Atticus G. (Atticus Greene) Haygood

Born in Watkinsville, Georgia, in 1839, Atticus Greene Haygood graduated from Emory College in 1859 and entered the Methodist ministry. He went on to edit church publications, including the Wesleyan Christian Advocate, and built a reputation as an influential preacher and writer.

Haygood served as president of Emory College in the 1870s and 1880s, helping guide the school through a difficult period after the Civil War. He later worked with the Slater Fund, which supported education for African Americans in the South, and in 1890 he accepted election as a bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

He died in Oxford, Georgia, in 1896. Remembered as a major religious voice of his time, Haygood is also noted for the way his career connected Southern religion, higher education, and debates over race and reform in the late nineteenth century.