Nearly every Georgian knows about James Oglethorpe, who founded the Georgia colony in 1733. Middle school students learn to this day that chattel slavery was prohibited in the colony because of him. But a new book argues that a little known history informed Oglethorpe’s abolitionist stance: his friendships with two formerly enslaved Black men.

In the latest turn in a years-long attempt to open a rock quarry in Jackson County, a judge ruled this spring that the mining company Vulcan Materials could not go ahead with its project.