special report

HA..^

of protest marches in the summer of 1963, almost threezen girls from Americus, Georgia, were held for weeks in an abandoned Civil War-a stockade. Never formally charged, the girls banded together in horrificrcumstances, even as their frantic families searched for them. Now their storycourage, faith and resilience is finally being told BY DONNA M.OWENS !

he Georgia sun was unrelenting that July day in 1963. It

caiised sweat to trickle down the backs of young brown girls

wearing pretty homemade cotton dresses, starched blouses

and capri pants. Moisture formed at the napes of ebony boys-

with neatly cropped hair, dampening their crisp, short-slee\^

shirts. But for some 200 N^iro children and adults singir>g

"We Shall Overcome" as they marched down Cotton Avenue iii

the smalt southern town of Americus, Georgia, the heat was the

least of their concerns. In this onetime cotton center founded

in the 183O's, Blacks made up about half of the 13,000 resi-

dents, but they were treated as second-class

citizens under the same Jim Crow policies that ruled the South.

Americus, with its mix of antebellum cottages, tin-roof

shanties, pecan orchards and railroad tracks, had a name that

suggested democracy, but racism was as fertile here as the

rich, red Georgia soil. Colored and Whites Only signs prolifer-

ated, and segregated lunch counters, schools, restrooms and.

water fountains were a way of life. {

"If you think of Mississippi first and Alabama second,

then Georgia was third in terms of discrimination," says >j

SNCC smu^led photographerDANNY LYON into the stockade groundsin 1963 to capture this hauntingportrait of the jailed girls of Americus.

to-of w»

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fulian Bond, then a 23-year-oId leader of the Student Nonvio-lent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and now chairman ofthe NAACP. "in those days Black people had no rights thatWhiles felt bound to obey. You expected every outrage, and theworst that could happen, would happen."

Indeed, at high noon on thai hot ]uly day, the worst was be-ginning to unfold in downtown Americus. "The plan was for halfof the demonslrators to head to the segregated Martin Theater,while the rest were to veer right toward the White waiting r(X)mof the Trailways bus station," recalls James A. Westbrooks, then a19-year-old college .student and a field secretary for SNCC, whichhad joined with the NAACP to organize the demonstralion.

"Blood was pouring down my face"Near rhe edge oJ downiown, the demonstrators found them-selves facing a large While mob that included law-enforcementofficers, known Ku Klux Klan members and self-deputizedcitizens who had apparently heard about the protests from aninformant. No one doubted thai the snarling police dogs, high-powered fire hoses, billy clubs and electric cattle prods carriedby some in the angry moh would be used. But the marchersknew they would not fight back. They had taken an oath of non-violence that included no hitting or cursing, not speaking orlaughing, never blocking entrances to stores and aisles, andbeing courteous al all time.s. So when the shc'iiff ordered

Above: The girls were forced to sleep on the concrete floor. Right:After their release, some of them wrote statements to documentwhat they'd been through.

I Bin 13 yaars old and was In I««9burg Btockadt fK» Aur'uat 31 toSeptenber 8. Tliar* woro 3^ ltlds in Uiera irlLh ma. TViaro uero no beds, nom Ltrsssos, no blankata, pillows, no sfiaata. The fl,)or w»s cold. lou lay damfor whilo and soon It s',.:rts hu^-tlia you so yoj alt ui for ttrfill* ind It stirtahurtlns 90 you hava to USUL arouni:! for a Nhll«.

Tha hsnbur^wa w«ra dry and wera not eookad wall bacauaa whan you breakyour [Mat opm you can aaa a lot of red aeat lnsida,

Dia S M U of th« wMta matarial ms bad. I want to Uie bsthroai t^a^a tourlnaU, but didn't have a bowel movanent Utriiig tha <ntir« nine days 1 was t^are,I urlAated Mhare tAs water fron t ^ QI-MOT dralna down. Sone of tha glrla us^d• placa of cardboard that can* fron U« box«a, tha cardboard boicas, that thahamburgon ware brought ir..

Hia water vaa hot and i t was rumiflg a l l tha Mhlla, '< J nan s*** ua Ihraacupa for tho 32 of us.

