The Fosterville settlement, named after Georgia Quartermaster General Ira Roe Foster,[4] was according to author Mary Elizabeth Massey in her 2001 history, the "most ambitious refugee project approved by the Georgia General Assembly" [during that period].

"[5] During the civil rights era of the 1960s, the local white minority resisted change, sometimes violently; it subsequently became known as "Terrible Terrell County".

[7][8] The case eventually reached the supreme court, and the county was ordered to allow them to register, but they did not immediately comply.

[10] (Note: Like other southern states, Georgia had disenfranchised most blacks at the turn of the century by rules raising barriers to voter registration; they were still excluded from the political system.)

That month Prathia Hall delivered a speech at the site of the ruins, using the repeated phrase "I have a dream."