1519 Africans Revolt In Hispaniola
1522 Revolt In Puerto Rico
1530 Revolt In Mexico
1619 The first African Americans 20 indentured servants
arrive in Jamestown, Virginia.
1624 Africans are imported as slaves to the Hudson River
Valley in New York.
1630-1697 Thousands of enslaved Africans establish Palmares, Brazil
1638 The New England slave trade begins with the shipment of
Native American slaves to the West Indies, where they
are exchanged for Africans and goods.
1639 Africans Revolt on Providence Island
1641 Massachusetts is the first colony to make slavery legal,
followed by Connecticut (1650), Virginia (1661),
Maryland (1663), New York and New Jersey (1664), South
Carolina (1682), Rhode Island and Pennsylvania (1700),
North Carolina (1715), and Georgia (1750).
1645 New England's triangular trade route is established: a
Boston ship brings slaves from Africa to the West Indies,
where they are traded for sugar, tobacco, and wine; these
in turn are sold for manufactured goods on the ship's
return to Massachusetts.
1655 Revolt of 1500 Africans in Jamaica
1663-1739 Nearly 76 years of insurrections by enslaved Jamaicans
1663 First serious slave rebellion in Gloucester County,
Virginia.
1664 First law prohibiting marriage between English women
and African men enacted in Maryland; the other colonies
will pass similar laws.
1674 Revolt in Barbados
1687 Revolt in Antigua
1688 The first white, organized protest against slavery made
by Germantown, Pennsylvania Quakers.
1708 enslaved rebellion, Long Island.
1712 enslaved rebellion, New York City.
1731 Benjamin Banneker, black inventor and scientist, born in
Ellicott's Mills, Maryland.
1739 enslaved revolt, Stono, South Carolina.
1750 Crispus Attucks escaped from his owner in Framingham,
Massachusetts.
1760 Jupiter Hammon, a New York slave who was probably the
first African poetin the US, published "An Evening Thought:
Salvation by Christ, with Penitential Cries."
1760 Major revolt in Jamaica led by "Tackey"
1763 Major revolt of enslaved Africans in Dutch Surinam
1765 Revolt by enslaved Africans in Honduras
1768 Discovery of revolt plot on St Kitts
1770 Crispus Attucks, often called the first martyr of the
American Revolution, was the first person killed in
the Boston Massacre.
1770 Quakers opened a school for Africans in Philadelphia.
1773 Massachusetts slaves petition the legislature for
freedom.
1773 Enslaved Africans in Jamaica in major revolt
Phillis Wheatley's book, Poems on Various Subjects,
Religious and Moral , is published, the first book by a
black.
1773-1775 Pioneer African church established between
in Silver Bluff, South Carolina.
1775 First abolitionist society in U.S. organized in
Philadelphia.
Among the African heroes of the Battle of Bunker Hill
are Peter Salem and Salem Poor.
1776 Declaration of Independence adopted on 4 July. A section
denouncing the slave trade was deleted.
1777 Vermont becomes the first American colony to abolish
slavery. Other Northern states followed over the next
two decades.
1781 Los Angeles, California, founded by 44 settlers, at least
26 of whom were descendants of Africans.
1787 Continental Congress excludes slavery from the
Northwest Territory.
U.S. Constitution approved with three clauses protecting
slavery.
1791 Beginning of Haitian Revolution.
Benjamin Banneker serves on commission which surveyed
the District of Columbia.
1793 First fugitive slave law enacted.
1794 Eli Whitney patented cotton gin, making cotton king
and increasing the demand for slave labor.
1797 Sojourner Truth born a slave in Hurley, New York.
1791-1803 Some 500,000 enslaved Africans sucessfully revolt in Haiti
1796 Enslaved Africans revolt in St Lucia
1800 Gabriel Prosser and 1,000 slaves attack Richmond,
Virginia; Prosser and 15 others were hanged.
Nat Turner born in Southampton County, Virginia.
1801 Revolt of enslaved Africans in Guadeloupe
1804 Jean Jacques Dessalines proclaims the independence
of Haiti, which becomes the second republic in the
Western Hemisphere.
