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Publication Date

1967

Abstract

The formal dedication of these magnificent buildings and equipment at the University of Georgia Law School is an inspiring event in which my wife and I-both native Alabamians-are particularly happy to participate. There are special reasons for our feelings. The present soil of Alabama was a part of the soil of Georgia when, even before the United States was created, your University was chartered by the Georgia General Assembly in 1785. And my ancestral ties with Georgia are even stronger than that. In April of the year 1835, in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, a few miles from where I now stand, on what I hope was a balmy spring Georgia day, a marriage license was issued and a marriage consummated between George Walker Black and Jane Vernon, both Georgians, who later became the parents of my father, William LaFayette Black. Tradition has told me that either on the day of their marriage or shortly afterwards my grandfather and his bride both mounted one mule and, with their belongings, set out for Alabama to make their home there. In that State, on lands which, as I said earlier, had been a part of Georgia soil when Georgia promptly and unanimously adopted the United States Constitution in January 1789, my parents reared a large Alabama family. This means that my family and I are bound to Georgia by an unbreakable bond, and whether we, or Georgians, like it or not, my people are your people and your people are mine. It was because of this kinship with Georgia and Georgians that I found it impossible to resist the invitation of your persuasive Dean Cowen to join with him and you in this, another step in Georgia's dynamic march toward a higher and more effective state educational system

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