Newnan was largely untouched by the Civil War due to its status as a hospital city (for both Union and Confederate troops), and as a result still features much antebellum architecture.

[5] During the Atlanta Campaign, Confederate cavalry defeated Union forces at the nearby Battle of Brown's Mill.

On April 23, 1899, a lynching occurred after an African-American man by the name of Sam Hose (born Tom Wilkes) was accused of killing his boss, Alfred Cranford.

Hose was abducted from police custody, paraded through Newnan, tortured, and burned alive just north of town by a lynch mob of roughly 2,000 citizens of Coweta County.

Newnan was also host to the trial in 1948 of wealthy landowner John Wallace, the first White man in the South to be condemned to death by the testimony of African Americans, two field hands who were made to help with burning the body of murdered white sharecropper Wilson Turner.

In 1968, Kmart opened a warehouse in Newnan, which slowly established it as a major hub for distribution in the area.

[8] In the early morning hours of March 26, 2021, Newnan was directly impacted by a violent EF4 tornado, which caused substantial structural damage and indirectly killed one person.

The center opened in 2010, and offers programs through the university's College of Continuing and Professional Studies.

[23] Until the mid-1950s the Central of Georgia operated two trains daily in each direction, through Newnan from Atlanta to Columbus, in its Man O' War service.

The Central continued a single Man O' War train until 1971 when Amtrak took over most interstate passenger service.