TYitn »ts a a^an^ but I t wasn't claan Mough for you to batfie In.Jardboard with wast« nutarlal had been put Ui»r* and i t naadad cl«a.iii^ andacrubbing.

At night tha nosquitwas Bid ro^chas ware at UB. In tha middla of th« uaaktha whit* Min gavfl ua saw blankets. They war* tha onea wlich had bMD bumed.Re put t)-aN out in ttja aua Htd than gav* HIM back to ua. Two v UirM of imaltpt tn ona bl^nkat.

In Americus, as in other parts of the South, youngpeople, fired up by meetings at local Black churches, hadbecome faithful foot soldiers of the movement. They hadalready taken part in sit-ins, protests and picketing at thesegregated public library and the local courthouse, andvoier registration drives were plentiful. "We were marching atleast once a week and every weekend." remembers EmmareneKaigler Streeler. who turned 14 that year. "A lol of us were snealc-ing out of the house and doing it againsi our parents' wishes."

But just as the dream of dignity and equality emboldened someBlacks, their challenge to the status quo angered and threatenedmany Whites in Americus. including some of those charged withprotecting them. Police Chief Ross Chambliss and the tobacco-chewing sheriff. Fred Chappell. were as infamous in these partsus Bull Connor was in Birmingham. Alabama. Chappell, who somelocal folk described as heavy-jowled and prone to calling Blacks"nigger," had even left an impression on Dr. Martin Luther King.Jr., back in 1961. After his arrest in nearby Albany, Dr. King hadbeen transferred and briefly held in the Sumter County jail inAmericus. Afterward he is reported to have said that FredClhappell was "the meanest man in the world." This was the manwaiting to meet the marchers in Americus in 1963.

bafor* •• Uila Uth daj of Sapiwbar, 1963,

Loli Bamnw HoUey ^ ^ ^ •'aarletta FULlar

Votary PubUc, Oa. SUta at largeMy camlaoicci w n i n a 8 ^

Kanrlatu Puller

them to disperse, the demonstrators dropped to their kneesand began to pray.

"I didn't have sense enough to be afraid." says Piane DorseyBowens, who had just turned 13 and was marching for the firsttime. More than anything, she wanted to see places like thelocal Watgreens desegregated. "You'd go in for a prescription,and there was a soda fountain but you weren't allowed todrink." recalls Bowens. "Whites there would laugh and makefun of you and call you 'nigger/ When the movement came. 1couldn't wail to be part of it."

But as resolved as she and the other protestors were ioremain nonviolent, nothing could have prepared Ihem for themayhem thai ensued. As the crowd swarmed Ihe marchers, I.ul.uWestbrooks Griffin, then 13. felt herself being swept from the side-walk into the street bya stinging blast of water, her shoes knockedoff her feel. As she struggled to get up, a policeman attacked herwith his club. "He was on me, beating me over the head." lul.u

Above: LuLu Westbrooks Griffin stands at the door of the stockade 43years later. Right: Gloria Breedlove and Carol Barner Seay inside thestockade, which is now a public works facility.

would recall 43 years later. "Blood was pouring down my face."Her older brother James, the SNCC worker who had

helped recruit and train the young marchers, watched inhorror hut was in no position to help. Pinned to the ground bypolice, one boot on his neck, another on his back, he could donothing as his little sister LuLu, his 13-year-oId niece, GloriaBreedlove, and dozens of other children were arrested andthrown into police wagons.

Eunice Lee Butts, now 95. remembers that her son Jamescame running home that afternoon, screaming that his 12-year-old sister "Bang" was in jail. Bang was the nickname of BobbieJean Butts Wise, one of Mrs. Butts's nine children, "I was scaredand sick with worry," she says, her voice clouding at thememory, "But I didn'l even know where they had taken them.There was nothing 1 could do."

For weeks afterward, the marchers were shuffled from jailto jail in neighboring counties across the region, all overflow-ing with demonstrators from the numerous civil rights proteststhat took place that summer. Boys and girls were sometimeskept apart by chicken wi re in improvised holding pens, and olderteens were separated from yoxinger ones. Eventually about threedozen adolescent girls from various facilities were transportedsome 20 miles from Americus to the Leesburg Stockade, a CivilWar era prison in Lee County. The youngest girl was about 10,the oldest about 16. For nearly seven weeks, many would be heldin that bleak place with little family contact and no sense ofwhen or whether they'd ever be let go. "They told us that we'd

be taken out one by one and killed," recalls Barbara Jean Daniels.She was 14 years old.

