Georgia Today: Rural health initiative; Swearing-in makes history; Study on CBD usage among students

Peter Biello:  Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast. Here we bring you the latest reports from the GPB newsroom. On today's episode, Georgia is slated to receive more than $200 million next year to bolster rural health. Newly elected public service commission member Alicia Johnson made history yesterday with her swearing-in ceremony. And a recent study from the University of Georgia is shedding light on the use of CBD among college students. 

Jenny Pless: They reported using it because it's legal, because it is new and exciting. 

Peter Biello: Today is Tuesday, December 30th. I'm Peter B. Yellow, and this is Georgia Today. 

Story 1:

Peter Biello: Georgia is slated to get $218 million from the federal government next year to bolster rural health. That award falls short of what Georgia officials were asking for. GPB's Sofi Gratas has the details. 

Sofi Gratas: The awards mark the first year of grant money under the newly created Rural Health Transformation Program, overseen by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, which is facing billions of dollars in cuts. Federal health officials say the program should help offset those losses and push states to get creative in tackling health care gaps. Georgia's Medicaid agency, which will decide how the money is allotted, asked in its application for $1.4 billion from the program over five years to help fund physician recruitment, technology upgrades at rural hospitals and things like telehealth. Gov. Kemp said in a statement Monday he is quote "thankful" for the over $200 million for Year 1. Subsequent awards will be decided following a federal government audit state programs to determine if spending aligns with the administration's priorities. For GPB News, I'm Sofi Gratas. 

Story 2:

Peter Biello: Newly elected Public Service Commission member Alicia Johnson made history yesterday with her swearing-in ceremony in Atlanta. When she takes office on Thursday, she'll become the first Black woman to hold a statewide Georgia post that isn't a judgeship. She and fellow PSC newcomer Peter Hubbard also are the first Democrats elected to a state-level statewide office in Georgia since 2006. The five-member commission regulates Georgia utilities, including rates charged by the state's only private electric company, Georgia Power. 

Story 3:

Peter Biello: A recent study from the University of Georgia is shedding light on CBD use among college students. GPB's Chase McGee has more. 

Chase McGhee: In a recent survey of 4,000 undergraduate students at the University of Georgia, 48% reported they had tried CBD at least once, and 29% use it once a month or more. Students tend to obtain edibles like gummies or oils from a trusted consumer brand or from a friend. Most commonly, they use CBD to reduce anxiety and improve sleep. But the study's author, doctoral student Jenny Pless, says there's also a social aspect to CBD use. 

Jenny Pless: Some of the more interesting things that we found is that students also reported using it just because their friends do. They reported using it because it's legal, because it is new and exciting. 

Chase McGhee: To her knowledge, this study is the largest survey conducted on CBD use by students. For GPB News, I'm Chase McGee.

Story 4:

Peter Biello: A state judge has ordered a temporary pause for a December execution that already had been put on hold. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said in an order yesterday that a death sentence for Stacey Humphreys cannot be carried out until questions about George's clemency process are addressed. Humphreys was facing lethal injection on Dec. 17 for the 2003 fatal shootings of two women in metro Atlanta's Cobb County when the execution was halted. Humphreys' lawyers argue that two members of George's parole board have conflicts of interest that could affect his clemency hearing. 

Story 5:

Peter Biello: This is All Things Considered on GPB. I'm Peter Biello. Leading up to and during World War II, heavyweight champion boxer Joe Louis was arguably the most admired athlete in the United States. The so-called "Man with the Jackhammer Fists" defeated an unprecedented number of challengers. Because he was so admired, the U.S. government used him in propaganda that would downplay the harm caused by racial segregation and encourage Black Americans to fight the Nazis even while facing oppression at home. A new book looks at this aspect of his life. It's called The Fight of His Life: Joe Louis's Battle for Freedom During World War II. Johnny Smith is the J.C. Budshaw Professor of Sports History at Georgia Tech, and he's the co-author of the book. He's with me now. Welcome to the program. 

Johnny Smith: Thanks for having me. 

Peter Biello: So you wrote this along with Randy Roberts, a history professor at Purdue University. Can you tell us a little bit about the inspiration for this book? 

Johnny Smith: Joe Louis held the heavyweight championship between 1937 and 1949, and he was arguably the most admired American athlete during that period — certainly the greatest Black hero in America during that time. However, the biographers who have written about Joe Louis have treated his experience during the war as sort of an afterthought. But what we argue in the book is that central to understanding the legacy of Joe Louis as an activist, we have to go back in time to World War II, when the United States government, the War Department, built this propaganda campaign around Louis, organizing him in a campaign to visit military camps, military bases, as a goodwill ambassador, to promote this idea of unity on the home front at a time when Black soldiers are fighting in a segregated army. 