The first of a series of Northern African Laws is
passed by the Ohio legislature. These restricted the
rights and movement of free Africans in the North.
1807 Congress bans the slave trade.
1810 First insurance company managed by Africans
is
established in Philadelphia.
1811 Revolt of enslaved Africans in St. Johns Parish, Louisana
1817 Frederick Douglass born in Tuckahoe, Maryland.
1820 "Mayflower of Liberia" sailed from New York City to
Sierra Leone with 86 Africans.
Missouri Compromise enacted. It prohibited slavery to
the north of the southern boundary of Missouri.
1822 Denmark Vesey's conspiracy one of the most elaborate
slave plots on record was betrayed by a house slave.
The conspiracy involved thousands of Africans in and
around Charleston, South Carolina; 37 Africans were
hanged.
1823 Major revolt of Africans in Guyana
1827 Freedom's Journal , the first African newspaper, is
published in New York City.
Slavery abolished in New York State.
1828-1837 Revolt of enslaved Africans in Brazil
1829 After a race riot in Cincinnati, more than 1,000
blacks left the city for Canada.
Walker's Appeal , a radical antislavery pamphlet, is
published in Boston by David Walker.
1830 The first national African convention meets in
Philadelphia, with 38 delegates from 8 states.
1831 William Lloyd Garrison publishes the first issue of
the abolitionist journal, the Liberator .
1831 Revolt of Africans in Antigua
1831 The Nat Turner Rebellion in Southampton County,
Virginia. Some 60 whites were killed. Turner
eluded capture for nearly two months, but was eventually
caught and hanged.
1833 American Anti-Slavery Society organized.
1834 Slavery abolished in the British Empire.
1837 Weekly Advocate changed its name to the Colored
American , the second major African newspaper. Some
40 black newspapers were published before the
Civil War.
1843 Sojourner Truth leaves New York and begins her
career as an anti-slavery activist.
1844 Revolt of enslaved Africans in Cuba
1845 Macon B. Allen becomes the first African lawyer
admitted to the bar (in Massachusetts).
1845 Frederick Douglass publishes Narrative of the
Life of Frederick Douglass .
1847 Frederick Douglass publishes the first issue of his
newspaper, the North Star .
1848 Revolt of enslaved Africans in the Virgin Islands
1849 Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland.
She returned to the South 19 times and brought
out more than 300 slaves.
1850 Fugitive Slave Act passed by Congress.
1853 William Wells Brown publishes Clotel , the first novel
by a African born in America.
1854 The Kansas-Nebraska Act repeals the Missouri
Compromise and opens Northern territory to slavery.
1856 Booker T. Washington born a slave in Franklin County,
Virginia.
1857 Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court opens
Northern territory to slavery and denies citizenship
to Africans born in America.
1858 William Wells Brown publishes The Escape , the first
play by an African born in America.
1859 John Brown attacks Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He and two
of the African members of his band were hanged.
The last slave ship, the Clothilde , lands shipment of
slaves at Mobile Bay, Alabama.
1860 Abraham Lincoln is elected president.
South Carolina declares itself an "independent
commonwealth."
1862 Congress abolishes slavery in Washington.
1863 African slavery ends in the Former Dutch Colony of Suriname
1863 Emancipation Proclamation frees slaves in rebel states,
with exceptions in sections of Louisiana, West
Virginia, and Virginia. The Proclamation does not apply
to slaves in Border States.
1865 Thirteenth Amendment Abolishes Slavery. The
African in America
is free.
1867 Fourteenth Amendment Bill of Rights extended to
individuals, thus preventing states from depriving
individuals of federally guaranteed rights. The
African born in America is a citizen.
1870 Fifteenth Amendment Guarantees the right to vote
to all men of all races (women do not get the vote
until 1920).
1875 Civil Rights Bill , Africans have the right to equal
treatment in inns, public transportation, etc.
1870-95 Many Africans gain elective office, but at the same time
there are outbreaks of violence against blacks in the
South.
1882-96 More than 1200 reported lynchings of Africans.
1883 Supreme Court declares the Civil Rights Bill of
1875 unconstitutional.
1895 Frederick Douglass dies.
Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition Speech.
