Margaret Barnes; wrote of South

ATLANTA - Margaret Anne Barnes, award-winning author of books examining events in Southern history, died Oct. 11 at an Atlanta hospital after a long battle with emphysema. She was 80.

Ms. Barnes wrote the 1976 book "Murder in Coweta County," which detailed the first time in Georgia history that testimony from two black field hands helped convict a prominent land baron for the murder of a sharecropper.

It won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe award and was made into a TV movie.