About

The Atlanta Constitution was founded when Carey Wentworth Styles and two partners, James H. Anderson and W. A. Hemphill bought the Atlanta Daily Opinion newspaper and renamed it The Atlanta Constitution, beginning on June 16, 18…

…68. A charter subscription to this early paper cost $10 a year, $1 a month. Atlanta was still under martial law during the Reconstruction era. The founders advocated the return a constitutional government as had existed before the Civil War, thus the name. Styles sold out to Hemphill and his future father-in-law Anderson six months later. Not long after that Anderson turned his share over to Hemphill who was then the controlling stockholder until 1876.

1876: Evan P. Howell acquires a half interest in The Atlanta Constitution and is named editor-in-chief. He hires Henry Grady as political writer and Joel Chandler Harris as associate editor, beginning an extraordinary era in the paper's history. Howell's family would come to own The Constitution from 1902 to 1950.

1879: Joel Chandler Harris' first Uncle Remus story, The Story Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Fox, runs in the Constitution on July 20.

Additional information

Frequency of publication Once per week
Type of pubilcation Media & News Publisher
Writer(s) Various
Publisher AJC