1896 Supreme Court's decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson
upholds the doctrine of "separate but equal," thus
initiating the age of Jim Crow.
Oct. 7, 1897 The Honorable Elijah
Muhammad is
Born in Sandersville, Georgia
1896-1906 800 reported lynchings of Africans.
1898 Spanish-American War. Sixteen regiments of
African
volunteers recruited in the course of the war. U. S.
gains the Hawaiian Islands, Puerto Rico, and the
Philippine Islands.
1900 James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson
compose "Lift Every Voice and Sing."
1903 W. E. B. Du Bois publishes The Souls of Black Folk .
1905 The Niagara Movement, led by Du Bois, demands
abolition of all distinctions based on race.
1906 Rebellions in Atlanta and Philadelphia.
1909 NAACP founded on 12 February, the 100th
anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth.
1910 Du Bois publishes the first issue of The Crisis .
1911 The National Urban League formed.
1912 First published blues composition, W. C. Handy's
Memphis Blues .
1913 Harriet Tubman dies
Woodrow Wilson's administration begins segregating
blacks and whites in government departments.
1915 Booker T. Washington dies.
1916 ku klux klan receives a charter from the Fulton
County, (Atlanta) Georgia, Superior Court. The organization
spreads quickly, reaching its height in the 1920s,
when it had an estimated 4 million members.
Great Migration begins. Approximately 2 million
Africans move to northern industrial centers
during the following decades.
1917 United States enters World War I.
Major race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois.
More than 10,000 Africans march down Fifth Avenue
in New York City in a silent parade to protest
lynchings and racial indignities.
Rebellions in Houston lead to the hanging of
13 African soldiers.
1918 World War I ends. Official records indicate that
370,000 African soldiers and 1400 African commissioned
officers participated, more than half of them in
the European Theater. Three African regiments the
369th, 371st, and 272nd receive the Croix de
Guerre for valor. The 369th was the first American
regiment to reach the Rhine.
1919 Du Bois organizes the first Pan-African conference
in Paris.
Rebellions in Charleston, Washington, Chicago, Arkansas,
and Texas. A total of 26 rebellions during the "Red Summer"
of 1919.
Madame C. J. Walker dies.
1920 Marcus Garvey launches the Universal Negro
Improvement Association in Harlem. Garvey addresses
25,000 Africans in Madison Square Garden. Garvey
establishes the first mass movement for Africans
in the U. S.
1921- Harlem Renaissance
1923 Martial law declared in Oklahoma as a result of
activities by the klan.
1925 Malcolm Little (later Malcolm X) born on 19 May in
Omaha, Nebraska.
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters organized A.
Philip Randolph elected president.
Louis Armstrong records the first of Hot Five and
Hot Seven recordings that influenced the direction
of jazz.
40,000 ku klux klan members parade in Washington
1926 Carter G. Woodson organizes the first
African History
Week celebration in the second week of February to
include the birthday of Abraham Lincoln and the generally
accepted birthday of Frederick Douglass.
1927 Duke Ellington opens at the Cotton Club in Harlem.
1929 Martin Luther King, Jr., born on 15 January in Atlanta.
The stock market crashes on 19 October, beginning the
Great Depression. By 1937, 26% of African males were
unemployed.
1930 The Honorable Elijah Muhammad meets and is
taught by Master Fard Muhammad
1931 First Scottsboro trial begins in Scottsboro, Alabama on
6 April. Nine African youths were accused of raping two
white women on a freight train. The blatant injustice
of the case outrages the public throughout the 1930s.
May 11, 1933 Louis Farrakhan minister Nation Of Islam is born
1935 Joe Louis defeats Primo Carnera at Yankee Stadium.
Eldridge Cleaver born in Wabaseka, Ark 1935
National Council of Negro Women founded in New York;
Mary McLeod Bethune, President.
1936 Jesse Owens wins four gold medals at the Olympics
in Berlin.
1937 Joe Louis becomes heavyweight boxing champion.
Bessie Smith dies.
1938 James Weldon Johnson dies.
1939 Marian Anderson performs before 75,000 at the Lincoln
Monument. Her concert is scheduled in protest of the
decision made by the Daughters of the American
Revolution to forbid, for reasons of race, Ms. Anderson to
sing in Constitution Hall.