"He swung the shovel at me"The Leesburg Stockade, a low-slung white structure wiih steeldoors, looked as if it hadn't been cleaned in decades. The barredwindows all had jagged, broken glass and no screens, the floorswere filthy, and a single bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling.In this narrow cell, roughly 12 feet by 40 feel, more than 30 girlswere squeezed into a space intended to accommodate far fewer.A squat, graying older man called Pops was assigned to guardthe girls; he was armed with a sholgun. Other White men passedthrough on no particular schedule—whether they werelaw-enforcement officials or not, the girls never knew. The onlyother person Ihey saw regularly was the local dogcatcher,Mr. Story, a tall, thin man with a nervous manner. He deliveredmeals. "The first two days we didn't get any food." recalls ShirleyAnn Green Reese, who was 14. "Around the third day they startedbringing us hamburgers that were almost raw."

Several of the girls began throwing up or suffering fromdiarrhea. The only toilet was a broken commode in Ihe cornerthat couldn't be flushed. It was soon clogged to the top, Withno other options to relieve themselves, the j irls took to squat-ting over the shower drain, which quickly developed asuffocating stench. To wipe themselves they used the paper >

ESSENCE 165 6 . 2 0 0 6

special report

cartons from the burger deliveries. When their menstrualcycles came, they tore strips off their dresses and fashionedthem into napkins. Bathing wasn't an option. There was ashowerhead, but its slow perpetual drip proved useless, thoughthe girls could get a sip of warm water by standing under itwith cupped hands. One of the guards later gave them a fewtin cups to share.

Rickety bunks with thin, soiled mattresses stood in a cor-ner of the cell, but nobody dared sleep on them. Instead, thegirls huddled on the concrete floor with no pillows and somestained army blankets full of cigarette burns. They didn't sleepmuch. Their backs ached; the mosquitoes, ticks and roacheswere merciless; and the heat was stifling.

As the days and then weeks crawled by, the girls would taketurns at the window, hoping for an occasional whiff of fresh air."Once 1 was looking out through the hars, and I asked Popssomething. When he didn't respond, I called him a bastard."recalls Willie Mae Smith Davis, whom everyone called Mae Mae.She was 15 years old. "He swung a shovel at me. and it narrowlymissed my hands,"

Some guards poked the girls with sticks and called them"pick-a-ninnies." "jungle bunnies" and "nigger." They told themDr. King had gone tci iail. "Who's going to be your,savior now?"

The girls took turns at the window to escape the heat and stench In the cell.

they taunted. One day one of the guards tossed a huge snakeinto the cell, sending the girls screaming into a corner. Thereptile remained there all night, hissing noisily. The nextmorning it was captured after the girls begged one of the othermen to remove it,

Laura Ruff, who was 15, recalls the nlghl that two truckloadsof While boys came riding up. "We knew they'd been drink-ing because we could see the bottles in their hands," she says."They started yelling to Pops. 'Let us in there. We wanna havea little fun!'" Pops cocked his rifle and told them to get thehell out of there, but Sanders, now 58, still shudders at thethought of what might have happened had they somehowmanaged to get inside the stockade,

During those long, slow weeks of captivity, the girls did whatthey could to keep going, "We prayed all the time, and we sangfreedom songs." says Annie Lue Ragans Laster. one of several girlswho had been sent to the stockade from later protests, "When

someone was down or crying, we would all gather 'round andhold her." Everyone had lost weight, and LuLu desperately neededmedical treatment for her festering head wound. The other girlssuffered from a range of ills: ear infections, boils and high fevers.Some had lice in their hair, and one girl. 15-year-old Verna Hollis.learned she was pregnant while inside the stockade. "Everyoneelse was getting their period, and mine never came," she sayssoftly. "I was throwing up all the time. I was just miserable."

