Stolen Girls of the Lee County Stockade- 1963 in Georgia. I learned about this just this morning

[irisblue]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZxiNMJuubP/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Sources: Georgia Historical Society; Smithsonian NMAAHC; BlackPast.org

the summer of 1963, a group of Black girls in Georgia vanished — some as young as twelve — and their own parents had no idea where they had been taken. Their “crime”? Trying to buy movie tickets at the whites-only entrance of a theater in Americus. ✊🏾

After their arrest, police drove the girls more than twenty miles away to an old Civil War-era stockade in Leesburg and held them for weeks with no charges, no trial, and no word to their families. They survived in a single filthy cell with a broken toilet, almost no food, and guards who once threw a snake into the room. Because their loved ones had no clue where they were, history remembers them as the Stolen Girls. It was only when SNCC photographer Danny Lyon found them and published photos through the barred window — pictures that ran in Jet and Black newspapers nationwide — that the country saw the truth and the girls were finally freed. 🙏🏾

Had you ever heard of the Stolen Girls before today? Drop a comment and say their name — and follow the page so we can keep uncovering the hidden Black history living in all 159 of Georgia’s counties.


Wiki page-https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Girls_of_the_Lee_County_Stockade

https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/hidden-herstory-leesburg-stockade-girls

Hidden Herstory: The Leesburg Stockade Girls

snip-"I never fully realized the monumental role that massive numbers of children played in civil rights protests. Law enforcement arrested and jailed children by the thousands for days, and sometimes months, and their involvement helped to enable one of the greatest legal and social assaults on racism in the 20th century—the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Leesburg Stockade Girls are an incredible example of these courageous, young freedom fighters. "snip-"On August 28, 1963, as Martin Luther King Jr. gave his historic “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, DC, these children sat in their cell bolstering their courage with freedom songs in solidarity with the thousands of marchers listening to Dr. King’s indelible speech on the National Mall. Soon after the March on Washington, during the same week of the bombing of the five little girls at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963, law enforcement released the Leesburg Stockade Girls and returned them to their families.

Their story was part of the broader Civil Rights effort that engaged children in a variety of nonviolent, direct actions. In Alabama, for example, thousands of youth participated in the 1963 Children’s Crusade, a controversial liberation tactic initiated by James Bevel of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After careful deliberation about the merit of involving children in street protests and allowing them to be jailed, Dr. King decided that their participation would revive the waning desegregation campaign and would appeal to the moral conscience of the nation."


Much more there



You may ask, “Who were the Leesburg Stockade Girls?” In July of 1963 in Americus, Georgia, fifteen girls were jailed for challenging segregation laws. Ages 12 to 15, these girls had marched from Friendship Baptist Church to the Martin Theater on Forsyth Street. Instead of forming a line to enter from the back alley as was customary, the marchers attempted to purchase tickets at the front entrance. Law enforcement soon arrived and viciously attacked and arrested the girls. Never formally charged, they were jailed in squalid conditions for forty-five days in the Leesburg Stockade, a Civil War era structure situated in the back woods of Leesburg, Georgia. Only twenty miles away, parents had no knowledge of where authorities were holding their children. Nor were parents aware of their inhumane treatment.

[irisblue]

1. No wonder why the trumpers want to bury racist American history

[rampartd]

5. they don't want to bury it

they want to relive it ,

[Srkdqltr]

2. How utterly awful. I can't imagine. As a white woman who was 20ish at the time i don't know what to say.

Here in the north most didn't know this stuff was going on. As that white women i wish I could apologize for my race. Makes me sad and angry.

[malaise]

3. All because they wanted to go to the movies

Racism is evil

[Keepthesoulalive]

13. Movie theaters were segregated

If you wanted to see a movie at the white theater you had to sit in the buzzards roost. Everything was done to make you feel less than but we want your money.

[a kennedy]

4. Makes my heart ache.....

🤬 🤬

[Solly Mack]

6. K&R

[AverageOldGuy]

7. Never heard of this.

I would not be surprised to find many other such incidents.

[Alice B.]

8. Never!

45 days. JFC. Another American atrocity.

[JoeOtterbein]

9. K n R with...

...(tears).

[slightlv]

10. I'd like to think that's one of those regional incidents that were

usually never published... but I just don't know. How many others like the "Stolen Girls" exist in our history? How many other stories of people, on the "fringe" in one way or another, have paid the price? My uncle, who was mentally retarded after a bout of German Measles back when I was kid, was banned from certain public places, too. Taking him would have been a major issue, to boot, and once someone told him to "get out" he'd more than likely have turned violent. These kids were just wanting to see a movie, and they were just ordinary girls. SMDH. My uncle had a habit of commenting aloud at the theater when we could get him in to see a movie. Most times they refused him entrance.

I fear we're headed back to those days and worse, and at 70 it drives me crazy even to think it.

[Boomerproud]

11. I read about this in a magazine years after not learning about it in history class.

Today I read on a news site that an appeals court ruled for the Administration that the exhibit regarding slavery could be taken down at the President's House in Philadelphia. Outrageous.

[1WorldHope]

12. I had not heard of this either. The secrets of the South are deep and ugly.

But, I know the root problem of it all is not isolated to the South. The root cause IMHO is Patriarchy. Men and governments have been torturing, raping and killing those weaker than themselves since the beginning of time.
I wonder if these young girls were ever able to heal from their torture.
So absolutely fucking sad.

[popsdenver]

14. As soon as Stephen Miller,

the 2025 Racist Group, and the Republican Party are through with deporting every last Mexican in America, they will start in on the black population in America. They are already rumored to be sending some of the deported Mexicans to the war torn African Congo........sort of a trial run for the future??????

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

15. Horrible

[Kid Berwyn]

16. The Stolen Girls story is news to me.

1963, when JFK tried to build a better nation.

JFK believed in D.E.I. (Before there was such a thing)

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219413096

Secret Service was ordered to stand down at Love Field.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220824413