1940 Richard Wright publishes Native Son .
Marcus Garvey dies in London.
President Roosevelt issues a statement that
segregation is the policy in the U. S. armed forces.
1941 United States enters World War II.
1941- The Honorable Elijah Muhammad refuses to register
for the military draft, is arrested
and sentenced to a 5 year prison term to be served
at the Federal Correctional Institution at Milan, Michigan
President Roosevelt, responding to pressure from
African leaders, issues an Executive Order forbidding
racial and religious discrimination in war industries,
governmental training programs, and governmental
industries.
Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton dies.
First U. S. Army flying school for black cadets
dedicated at Tuskegee.
The first of many serious racial incidents between
black and white soldiers and black soldiers and
white civilians, these continue throughout the war.
1942 John H. Johnson publishes the first issue of Negro
Digest .
1942 Huey P. Newton born
Congress of Race Equality (CORE) organized in Chicago.
It advocates direct, nonviolent action. The National
CORE is organized in 1943.
1943 Rebellions in Detroit, Harlem, and elsewhere.
Thomas W. "Fats" Waller dies.
1944 United Negro College Fund incorporates.
Adam Clayton Powell is elected to Congress.
1945 President Roosevelt dies.
United Nations founded.
Germany surrenders on 8 May, V-E Day.
Japan surrenders on 2 September, V-J Day, ending
World War II. Total of 1,154,720 African born in America
were inducted or drafted into the armed services
during the war.
White students in various metropolitan areas protest
integration in the schools.
Brooklyn Dodgers sign Jackie Robinson.
John H. Johnson publishes the first issue of Ebony .
1946 Supreme Court bans segregation in interstate bus
travel.
1947 Widespread violence against Africans, especially
returning soldiers.
CORE sends 23 black and white Freedom Riders
through the South to test compliance with court orders.
1948 President Truman issues an Executive Order directing
equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed
forces.
1950 Gwendolyn Brooks receives Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Ralph Bunche receives Nobel Prize for his successful
mediation of the Palestine conflict.
1951 John H. Johnson founds Jet magazine.
1952 University of Tennessee admits first African student.
1953 The movement of black families into Trumbull Park
housing project in Chicago triggers virtually
continuous riot lasting more than three years.
1954 Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown vs.
Board of Education declares segregation in public
schools unconstitutional "Separate is not equal."
School integration begins in Washington and Baltimore.
Defense Department announces elimination of all
segregated regiments in the armed forces.
1955 Marian Anderson debuts at the Metropolitan Opera House,
the first African singer in the company's history.
Supreme Court orders school integration "with all
deliberate speed."
Emmet Till, aged 14, kidnapped and lynched in Money,
Mississippi on 28 August.
Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to give up her seat
to a white man on a Montgomery bus, on 1 December.
The historic bus boycott in Montgomery begins on
5 December. Martin Luther King, Jr., is elected
president of the boycott organization.
1956 Home of Martin Luther King, Jr., is bombed on 30
January.
First African student admitted to the University of
Alabama on 3 February. She was suspended after
a riot on 7 February and expelled on 29 February.
Nat King Cole attacked on stage in Birmingham by
white supremacists.
Bus Boycott begins in Tallahassee.
Federal court rules that racial segregation on
Montgomery city buses violates the Constitution.
Supreme Court upholds the decision several months
later.
December 6, 1956 Nelson Mandela & 156 others arrested for political activities in South Africa.
1957 Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
organized, Martin Luther King, Jr., president.
Prayer Pilgrimage, the biggest civil rights demonstra-
tion to date, held in Washington.
Civil Rights Act of 1957 passes Congress, giving the
Justice Department the authority to seek injunctions
against voting rights infractions.
President Eisenhower orders federal troops into
Little Rock to prevent interference with integration
at Central High School. Soldiers of the 101st Airborne
Division escort nine students to the school.
September 20, 1958 Martin Luther King Jr stabbed in chest by a deranged African woman in NYC
1958 Members of the NAACP Youth Council begin sitting at
lunch counters in Oklahoma City.
