Anak Thomas Atwater (1872-1949)

Portrait from the History of the American Negro and His Institutions, Georgia edition, 1917.

  A leading black newspaper publisher during the early 20th century, Anak Thomas Atwater was the founder of the Rome Enterprise, the first black newspaper to be published in that city. A teacher and principal prior to his time in the publishing field, Atwater was also active in Republican circles in Floyd County, being the secretary of the county Republican executive committee and was a six-time delegate to the Republican National Convention from Georgia. A son of D.C. Atwater and the former Amanda Ragland, Anak Thomas Atwater was born in Upson County, Georgia on August 21, 1872. 

  Sharing a first name with a biblical figure whose name is shared with the Anakim, a race of giants who inhabited Canaan, young Anak T. Atwater traveled with his itinerant minister father during his formative years, and following a period of work and accumulating income enrolled at the Atlanta University in 1891. His time here extended until 1898, during which time he "completed the grammar and college preparatory courses", as well as other classes. After the completion of his studies, Atwater relocated to Danville, New York to take a teaching course, but remained here only briefly, returning to Georgia in 1899.

  Following his return to Georgia Atwater continued his burgeoning career in education, taking the position of principal of the East Rome Industrial School. His stewardship of that school later saw the erection of a "large two story school building", a feat accomplished "without one dollar from any public fund." He remained in that post until 1904 when he decided to enter into newspaper publishing, establishing the Rome Enterprise, acknowledged as the first African-American newspaper in the city. Atwater would run the paper out of a publishing office at his home, and when not delivering his papers directly, was aided by older children in the neighborhood, who delivered them for him. Anak T. Atwater married in June 1906 to Callie Bryant (born 1883) and following her death in 1927 he remarried to Ada A. Smith. Atwater would have at least one son, Horace, born in 1930.

Anak T. Atwater, from the "Sons of Allen", 1903.

  By 1919 the Rome Enterprise had a circulation of over 2,000 readers, and in addition to his newspaper Atwater made substantial inroads into other aspects of Rome, Georgia life, dabbling in insurance and real estate, and in 1910 held the post of census enumerator for the city's first and sixth wards. Remarked as one of Rome's leading black Republicans, Atwater served as the secretary of the Floyd County Republican Committee and in 1912 first served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention, supporting Theodore Roosevelt. Following his service at that convention, Atwater would be named as an alternate delegate from Georgia to five further Republican National Conventions, those being the 1916 and 1920 conventions in Chicago, 1924 (held in Cleveland), 1932 (held in Chicago) and 1948 (held in Philadelphia.)

  A longstanding member of the African Methodist Episcopal church, Anak Atwater was for many years a Sunday school superintendent and in 1904 and 1908 was a representative from the North Georgia Conference to the Methodist General Conferences in Chicago and Norfolk, Virginia. Anak T. Atwater died in Rome on December 22, 1949, aged 77 and was survived by his wife Ada, who died in Detroit in 1956. Both were interred at the Myrtle Hill Cemetery in that city.