By Dr. Charles Pendley
Contributing Writer

Winds of Change

In previous articles in this series celebrating the Bicentennial history of Henry County, we have followed the long arc of our County’s history from the arrival of the first white settlers in 1821, through the harrowing experience of Civil War and reconstruction, recovery and growth aided by the expansion of railroads. Outside of towns, family farms, tenant farmers and sharecroppers continued to cultivate cotton, corn and other crops.

By the middle of the 20th century the winds of change began to be felt across the County. Cars had replaced horses, trucks replaced wagons, and tractors replaced the hard-working and long-suffering mules. Textile mills such as Dowling and the Henderson Spinning and Hosiery Mill in Hampton as well as a number of textile mills in nearby Griffin, added value to raw cotton that was grown and ginned locally by converting it into thread and garments.

Towns such as McDonough, Stockbridge, and Hampton along railroads grew in importance. Smaller communities serving nearby families such as Ola, Kellytown, Flippen, Oakland and Luella also survived, while others such as Peeksville, Mt. Carmel, Snapping Shoals, Greenwood and Dutchtown declined.

By the 1950s, Henry County has become a stable society with relatively well-defined social boundaries maintained by schools, churches, social clubs and civic organizations that were for the most part racially segregated. Farming had suffered during the boll weevil and Great Depression and now required more land and investment in new machinery to be profitable. After cotton experienced a decline due to the Boll Weevil and Great Depression in the 1920s and 1930s as described in previous articles in this series, farmers sought to diversify into new crops such as peaches, pimento peppers, and dairy and beef cattle, or to seek employment in towns.

Members of farm families were attracted to new industries that offered steady jobs with regular pay that attracted members of former farm families – including children. Larger industries were the McDonough Power Equipment Company that became known as Snapper, Inc., Henderson Foundry that eventually became Southern States, Inc., and the rock quarry in Stockbridge, among others.

Production of building materials, clothes, tools, etc. that family farms inherited from self-sufficient plantations were gradually being taken over by stores in towns selling “dry goods,” ready-made clothes, hardware, coal, lumber, ice and other products. The once numerous grist mills in the county declined in the face of new products like self-rising flour and sliced bread produced by large milling companies and bakeries.

In the 1940s and early 1950s many Henry Countians served in World War II and the Korean War, with some sacrificing their own lives on faraway battlefields in Europe, Asia and the Pacific in the name of freedom from oppression and tyranny. They and Henry County’s veterans are aptly honored today at the Wall of Honor at Heritage Park in McDonough.
The wars and the spirit of patriotism that they aroused among Henry Countians served to further integrate the County into larger national society and institutions. During World War II Southern States in Hampton made bomb casings and firing pins, earning it an Army-Navy munitions excellence award. Many other Henry Countians worked in war industries and on military bases.

An important person in the transition of Henry County from an insulated agricultural society was Governor Herman Talmadge, a Democrat and one-time resident of Henry County. Governor Talmadge did much to attract new industry to Georgia and was a strong supporter of the timber industry, which began to expand in Henry County. During Talmadge’s term as Governor from 1947 to 1955 Georgia enacted its first sales tax, which helped fund large improvements in Georgia’s public education system. New schools were built in Henry County and teachers’ salaries were increased, the school term was lengthened to nine months, new school buses were purchased, and the 12th grade became mandatory in high schools.

In May 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregation to be unconstitutional. Previously segregated public schools were integrated, which was strongly opposed and had far-reaching political consequences, seeing the first Republicans elected to public office in almost a century since Reconstruction.

High school graduates were leaving the family farm in increasing numbers going off to colleges like West Georgia, Georgia State, the University of Georgia, Bessie Tift, Mercer, Wesleyan, Abraham Baldwin and others. The city of Atlanta was expanding rapidly, becoming a sprawling metropolis and providing steady, well-paying jobs that attracted many increasingly mobile Henry Countians. Still, in the 1950s a shopping trip to Rich’s or Davison’s in Atlanta was a special, all-day affair.

Thus as the 1950s drew to a close, the stage was set for the coming tsunami of change – the Interstate Era, which saw an explosion in the County’s population and the arrival of a wave of newcomers, and new jobs, among other far-reaching changes. This new era will be the subject of an upcoming article in this Bicentennial history series. Stay tuned.