1959 A Raisin in the Sun , the first Broadway play by a
African woman, opens.
Prince Edward County, Virginia, Board of Supervisors
closes the school system to prevent integration.
1960 Four students from North Carolina A & T College begin
the Sit-In Movement at a Greensboro, North Carolina,
five-and-dime store on 1 February. By 10 February, the
movement had spread to 15 Southern cities in 5 states.
Student protest marches spread; white police forces
and white civilians respond with violence. By March,
more than 1,000 are arrested.
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
organized at Shaw University.
President Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights Act of
1960 on 6 May.
John F. Kennedy elected President.
1961 SNCC launches Jail-in movement ("Jail, no Bail.").
Thirteen Freedom Riders take bus trip through the
South. On 14 May, the bus is bombed and burned. Robert
F. Kennedy sends four hundred federal marshals to
Montgomery to keep order.
Hundreds of protesters, including King, are arrested and
beaten.
1962 King is jailed in Albany, Georgia.
Several African churches are burned.
Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett denies the
federally mandated admission of James Meredith to
the University of Mississippi. Federal marshals
eventually escort Meredith to the campus.
June 13, 1963 Medgar Evers is assassinated.
National Guard troops brought to Boston because of
protests against integration.
W. E. B. Du Bois dies on 27 August.
March on Washington, the largest civil rights
demonstration in history, draws more than 250,000
people on 28 August.
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham bombed,
killing four African girls, on 15 September.
More than 225,000 students boycott Chicago schools
on 22 October to protest de facto segregation.
John F. Kennedy assassinated on 22 November.
1964 24th Amendment eliminates poll tax requirements in
federal elections.
Muhammad Ali defeats Sonny Liston on 25 February.
Malcolm X resigns from the Nation of Islam on 12 March.
Civil Rights bill signed by President Johnson on 2 July.
Malcolm X founds the Organization for Afro-American
Unity on 28 June.
Rebellions in Harlem, Brooklyn, Rochester, Jersey City,
Philadelphia.
Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman murdered by ku
klux klan terrorists in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
December 10 Martin Luther King, Jr., receives Nobel Peace Prize
February 1, 1965 King begins voter registration drive in Selma. King
and more than 100 others are arrested
February 14, Malcolm X's home is firebombed. No injuries are reported
February 21 Malcolm X assassinated in front of hundreds, while delivering a speech.
Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march.
August 6, President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Bill on
authorizing the end of literacy tests for
voting.
Rebellions in Watts and Chicago.
1966 Julian Bond denied his seat in Georgia House of
Representatives because of his opposition to the
Vietnam War
First world festival of African art held in Dakar, Senegal.
King denounces the Vietnam War.
Stokely Carmichael named chairman of SNCC.
James Meredith wounded by sniper during the
Memphis-to-Jackson voter registration march.
Willie Ricks coins the slogan "Black Power"
Stokely Carmichael launches the Black Power Movement during
the same march.
Rebellions in Chicago, Lansing, Milwaukee, Dayton,
Atlanta and nearly forty other cities.
October 15 Huey Newton and Bobby Seale found the Black Panther
Party in Oakland.
January 1 1967 BPP opens first official headquarters on 56th and Grove streets in Oakland, Calif
February 21: Two years after the assassination of Malcolm X, armed BPP members areconfronted by police outside
the San Francisco offices of RAMPARTS magazine while escorting his widow, Betty Shabazz
1967 Julian Bond is finally seated in the Georgia legislature.
Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., is expelled
from the House of Representatives. Harlem voters
defy Congress and re-elect Powell.
H. Rap Brown replaces Stokely Carmichael as chair
of SNCC.
Thurgood Marshall named to the Supreme Court.
Rebellions in Roxbury, Tampa, Cincinnati.
Muhammad Ali convicted for refusing induction into
the army; sentenced to five years of prison.
July/August 1967 Newark Rebellion, the worst outbreak of racial
violence since Watts riots spread to other New
Jersey cities. Riots in numerous cities across the
nation. National Guard called out. 75 major riots
during the year
1968 Kerner Commission Report states that white racism
is the fundamental cause of the riots in the cities.