Peter Biello: And I wanna talk a little bit about what he did during the war, but before we get to that, I wanna to talk about how the government sort of realized that he was the right person for this job. And part of it has to do with a couple of bouts against German Max Schmeling. Can you talk a bit about the significance of those fights against him? 

Johnny Smith: Yes. So Joe Louis first fought Max Schmeling in 1936. Schmeling was a former heavyweight champion, and he was not yet though really celebrated by the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler in 1936. The reason for that is that in that year, it seemed as if Schmeling's career was over and that Joe Louis would easily defeat Schmeling. And so that '36 fight, which occurs before Louis is the heavyweight champ in the world, it lacked the political significance that their rematch two years later, 1938, would take on. Ultimately, Schmeling scores a tremendous upset. He beats Joe Louis. It was the first time that Joe Louis had been knocked down and defeated, and so Joe Louis had to gather himself, resurrect his career in some ways. Fast forward, in June of 1938, you have this rematch between Joe Louis and Max Schmelin, and they both become proxies for political ideologies. Schmeling now after having defeated Joe Louis two years earlier, he's the darling of Adolf Hitler. Now the Nazi officials, they are celebrating Max Schmeling because they see the potential of him to win the title against Joe Louis, a Black man who he had once defeated before. Joe Louis ironically is transformed by mostly white sports writers into a symbol of democracy. Louis defeats Schmeling in the first round — he destroys him — and Louis is celebrated. 

Peter Biello: Describe for me how Black Americans felt about him, in particular. Describe the depth of feeling. 

Johnny Smith: When Joe Louis wins the heavyweight title in 1937, he is celebrated because in Black America, these fights in the ring against white opponents, he is striking down white men with impunity. Nowhere else in America is that possible. And that is not lost on Black Americans. So it becomes a kind of an avenger for them. It's not so much that Black Americans see him as some racial unifier in the aftermath of defeating Max Schmeling in 1938; they see him as fighting back against racial oppression. What we have to keep in mind at that time is there is no other Black hero who so physically embodied this resistance. This is before Jackie Robinson joins the Brooklyn Dodgers. Jesse Owens wins four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics in 1936, but there's no Olympics in 1940. Jesse Owens quickly leaves the sports stage, if you will. But Joe Louis is at center stage for years — again, between 1937 and 1949. He is the Black hero in America. 

Peter Biello: So when the war starts for the United States and Joe Louis joins the army, he's not gonna see combat. That's not going to be his role, but his role is he's gonna be doing exhibition matches. He's gonna to be visiting bases across the country and abroad. And he knows his role. How does he feel about that, given that he also knows the kind of discrimination that other black men in the military are facing?

Johnny Smith: Initially, he says all the right things that you would want from America's champion, you know, "I'll do whatever the Army asks of me, I'll go wherever my commanding officer tells me to go." He has to go through basic training like every other soldier, but he is segregated. When he goes to Camp Upton in New York — that's where he starts his basic training — he gets off this — er, he arrives and he's directed immediately. He can't go over with the white soldiers. He has to go with the Black soldiers. So Joe Louis, who lives most of his life above the Mason-Dixon line, who grows up in Detroit, spends a lot of time in Chicago, his career is largely defined in New York — this is different for him. He's now being forced into a segregated state, and I think it was very difficult for him at first. But when he's with those other Black soldiers, they wanna talk to him about his boxing career and his best matches and so on, but they also wanna talk to him the brutal conditions that Black soldiers faced who felt like they were in indentured servitude, We have white officers who are acting like overseers. And so that is a very difficult thing for Joe to accept. 

Peter Biello: So it seems like during the war, he wasn't vocal, right? He wasn't speaking out. To some extent, there were army censors, right?

Johnny Smith: Yes.

Peter Biello: There were things he could not say. How did that change after the war ended? 

