a magazine that profiles remarkable southern women of past and present
Featured Profiles
My Sporty Baba
by Landry Simpson | July 6, 2019 Beside my grandmother’s bed is a portrait I drew of her when I was a young girl. Entitled “The Sporty Grandma,” the drawing is of a young blond wearing sunglasses and a blowing scarf, driving a red sports car. “Baba” has gone through so much in her life, but meeting her you would have no idea of her previous or present struggles. Read More |
Sister Helen Prejean: Justice for All
by Johna Wright | February 9, 2019 In our society, we tend to become complacent with the current state of affairs, either because we are blissfully unaware of the implications of what is happening or we feel that we are too weak to make a change alone. Both of these ideas prove to be extremely harmful for us, as well as the entirety of the world’s population, because we continue on a cyclical path that results in a hopeless monotony—a life with no purpose, no way out, and people with no motivation to break this dangerous cycle that will most certainly lead to a decline in the functionality of our society. Read More. |
Madam C.J. Walker: The First Self-Made Female Millionaire
by Kat Mayfield | December 31, 2018 Madam C. J. Walker was an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur in the early twentieth century. She founded her own company called Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, which created haircare products marketed to black women. She is credited as being the first female self-made millionaire. Read More |
New Contributors
Landry Simpson is a sophomore at Georgia College majoring in Mass Communications. She is from Milledgeville, Georgia. She enjoys photography, exercising, the beach, and her dogs, Barkley, Bo, Mason, and Winston. Read More
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Johna Wright was raised in the rural town of Thomson, Georgia. She was born blind and has learned to navigate the sighted world throughout her childhood. Currently, she is a junior at Mercer University, pursuing a degree in Psychology, with minors in English and Creative Writing. Read More
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Kat Mayfield is currently a student at the University of North Georgia. She has yet to declare a major and is weighing several different possibilities. Before coming to UNG, she attended the Savannah College of Art and Design majoring in fashion marketing. Read More
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Jillian McCrory is 19 years old and attends Kennesaw State University with a major in Political Science and a minor in Criminal Justice. Jillian loves to listen to Taylor Swift and travel, especially to Europe and the beach. Read More
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Older Posts
Jo Freeman Wants Freedom for Feminists
by Jillian McCrory | October 31, 2018 Jo Freeman is a prominent feminist from Atlanta, Georgia. She has lived through the second, third, and fourth waves of feminism. From protesting the Miss America beauty pageant to being given credit for starting the feminist movements in Norway and the Netherlands, Freeman is a woman to look up to. Many people of her time did not support women’s rights, but Freeman would go to extreme lengths for her feminist ideas to come to life. Read More |
bell hooks: A Woman Inspiring a Movement for Change
by Cindy Vasquez | July 31, 2018 Throughout the years, many women have come and gone and made history in the feminist movement. They have made changes for the betterment of society and have also inspired many women to call themselves feminists. One of those women is bell hooks. Bell hooks is most famously known for being an author, feminist, and social activist. She was born in 1952 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Although she goes by the pseudonym “bell hooks,” her birth name is actually Gloria Jean Watkins. Read More |
Nanny: Cracked but Not Broken
by Sadie Brown | June 29, 2018 Conventionally beautiful is not how I would describe Ella Mae Sweat. I would say that her beauty is timeless. She is a woman of great renown, with countless sufferings, an unwavering faith, and unending love for everyone around her. Her smile is broad, though laugh lines pull down on her skin. Kind eyes hide beneath heavy eyelids and deep crow’s feet. Black hair, which curls in wisps, has silvered into light brown. Read More |
Love Ambassador, Pearl Bailey
by April Bynum | May 31, 2018 She was born March 29, 1918, in Newport News, Virginia, and died August 17, 1990, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was a daughter of an evangelical minister and had three older siblings. When she was a child, she would sing in the choir of her papa’s church. When she was four, her parents divorced, and she moved with her mother and siblings where they would eventually settle in Philadelphia. This is where the entertainment bug would get Pearl Mae Bailey. Read More |
Liz Carpenter: A Lifetime of Dedication
by Ashley Wilson | Apr 30, 2018 Liz Carpenter, a witty, outspoken believer in women’s rights, fought her whole life for what she believed in. She was an American journalist, speechwriter, political advisor, a public relations expert, and a dedicated feminist who was born September 1, 1920 in Salado, Texas as Mary Elizabeth Sutherland. She was the middle child of five children. She had three brothers and one sister. When she was seven, Carpenter’s family moved to Austin, Texas. Read More |
Famous, Fabulous, and Feminist: Lillian "Fabulous Moolah" Ellison
by Kensie Faldoski | Mar 29, 2018 Lillian Ellison, otherwise known as “Fabulous Moolah,” literally punched and kicked her way through gender stereotypes. She was one of the most important women wrestlers of the twentieth century and she paved the way for women in her career path. She exhibited strength and fierceness inside the ring and outside of it, never caring what critics had to say. Read More |
The Mirabal Sisters: Iconic Figures of Resistance
by Elize Villalobos | Jan 30, 2018 As the new year begins, it is a hard necessity that we reflect upon the tumultuous political events that have taken place in the U.S. and across the globe that have shaken people’s collective sense of security. However, for today, rather than analyze circumstances that you already know are dire, it seems prudent to share a story which might revitalize your hopes for this new year, a story in which organized resistance thwarts oppression in the end. The heroines thereof were three sisters: Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa Mirabal. Read More |
Katie Leikam, LCSW: Transforming the Decatur LGBTQIA Community Through Affirming Therapy
by Cameron Williams Crawford | Nov 30, 2017 I met Katie for the first time when she and her husband hosted us at a housewarming party at their new home. They had recently moved into our neighborhood, and my husband, a realtor, had worked as their agent. “I think you’ll like the Leikams,” he told me on the ride over, “They’re good people, and it seems like you and Katie might have some of the same interests.” Turns out, he was right. Read More |
About Beyond the Magnolias: A Letter from the Editor
by Cameron Williams | Feb 1, 2015 My great-aunt Edith was a spitfire. Edith was my grandfather’s sister, and she was one in a family of two daughters and four sons. She lived as a single woman throughout most of her adulthood. Read More |
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