in the United States since Reconstruction to come under black political control, in large part because of the charismatic leadership of McCown, who secured millions in grants from the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Ford Foundation, and the East Central Committee for Opportunity. Eight years later, McCown's regime ended with his dramatic death and indictments against McCown and his associates on various charges of defrauding the government. Black Boss details the rise and fall of McCown and the continuing effects of his abuse of power on the people of Hancock County. It is a story that Rozier says shows "the good and evil that dwell in us all."

Gathers letters between Edgeworth Byrd, a Confederate soldier, planter, and slave owner, and his wife and daughter

"This is a collection of 283 genealogies which I have compiled over a period of twenty years as a professional genealogist. ... While I have dealt with some of Oglethorpe's settlers, the vast majority of the genealogies included in this collection deal with Georgians who descend from settlers from other states."--Note to the Reader.

An illustrated history of Hancock County, Ohio, paired with histories of the local companies.