Johnny Smith: Joe Louis strongly identified with being a Black veteran. After the war ends, in the summer of 1946, we see white mobs attacking Black veterans in uniform, and Louis becomes outraged. There's a famous story about a soldier named Isaac Woodard who gets assaulted by white cops in South Carolina, and they blinded him. And it angered Joe Louis. And so he organizes a benefit for Isaac Woodard to raise money for him so he can get health care, and he recognizes that he has to speak up. And he gives this speech in December of 1946, where he was being honored and he says, I hate Jim Crow, I hate the poll tax, but I'm not gonna let this hate control me. I'm gonna do something about it. We must all come together: Black soldiers, white soldiers, Americans, veterans, and take a stand against segregation, fight for our civil rights and our voting rights. And this is very new, this is 1946. This is before Jackie Robinson joins the Dodgers in 1947. Americans were not accustomed to seeing Black athletes speak out in political ways, to have a political message. And he doesn't see himself as a leader, though Black Americans see him as a leader. And they admire him for taking a stand. And so he contributes to the NAACP and veterans' groups. And it really becomes an important turning point, I think, because Joe Louis now offers a model for future Black athletes to use their influence, their power to press forward for change. And I think that's a role of Joe Louis that's been overlooked. 

Peter Biello: The book is called The Fight of His Life: Joe Louis's Battle for Freedom During World War II. Johnny Smith, thank you for speaking with me. 

Johnny Smith: Thanks again. 

Peter Biello: And Johnny Smith's book on Joe Lewis is the subject of the latest episode of Narrative Edge, GPB's podcast about books with Georgia connections. Find Narrative Edge wherever you get your podcasts. 

Story 6:

Peter Biello: This weekend will be the last the private vehicles will be able to drive up Kennesaw Mountain, north of Atlanta. Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park yesterday announced the closure of the mountain road to cars, citing safety concerns and a desire to make the mountain experience better for bikers and pedestrians. Starting January 6, the 1.5 mile road will be accessible only by park shuttle or on bike or foot in a newly created lane for visitors wanting to take the slow way up. Of course, there's also a more challenging trail to the mountain top, a key site in the Civil War's Atlanta campaign. The overlook offers a view to the city about 24 miles away. Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park had nearly 1.5 million visitors in 2024. That's according to the latest publicly available National Park Service data. 

Story 7:

Peter Biello: One Georgia New Year's Eve tradition is returning this year while others continue, and another is radically changed. The Downtown Development Authority in coastal Brunswick plans to bring back an event held off and on in two previous iterations since the late '90s. It's called the Shrimp Drop. The authority's Matthew Hill says they'll drop a 4-foot-tall metal shrimp from a 65-foot-high perch. The aquatic crustacean will keep his previous name. 

Matthew Hill: The shrimp's still named Bob. I guess you could call this one Bob, Bob the Third, but yeah, he's just always called Bob.

Peter Biello: But unlike in previous years, Bob will not drop into a vat of cocktail sauce. Hill says the tradition celebrates Brunswick connection with seafood. In the North Georgia mountains, Helen celebrates the new year with the dropping of the Adelweiss. That is the mountain flower you see adorning beer steins during Helen's Oktoberfest. In South Georgia's Tifton, they'll drop a gnat named Matt. Why a gnat? Well, Tift County Commissioner Melissa Hughes told WALB TV that she created the Gnat Drop as a way to bring people together in an odd but funny way. Hughes considers gnats the welcoming committee of the South, and what better way to welcome the new year than with a familiar face? In West Georgia's Talapoosa, they'll drop a possum named Spencer. Once named Possum Snout, Talapoosa celebrates its heritage every year with the Possum Drop to welcome the new year. The possum used in the New Year's Eve celebration is a taxidermied possum named Spencer, after Ralph L. Spencer, the businessman who is credited with creating the late 19th century boom in Talapoosa. In Middle Georgia, you can celebrate the New Year's Eve the Perry Way, with the nationally recognized Perry Buzzard Drop. According to the AJC, the Buzzard Drop tradition in Perry started with a problem: More than a decade ago, buzzards were migrating to Perry for the winter to rest on the town's water tower. The birds caused damage to the tower, so the town took action. A plastic buzzard made with real feathers wards off the migrating birds as a practical form of pest control, and it turned into a New Year's tradition. And for the first time, Atlanta's Peach Drop won't be a downtown party with live bands and a descending fiberglass and foam peach. Instead, it'll be a drone and fireworks show that officials say will be visible, quote, "across Atlanta." Atlanta officials have released a list of dozens of businesses participating in events, specifically marketing views of the aerial display. 

Outro:

Peter Biello: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. We hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you come back tomorrow. We'll have more of the latest news and you can check gpb.org/news for updates to any of the stories you heard today and you could find the latest headlines there as well. Check it anytime. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do it now. And remember, your feedback is super valuable to us. You help guide our reporting. You point out cool stories that we know nothing about. Perhaps there's another kind of animal dropping on New Year's Eve that we failed to mention. Well, please let us know: The email is georgiatoday@gpb.org. I'm Peter Biello, thanks again for listening. We will see you tomorrow. 

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