February 8 Three South Carolina State students are killed during segregation protests in Orangeburg
March. King announces plans for Poor People's
Campaign in Washington, scheduled for 20 April.
April: Black Panther Party opens office in New York City.
April 4, 1968 - Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated
by hite
sniper in Memphis. The assassination triggered
a national crisis with rebellions
in more than 100 cities and calls for racial
renewal and repentance.
President Johnson declared a day of mourning.
June 6 Robert F. Kennedy assassinated
June19 Poor People's Campaign, Numerous arrests
are made and "Resurrection City" is closed on June 24.
November 5 Richard M. Nixon elected President.
November 24: Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver flee US, visit Cuba and Paris, then eventually settle in Algeria
January 1969 The first BPP Free Breakfast for School Children Program is initiated at St. Augustine's Church in Oakland
April 2: Twenty-one BPP members in New York are arrested on a wide assortment of conspiracy charges
May 22: Eight members, including Ericka Huggins, arrested on a variety of conspiracy and murder charges in New Haven, Conn.
Dec 4 1969 Fred Hampton murdered by police while sleep in bed
Jan. 7, 1973 - Mark Essex, 23; is killed atop New Orleans hotel after killing 6 and wounding 15.
July 1974 Newton goes into exile in Cuba to
avoid prosecution for the beating death of a female barroom customer.
-Elaine Brown succeeds Newton as Chairman of the BPP
November 1974 Eldridge and Kathleen
Cleaver return from exile. Eldridge is a born-again Christian.
Jan. 19th - One policeman killed and 2 wounded as
Black freedom fighters seize a Brooklyn sporting goods store.
May 2nd - Zayd Malik Shakur killed by New Jersey
state police on New Jersey Turnpike; Assata Shakur wounded and Sundiata Acoli
arrested.
Nov. 14th - Twyman Fred Myers, 23, BLA member,
ambushed by FBI and New York police; was 6th BLA member killed in this fashion.
February 26 1975, The Messenger of Allah, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad dies in Chicago.
1976 The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment ends
June 16, 1976 The Sharpville Massacre 69 murdered, hundreds injured
when South African school children, protesting the forced use of a
european
language being applied to all their classes, are shot down by the racist
europeans
Nov 2, 1979 Assata Shakur is liberated from a NJ prison on Black Solidarity day
Jan 15 1980 A group of organizations spearheaded by Stevie Wonder march on Wash DC in support of a
national holiday honoring Dr.King 900,000 respond in the bitter cold, effectively shutting down DC.
1988 In separate incidents, Cleaver and Newton are arrested for drug possession.
April 22, 1989 Huey P. Newton murdered in California, Tyrone Robinson, member of the Black Guerrilla family, is arrested for the murder.
April 17, 1990 Ralph Abernathy civil rights activist and top aide to Dr King, dies at age 64.
June 20, 1990 Nelson & Winnie Mandela lands in NYC to begin a tour of the US.
April 29, 1992 The Rodney King verdict is handed down, an all white
jury acquits the officers of any wrong doing, rebellions broke out all over the
USA, in LA alone
over 54 dead, hundreds injured thousands arrested, Atlanta had 300
arrested
May 10, 1994 Nelson Mandela is sworn in as South Africa's first African president
October 17, 1995 Over 1.5 Million responded to the call made for a Million Man March by The Honorable Min. Louis Farrakhan and a host of African organizations, 1.5 Million converge on Washington D.C. for Atonement and effectively shuts down the nations capital.
June 1, 1997 Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, was fatally burned in a fire set by her 12-year-old grandson in her Yonkers, NY apartment.
October 25, 1997 Over 2.1 Million respond to the call for a Million Women March held in Philadelphia, Pa. this march galvanized sisterhood all over the world.
May 1, 1998 Eldridge Cleaver dies
September 5, 1998 Over 300,000 respond to the call by Dr. Khallid Abdul Muhammad for a Million Youth March in Harlem, NY
November 15, 1998 Kwame Ture murdered from "a cia induced cancer"
February 17, 2001 Dr. Khallid Abdul Muhammad dies under mysterious circumstances in a North Georgia hospital