Georgia Today: Former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan endorses Harris; Stories of Oak Ridge Cemetery in Macon

Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB News. Today is Thursday, Aug. 22. I'm Peter Biello. On today's episode, former Georgia Lt. Gov. Jeff Duncan urges other Republicans to vote for Harris for president. Historical preservationists work to uncover the forgotten stories of Oak Ridge Cemetery in Macon. And as the Braves take on the Phillies, a rivalry between two players reignites. These stories and more are coming up on this edition of Georgia Today.

 

Story 1:

Peter Biello: The Democratic National Convention wraps up this evening, when Vice President Kamala Harris formally will accept the party's nomination this year. Georgia's delegation features several politically active young people. GPB's Sarah Kallis reports.

Sarah Kallis: Fifteen of Georgia's 123 delegates are under 35 this year. Audrey McNeal is one of those delegates. She lives in Fulton County, and said being around other young Georgians at the convention is, quote, "empowering."

Audrey McNeal: I think we all have a common experience coming to the DNC, being really young, having very passionate dreams about what we want to see and kind of being there for each other when it comes, like supporting each other's campaigns or, you know, going to caucus events together.

Sarah Kallis: McNeal was also a delegate in 2020, but said the experience is different this time around since the convention was virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For GPB News, I'm Sarah Kallis in Atlanta.

 

Story 2:

Peter Biello: Meanwhile, Georgia's former lieutenant governor, Republican Jeff Duncan, addressed the Democratic National Convention last night. He spoke in a segment with other conservatives, making the case for Kamala Harris and her vice presidential pick, Tim Walz. He said he wanted to speak directly to the Republican and independents deciding who to vote for.

Geoff Duncan: Let me be clear to my Republican friends at home watching, if you vote for Kamala Harris — Kamala Harris in 2024, you're not a Democrat. You're a patriot.

Peter Biello: Duncan has been an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump. Duncan was lieutenant governor during the 2020 election, and Trump and others are accused of attempting to overturn its results.

Caption

J.D. Vance

Story 3:

Peter Biello: Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance blasted the Harris and Walz campaign over border security at a rally in Valdosta this afternoon. The Ohio senator also took questions from members of the press. When asked about policies that would help rural Georgia, he again addressed public safety.

J.D. Vance: Rural America has been affected by this terrible poison. The drug cartels are bringing in as much as anybody. We have got to close down the border and stop the cartels from bringing this poison into our communities. We've got to re-implement basic law and order and public safety policies.

Peter Biello: Vance was flanked by members of local law enforcement agencies, including Lowndes County Sheriff Ashley Polk.

 

Story 4:

Peter Biello: Georgia U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff is urging the IRS to waive fees incurred as a result of mail delays with the U.S. Postal Service. Ossoff says he's looking into complaints about late fees from Georgians, who say they mailed their forms on time. He's been putting pressure on the postmaster general over missing mail and delays caused by problems at a distribution center south of Atlanta. In June, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy reported that on-time mail delivery was improving, but Georgians continue to complain about delays sending and receiving mail.

 

Story 5:

Peter Biello: The Georgia Department of Public Health expects 190,000 Georgians will be diagnosed with dementia in the next 10 years, and a new study suggests chronically lonely people are at higher risk of related diseases like Alzheimer's. GPB's Ellen Eldridge reports.

Ellen Eldridge: The study, published in The Lancet, also shows a connection between being lonely and developing other diseases and conditions like strokes. Experts agree more research is needed. But Dr. Elaine Jones, a neurologist, says chronic loneliness is linked to changes in the brain needed for social and emotional cognition and awareness.

Dr. Elaine Jones: But it is hard to measure loneliness. It's — it's kind of like measuring pain. Everyone may have a different perception of it. And you can have scales and but you have to ask them.

Ellen Eldridge: Last year, the U.S. surgeon general identified chronic loneliness as a public health crisis. For GPB News, I'm Ellen Eldridge.

Credit: Pexels

Story 6:

Peter Biello: Doctors Hospital of Augusta has received the go-ahead to build a new 11-bed, $15 million emergency room west of Augusta. The Georgia Department of Community Health approved the hospital's plans for the facility in Evans. Construction is expected to break ground this fall and be complete within a year. It is now the second new ER coming to fast-growing Columbia County after Wellstar broke ground on a new medical center earlier this year.

 

Story 7:

Peter Biello: Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines announced it will extend its suspension of flights to and from Israel, as tensions in the region continue to grow. Late last month, Delta said it would pause flights between New York and Tel Aviv through Aug. 2. The announcement yesterday extended the suspension through the end of the month.

 

Story 8:

Peter Biello: All over the South, traditionally African American cemeteries, which for a variety of reasons have been forgotten over the years, are being rediscovered. That means the stories connected to them are two. In Macon, historical preservationists are peeling back the layers on just one such place, Oak Ridge Cemetery. GPB's Grant Blankenship recently took a guided tour.

Grant Blankenship: The squawk of Kathleen O'Neal's bullhorn gets the attention of the 40 or 50 people on this sunset tour, and then it's a short walk before an astonishing story.

Kathleen O'Neal: Right behind us over there is Miss Eady Beecher.

Grant Blankenship: Eady Beecher's grave is so small, O'Neal says at first she thought Eady must have died a child.

Kathleen O'Neal: "Born in Virginia in 1799. Sold to S.T. Beecher, Milledgeville, Georgia, 1811."

Grant Blankenship: Eady Beecher was Black and enslaved by Samuel Beecher, who owned a hotel — the State's Rights Hotel, in Milledgeville. Census records suggest Eady was the mother of at least eight of Samuel's children.

