Historical News and Notices

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• Historical News and Notices

THE ASSOCIATION

The Southern Historical Association will hold its ninetieth annual meeting in Kansas City, Missouri, October 24–27, 2024, at the Westin Kansas City at Crown Center. Registration is now open. For the most up-to-date information and to register, please visit https://thesha.org/meeting.

The 2024 annual meeting will not be one to miss. For the first time in our collective histories, the Southern will meet concurrently with the Western History Association (WHA). This first-ever meeting of the leading regional history associations in the United States is not just a marriage of convenience. The SHA Program Committee, chaired by Angela Murphy, has created a host of panels and plenaries emphasizing the SXSW turn in our historiography. The SHA Local Arrangements Committee, chaired by Diane Mutti-Burke, has also outdone itself, planning tours and events at off-site venues that will allow us to explore the city, including an opening plenary jazz performance at the National WWI Museum, a teaching panel at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and much more.

The deadline for submissions for the William F. Holmes Award, recognizing the best paper presented at the Kansas City meeting by a graduate student or recent Ph.D., is October 12, 2024. For more information, please visit https://www.thesha.org/holmes.

The 2025 Program Committee has issued its call for papers for the ninety- first annual meeting in St. Pete Beach, Florida, November 5–8, 2025. All proposals should be submitted electronically through the SHA website. The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2024. In accordance with the SHA’s “one year off” rule, no one who was accepted to give a paper or participate in a roundtable during the Kansas City program will be eligible for participation in St. Pete Beach. (Panel chairs and commentators do not have to take a year off.) The SHA strongly encourages session proposals that reflect racial, gender, and institutional diversity.

LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES

The Georgia Historical Society is pleased to announce that the following collections are now available for research. Please consult the Research Center catalogs for further information about these and other Georgia Historical Society collections: www.georgiahistory.com.

Judge Timothy R. Walmsley Collection of Ahmaud Arbery Murder Trial Materials (GHS 2844)—This collection consists of correspondence sent to Judge Timothy R. Walmsley of the Superior Court of the Eastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia. The correspondence consists of letters, greeting cards, postcards, and other messages related to the murder of Ahmaud Arbery and the trial of Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William “Roddie” Bryan, a trial presided over by Judge Walmsley. The majority of the correspondence [End Page 663] gives thanks and praises the judge for how he handled the trial. The collection also contains an article about Judge Walmsley’s involvement in the trial.

Bill Rankin Papers (GHS 2828)—This collection consists of materials used by Bill Rankin, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution legal affairs journalist, for the research and creation of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution podcast called Breakdown. The podcast investigates important criminal cases within the state of Georgia, takes a look inside the courtroom, and breaks down the stories and criminal justice system using fact-based reporting.

The collection also contains articles written by Rankin, a copy of The Headliner (February 1978) with a blurb about Rankin’s journalist father who once worked for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and materials used for other projects with topics such as the death penalty in Georgia and Georgia’s indigent defense system. The collection contains seven series: articles and clippings; Breakdown podcast files; death penalty files; Georgia’s indigent defense system transcript and articles; judge and attorney files; trial and hearing transcripts; and trial notes. The majority of the collection consists of textual documents. A few audiovisual items and flash drives are also included.

Dr. John Duncan Collection of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Books and Materials (GHS 2843)—While researching and writing his landmark book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (New York, 1994), author John Berendt often stayed with his Savannah friends Dr. John and Virginia Duncan at their townhouse on Taylor Street. This relationship led to...