About

Fred R. Fildes published the first issue of the Quitman Banner in January 1866 in Quitman, Georgia. The four-page weekly newspaper was the first to publish out of Quitman. The Banner held the role of legal organ for Berrien, Clinch, Coffee, Ware, and Lowndes counties until the establishment of the South Georgia Times in 1867. Politically, the Quitman Banner supported the Democratic Party and opposed the reconstruction plan put forward by Radical Republicans. When Carey W. Styles, former Confederate officer and future Atlanta Constitution founder, arrived at the editorial helm of the Banner in April 1866, the anti-reconstruction tone of the paper became even more fierce. Styles also had political ambitions and ran for State congress as a resident of Brooks County, but his campaign failed. After that loss, Styles left the Banner to re-establish the Albany News in October, 1867. With the exception of some brief editorial assistance by Thomas A. E. Evans in 1868, Fildes served as sole editor and publisher of the Banner until 1873. Fildes’ editorial voice was much more moderate than Styles’, which lead to local sentiments that Fildes was conciliating to radical reconstruction. This negative perception hurt the Banner’s reputation and prompted Major J. C. Gallahar to establish an aggressively anti-reconstruction newspaper entitled The Independent on May 10, 1873. In April, 1873, Henry M. McIntosh joined the Quitman Banner as editor of the paper’s local department. Due to competition in the area, Fildes announced in a valedictory editorial in July, 1873, then he sold the Banner to F. A. White and H. M. McIntosh. The new owners hired W. B. Bennet who assisted McIntosh as an associate editor. In January, 1874, the Banner ceased publication after F. R. Fildes returned to repurchase the publication and moved to Monticello, Florida, to found a new venture. Quitman was not without a legal organ for long, however, as White & McIntosh gathered the capital required to begin publication of the Quitman Reporter in the former printing-plant of the Banner on February 19, 1874. The Reporter eventually became the Quitman Free-Press in early-1877which continues to print today as Quitman’s legal organ.