Stolen Girls of the Lee County Stockade- 1963 in Georgia

[irisblue]

Cross posted to American History & soon in GD

Today I learned this.




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- Stolen Girls of the Lee County Stockade

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Girls_of_the_Lee_County_Stockade

[BaronChocula]

1. Thanks for posting!

Here's another Wikipedia entry on the event.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leesburg_Stockade

[irisblue]

2. Just when I think I know a bit about racism & misogyny & segregation in the US

I get slapped upside my head with more ugly stuff.

[BaronChocula]

3. No one could possibly know it all

With so many details of cruelty in history, we have the knowledge a big enough sliver to be familiar with how ugly human behavior could be.
I don't know if my brain could handle knowing it all.

[catrose]

4. For contrast, my friends and I, all white, asked to buy balcony tickets to se Butch Cassidy

So late 60s. We said because it was cheaper but we were making a statement. We were refused and bought tickets for the ground floor.

Do I need say that the balcony was for people of color?

It was opening night and the movie had just started when the manager approached us and said we could sit in the balcony if we wanted. We did. Sitting in the disgusting, dirty, ripped up chairs was even more of a lesson about race in America.

But the manager got sell five more tickets to a sold out show.