News in Statesboro, GA

The Union-Recorder · Statesboro, GA

Trojans going for championship No. 7 after semifinal smashing

John Milledge Academy football finds itself in familiar territory with the 2026 season entering its final week. For the ninth time in 11 years, the Trojans (12-0) will once again be playing for a GIAA Class AAA state championship after waylaying the visiting Tiftarea Panthers (6-6) by a score of 45-8 Friday. Head coach J.T. Wall and his No. 1-ranked team will try for their seventh state title in those nine trips when they face No. 2 Westfield at Georgia Southern University’s Paulson Stadium at 8 p.m. Friday. “You set this goal at the beginning of the year, so it’s great to see it happen,” Wall said after the semifinal win over Tiftarea. “It’ll be new territory with us going to Statesboro, but it is what it is. These guys get another week of practice and another game to play.” All of the Trojans’ previous excursions to the championship were a short ride over to Mercer University in Macon.

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High Country News · Savannah, GA

Nearby: Savannah, GA

What California owes for Native land

The day after California was admitted to the Union in September 1850, John C. Frémont, a U.S. senator who had settled in California from Savannah, Georgia, submitted 10 bills to the U.S. Senate seeking to transfer millions of acres of Indian Land to the newly admitted state. One of the bills that passed sought to dispossess California Indians by “providing for the extinction of their territorial claims in the gold mining districts.” According to research done by historian Benjamin Madley, who wrote the award-winning book An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, the bill opened the door to an all-out assault on California Indians. California Indians held title to these lands under the laws of Spain, the first country to colonize California.