Governor Hugh M. Dorsey

Hugh Manson Dorsey was born in Fayetteville and was admitted to the Georgia bar at the Fayette County Courthouse in 1894. After practicing law at his father’s firm, he became solicitor general of the Atlanta Judicial Circuit in 1910 and in that capacity prosecuted the 1913 murder case against Leo Frank. During his two-term governorship from 1917 to 1921, he oversaw the wider implementation of the county unit system of election favoring rural areas, appointed Richard R. Wright, Sr. to direct Georgia’s African-American war effort during WWI, and published a pamphlet opposing the unjust treatment of African Americans in Georgia. He is buried in Atlanta’s Westview Cemetery.

Fayetteville, Georgia · United States