For 120 years lawyers have started their day with the Daily Report. Like a lot of our readers whose practices no longer are confined to just the city of Atlanta or another metro community, we’ve stretched out into Georgia for readers and news.

A lot of things have changed in 120 years, but one constant is that lawyers still drive every significant social, political, cultural and financial issue. As our staff looked back into Georgia history in researching this issue, there were few important events that didn’t have the law or a lawyer attached to them.

Special credit for assembling this package goes to special projects editor Mary Smith Judd, who marshaled staff, freelance contributors and a wide array of archival resources. Print and website presentation credit goes to art director Jason R. Bennitt, art/production director LaMonte D. Ayers, designer Derrick Barnes and digital content editor Leigh Jones.

Besides our own archives, the Daily Report acknowledges the use of photos and other information from the Atlanta History Center, the Atlanta Bar Association, the Georgia Secretary of State’s Virtual Vault and Vanishing Georgia projects, the Georgia State Archives, the Georgia Bar Association, the Breman Jewish Heritage & Holocaust Museum, Georgia State University, the Digital Library of Georgia, Sutherland and King & Spalding. We also relied heavily on Internet timeline sources, especially Google’s timeline of Georgia Supreme Court cases, Ourgeorgiahistory.com and City-directory.com.

Unless otherwise noted, all photos are courtesy of the Atlanta History Center.

Our timeline is far from definitive. We plan to update it continuously, and we invite readers to tell us what we’ve missed.

Ed Bean
Editor in Chief and Associate Publisher