Editing Dublin, Georgia (section)

==History==
The City of Dublin, Georgia was incorporated by the Georgia General Assembly on December 9, 1812, and made the county seat of Laurens County, Georgia.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lamar |first=Lucius |title=A Compilation of the Laws of the State of Georgia, 1810-1819 |publisher=T.S. Hannon |year=1821 |publication-date=1821 |pages=951}}</ref> The original postmaster, Jonathan Sawyer, named the town Dublin after the capital of his Irish homeland, [[Dublin]], [[Republic of Ireland|Ireland]].<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_9V1IAAAAMAAJ |title=The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States |publisher=Govt. Print. Off. |author=Gannett, Henry |year=1905 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_9V1IAAAAMAAJ/page/n108 109]}}</ref>

[[File:Veterans Administration Bldg., Dublin, Ga. (8367048897).jpg|thumb|left|Old postcard showing the Veterans Administration building]]
Dublin, according to a historical marker<ref>{{cite web|url=http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/gahistmarkers/jeffdavishistmarker3.htm |title=GeorgiaInfo :: Carl Vinson Institute of Government :: University of Georgia |publisher=Cviog.uga.edu |access-date=March 24, 2013}}</ref> at the town's main [[Oconee River]] bridge, was one of the last encampments at which [[President of the Confederate States of America|Confederate President]] [[Jefferson Davis]] and his family stayed before being captured by [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]] forces in May 1865. 

Between 1880 and 1910, five railroads connected through Dublin and two bridges were built over the Oconee River. This infrastructure allowed the town to become a major cotton trading and export center for central Georgia. By the early 1920s, however, the boll weevil infestation led to successive cotton crop failures, causing economic collapse and population loss.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hart |first=Bertha Sheppard |title=The Official History of Laurens County, Georgia, 1807-1941 |date=1987 |publisher=Agree Publishers Inc. |year=1987 |isbn=0-935265-12-0 |pages=113}}</ref>

On April 17, 1944, [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] gave his first public speech, "The Negro and the Constitution" at First African Baptist Church in Dublin.<ref>{{cite web|last1=University|first1=© Stanford|last2=Stanford|last3=California 94305|date=June 12, 2017|title=King delivers "The Negro and the Constitution" at oratorical contest|url=https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/king-delivers-negro-and-constitution-oratorical-contest|access-date=February 22, 2021|website=The Martin Luther King Jr., Research and Education Institute|language=en}}</ref>