Georgia Magazine - March 2018 - 8

COMPILED BY JENNIFER J. HEWETT

Georgians win awards for archiving projects, historical advocacy

8

STEVE ENGERRAND

T

he Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council
(GHRAC) honored 19 groups, individuals and exhibits as part of its 2017 GHRAC Outstanding Archives
Awards Program.
Established in 2003, the contest celebrates the achievements and advocacy projects of local governments, state
agencies, schools, libraries, museums, history-related societies, educators, officials and students.
The 2017 winners are:
* Cindy Barton, for researching and identifying 15 soldiers who were omitted from the Griffin-Spalding County
World War I Doughboy Memorial statue so that they could
be properly honored;
* Mary Ellen Brooks, for her longtime leadership at the
University of Georgia's Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library;
* Vince Dooley and Samuel Norman Thomas Jr., for
organizing Civil War correspondence between Lt. Col.
William Gaston Delony and Rosa Delony (held at the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library), giving the letters
historical context and editing them into a book;
* Walter Javan "Jay" Fraser Jr., for his lifetime of work
as a historian, professor, writer and scholar of the American South;
* Gainesville High School's 125th Anniversary Celebration, for work done by the school's alumni to collect,
curate and display memorabilia;
* Monica R. Gisolfi, for her book about the transformation of the poultry industry in the 20th century;
* Benjamin Joiner, for his senior history seminar paper
on the changes in what society deemed appropriate education for Southern women from the 1820s to 1840s;
* Kenneth H. Thomas Jr., for his 40-plus years of writing for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, educating readers about how to research genealogy and Georgia history;
* John Lynch, for his advocacy of local history in Fayette
County, where he was a charter member of the county's
historical society, established the Holliday-Dorsey-Fife
Museum and was the official city of Fayetteville historian;
* Eleanor Clary McCoy, for her National History Day
project, an award-winning documentary-done while she
was a 12th-grader at Columbus High School-about a
Massachusetts woman who supported the cause of independence in the 1770s and 1780s;
* the Middle Georgia Archives, for its advocacy of local
history; its collection of architectural, business, church,
educational, personal and family papers; and its service
as a resource center for the region;
* J. Wade Padgett, for his book about the history of the
Augusta Judicial Circuit from a royal colony through the
2016 elections;
* Deborah Prosser, for her work at the University of
North Georgia to establish a special collections, archives
and research center after the consolidation of Gainesville

George Hart and Sonny Seals, center, receive the Award for Excellence in Documenting Georgia's History for their book, "Historic
Rural Churches of Georgia." Presenting the award are Tristan
Denley, left, chief academic officer and executive vice chancellor
of academic affairs for the University System of Georgia, and Toby
Graham, right, university librarian and associate provost with the
University of Georgia Libraries.

State College and North Georgia College and State University;
* Beth Pye, for documenting Gordon College's football
program (1896-1971) in Barnesville and collecting and
displaying related memorabilia, photographs and newspaper articles, which have been added to the Gordon
State College library's holdings;
* Sonny Seals and George Hart, for their book "Historic Rural Churches of Georgia," a project of the Historic Rural Churches of Georgia organization, which documents
47 late 18th- and early 19th-century churches in the state;
* the "Still Raising Hell: The Art, Activism, and Archives of Camille Billops and James V. Hatch" project, which explores the lives and careers of Billops and
Hatch and the artists, writers and activists with whom
their lives intersected (Pellom McDaniels III at Emory University created the exhibition and catalog affiliated with
this project);
* Megan Turner, for her student project on Samuel
Worcester, a missionary who lived and worked with the
Cherokee in the early 1830s;
* the Warner Robins Oral History Project, for its more
than 40 hours of video interviews with pioneers in the
Warner Robins community (the project was funded in
part by a grant from Flint Energies, the Reynolds-based,
member-owned electric cooperative); and
* Laurel Wilson, for her documentary "5 Generations:
From Enslavement to Public Service in Atlanta," which
commemorates the achievements of five generations of
African-American women in metro Atlanta from Reconstruction to the 21st century.
Nominations for the 2018 GHRAC awards program
will be accepted through early June. For details, visit
georgiaarchives.org/ghrac/awards_program.

More online at www.georgiamagazine.org

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Georgia Magazine - March 2018