Kathleen O'Neal: That's why Samuel Beecher is listed on Eady's tombstone.

Grant Blankenship: Amazingly, when Eady Beecher died at 103, it was not age that killed her, but a house fire.

Kathleen O'Neal: I'm going to be passing this off to Joey, wherever he is.

Grant Blankenship: The monuments of Rose Hill Cemetery are off to our right, but here at Oak Ridge, there are only a few more headstones between Eady's and the river hundreds of yards away.

Kathleen O'Neal: So it almost looks like you could graze horses or lambs here.

Grant Blankenship: Tour participant Stephanie Woods Miller says believing in this emptiness has consequences.

Stephanie Woods Miller: When you erase places, you erase people and you erase history.

Grant Blankenship: Restoring the history at Oak Ridge began years ago. First, with a historical marker.

Quinn Conley: Start it. Now it's going.

Grant Blankenship: Then last year, in cooperation with the nonprofit group Historic Macon, a Georgia State University graduate student named Quinn Connally began rediscovering the stories under the hill with something called ground penetrating radar.

Quinn Connally: There's something.

Grant Blankenship: He started at the top, with graves, like Eady Beecher's.

Quinn Connally: Yeah, I went across some of the graves up there just to see, like in this soil type. What does it look like where I know somebody is buried in the ground?

Grant Blankenship: And so with the few marked graves as a baseline for what a radar detected burial looks like, he's scanned the cemetery. Today, a year and a half later, on this tour Quinn's scanning is rendered as a single image perched on a little easel nearby. In it, blue waves thread through the ground, under our feet. Cemetery preservationist Joey Fernandez explains what the waves mean.

Joey Fernandez: There's a lot of people out here.

Kathleen O'Neal: Thousands?

Joey Fernandez: Thousands.

Kathleen O'Neal: Hold it up to you.

Joey Fernandez: Thousands of people. There was one after another, basically throughout this whole grassy area.

Unidentified man: And these are slaves or is this?

Joey Fernandez: It was 1840s and all. 

Joey Fernandez: I always say where you see grass in here is you see, there's a person there. I mean, this was here from 1840. It's full. They ran out of space.

Grant Blankenship: Here at the bottom of the hill are more easels with maps. The 1879 map tells the history of this space. It's full of graves. But just 75 years later, in a 1954 map, it's erased: In Oak Ridge Cemetery is mostly white space. People buried here — the fact of that — is nearly blotted out.

Stephanie Woods Miller: The thing is that it's not unusual.

Grant Blankenship: Tour participant Stephanie Woods Miller again.

Stephanie Woods Miller: It's okay to be surprised. The most important thing is, is that you're present. Every person who's here gives these people a chance to be remembered.

Grant Blankenship: For more guided tours of more rediscovered history are already planned at Macon's Oak Ridge African-American Cemetery. For GPB News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Macon.

Story 9:

Peter Biello: The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets have descended on Dublin. The football team traveled to Ireland for the season opener against the Florida State Seminoles. The Aer Lingus College Football Classic between Florida State and Georgia Tech is coming up on Saturday.

In baseball, the Braves lost to the Phillies last night, 3 to 2. Orlando Arcia launched a two-run homer in the fourth, and as he rounded the bases, he seemed to look back at Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper. And in doing so, he reignited the flames of a rivalry that began during last year's National League Division Series. In that best-of-five series between the Braves and Phillies during Atlanta's only win, the Braves pulled off an unlikely double play that caught Harper way off first base. Arcia was quoted in the locker room after the game saying, "Attaboy, Harper." Reports of his comments did not sit well with Harper, who at the next game stared down Arcia at short as Harper rounded the bases for his own homer. So as Arcia took his trot around the bases last night, his turn towards Harper held weight. Reporters asked him about that through an interpreter last night.

Reporter: Did you look up there at Harper? Just like he did last year?

Interpreter: *Speaks Spanish*

Orlando Arcia: *Speaks Spanish*

Interpreter: I was just enjoying my home run.

Reporter: What were you looking at then?

Interpreter: *Speaks Spanish*

Orlando Arcia: *Speaks Spanish*

Interpreter: I was just enjoying my home run.

Peter Biello: When asked about whether last year was on his mind, Arcia responded this way.

Orlando Arcia: *Speaks spanish*

Marcell Ozuna: No!

Interpreter: Last year was last year. I feel like we've already turned the page. We're focused on this year.

Peter Biello: That loud "No!" in the background came from designated hitter Marcell Ozuna, who had been filming Arcia's conversation with the press on his cellphone. Staring contests aside, the Phillies are seven games ahead of the Braves in the NL East, and the Braves are barely hanging on to a wild card spot. A little more than a month in the regular season remains. The Braves could shrink that lead to six games if they prevail tonight. Rookie Spencer Schwellenbach is scheduled to get the start.

And in basketball, the Atlanta Dream beat the Phoenix Mercury last night, 72 to 63. Tina Charles advanced to No. 2 on the NBA's all time scoring list, passing Tina Thompson with a 3-pointer in the fourth quarter. Charles now has scored 7,491 points in her career. The center recorded her 11th double-double with a dozen points and a season-high 17 rebounds.

Peter Biello: And that is all we've got for this edition of Georgia Today. If you want to learn more about any of these stories, visit GPB.org/news. And if you haven't subscribed to this podcast yet, please do it now. We'll be back in your podcast feed automatically tomorrow afternoon if you do. And your feedback is always welcome. We love hearing from you. If you send an email to us, the whole team will get it. The address is GeorgiaToday@GPB.org. I'm Peter Biello. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

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For more on these stories and more, go to GPB.org/news