George Goumas: The Fall of a Hero

In 1931, the city of Marietta was shaken by a sudden act of violence near the Square: the tragic killing of Doyle Butler by George Goumas—not a career criminal, but a decorated Greek-American war hero. During this lecture, retired Senior Judge Jim Morris explores Goumas’s fall from a celebrated patriot to a bankrupt outcast. Judge Morris will reveal how the harsh social prejudices of the Jim Crow era may have led to Goumas’s descent, and how the community searched for justice in the wake of the Leo Frank lynching.