Joe Brown Hall's Namesake - Joseph Emerson Brown

Joe Brown Hall's Namesake - Joseph Emerson Brown

Namesake of Joe Brown Hall

Joe Brown Hall was constructed in 1932 and named after Joseph Emerson Brown. Joseph E. Brown was an attorney and politician who served as the 42nd governor of Georgia. He was a secessionist who lead Georgia into the Confederacy in 1861. After Reconstruction ended, Brown rejoined the Democratic Party. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1880 by the state legislature. Brown became the first Democratic Party official in Georgia to support public education for all children, which is why a dorm hall was named after him. The Republican Reconstruction-era legislature was the first to establish public education in the state but the succeeding post-Reconstruction, white-dominated legislature abandoned it. Brown recommended that railroad fees be used to support it financially. Prior to this, only the elite who could afford tutors or private academies had their children formally educated.

F.N Boney

Digital Library of Georgia

New Georgia Encyclopedia (Project)

1821-1849

Images of Joseph Emerson Brown