It is part of the Black Belt, an extensive area in the Deep South with dark fertile soil, the Bible Belt, a southern region known for high church attendance, and the Sun Belt, a southern region with a warm and sunny climate.

After the American Civil War, Carey Wentworth Styles moved to Albany and founded the Albany News. Styles took great exception to Reconstruction era programs and founded the newspaper to oppose them. He was later elected to the Georgia Senate in an ironic turn of events, having killed a member of the Georgia House of Representatives in his earlier years.