The new colony of Georgia was created to both provide security from Spanish and to provide a new home for the poor and indigent people of Great Britain and Ireland.
      In November 1732, a ship left Gravesend, England for Georgia. According to colonial records, the first 491 Georgian settlers were accompanied by 106 of their manservants.
      Gen. James Oglethorpe wrote: “My friends and I settled the Colony of Georgia. We determined not to suffer slavery there (which is against the Gospel).”
      This theme repeats itself throughout Georgia’s history.
      In January 1775, representatives of Darien declared, “We hereby declare our disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of slavery in America.”
      In 1798, Georgia’s Legislature ruled: “There shall be no further importation of slaves into this state from Africa or from any other foreign place.”
      During the first American Continental Congress, Abraham Baldwin of Georgia proposed in 1789: “If left to herself, she (Georgia) may probably put a stop to this evil.”
      Senator Robert Reid of Georgia, in a speech given on Feb. 1, 1820, stated: 
      Slavery is an unnatural state, a dark cloud, which obscures half the lustre of our free institutions.”
      Despite these protests, tens of thousands of slaves were owned in Georgia.
      After the civil war and the demise of the Confederacy, millions of former slaves sought to acquire the American dream.
      Leaders in black communities sought to help them face the many challenges. One such man was Benjamin William Arnett, a leading Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
      Arnett was invited to speak to the first graduating classes of the Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth located just outside of Savannah on June 9, 1899.
      Bishop Arnett told the new graduates: ‘There is no law that applies to the white boy that does not apply to the black boy. They all have to travel the same road to reach the same end.”
      He challenged the students to: “Study the history of your own race. They were the leaders of human thought, they were among the greatest warriors of the time, and they founded empires and kingdoms, ruled the nations and governed the world of letters.”
      Little could Bishop Arnett know that his advice given then would ring even more true a century later? Could he have possibly dreamed of the day in which Barack Obama, the first American born of an African parent would be elected to the nation’s highest office?

  Arnett declared: “All we ask of the white people of this country to do islet us stand in our own strength or fall in our weakness. if you educate the Negro, the white man will not become ignorant.”
      He closed with a warning: “The time has arrived in the history of our country when we must take care of each other. A unified nation stands the best chance of surviving, and indeed besting, whatever challenges it may face in the future.”