Six of the women who were imprisoned together in the summer of 1963stroll toward the grounds of the Leesburg Stockade last January.

"One day a guard tossed asnake into the cell, sendingthe girls screaming into acorner. The reptileremained there all night."

"We weren't afraid of death"Several weeks into their captivity, the girls plotted an escape.Biilie Jo Thornton Allen, 14 at the time, recalls that the plan wasfor them to call out to Pops so he'd open the door, then they'dpush past him and make a run for it. Chased by blasts from theold man's rifle, they made it across an open field to the trees.But after stumbling through the heavily wooded area for sometime, they began to realize they'd never be able to find Iheir wayhome. Dejected, they returned to the stocltade.

There were other rebellions. The pile of mattresses in thecorner, which the girls had been forced to use as an impromptulavatory, developed a horrible smell, recalls Roberliena Free-man Fletcher, who was 14. One day, in protest, the girts set thepile on fire with some matches they found on the floor.

Back in Americus. frantic family members and SNCC work-ers were making the rounds of jails trying to discover the >

ESSENCE 186 6 . 2 0 0 6

Some of the women gathered last January on a bridge in Americus, Georgia. From left:Annie Lou Ragans Laster, Carol Barner Seay. Gloria Breedlove, Emmarene KaiglerStreeter. LuLu Westbrooks Griffin, Sandra Russell Mansfield, Diane Dorsey Bowens.

whereabouts of the children. Word finally filtered to some ofthe girls' families that they were being held in the LeesburgStockade. The few parents who had transportation drove outwith food and provisions, holding fast to the hope of takingtheir daughters home. A handful did succeed in securing theirdaughters' release, but they were mostly the town's more in-fluential Negro citizens, including the principal of the Blackjunior high school and the local funeral director. Most otherparents weren't even allowed to see their girls.

After more than a month, help finally arrived in the formof a 21 -year-old SNCC photographer named Danny Lyon, a Jew-ish New Yorker living in Atlanta. The organization had senlhim lo take photos of the girls as evidence of the fact that the\'were being held illegally. Smuggled to the stockade groundsby a Black teen driving Lyon's Volkswagen, the photographerlay on the floor behind the front seat. While the young driverdistracted Pops, Lyon crawled out of the car and around to theback, where he saw the girls through tbe windows.

"They clustered around the window, holding hands throughIhe broken glass and bars and saying 'freedom,'" remembersLyon, who later recounted the experience in his book Memo-ries of the Southern Civil Rights Movement (University of NorthCarolina Press). "They were beautiful." Lyon knew he didn'thave much time, so he explained to the girls the sort of pic-tures he needed to make. They understood at once, "They allwent and lay down and pretended they were asleep," says Lyon.His hands trembled and his heart pounded as he snappedphoto after photo of the giris in the squalid cell. He documentedthe overrun toilet, the rusty showerhead, the girls in torn cloth-ing on the filthy floor. Then, while the teen who'd smuggledhim in continued to engage Pops. Lyon hurried back to the car.shaken by his close-up view of southern "justice."

When he returned to SNCC's Atlanta headquarters with thepictures, workers rushed to publicize the girls' plight. "Thepictures first appeared in our newspaper, The Student Voice,"

"Some familieswere charged a feeof $2 for each daytheir daughtersspent in prison."

says Bond. "We then mailed them to Black newspa-pers all over the country." One image appeared ina September 1963 issue of Jet magazine, along withan article, "CA Marchers Kept in Filthy, Slench-Filled Jail." Bond and others say that Lyon's pholosalso came to the attention of a U.S. senator, Harri-son A. Williams. Jr., who later entered them into the

Congressional Record. In her self-published book, Freedom IsNot Free (Heirloom Publishing). LuLu Westbrooks Griffin spec-ulates that the pictures were eventually passed on to AttorneyGeneral Bobby Kennedy. While no one has been able to verifya paper trail, it seems clear that after the [CONTINUED ON PAGE 218]

DELAYED JUSTICE in recent years somecases involving civil rights-era crimes havebeen reopened by the Justice Department

THE CASE: The 1963 bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in

Birmingham, Alabama, killed four Black girls; Addie Mae Collins, 14;

Cynthia Wesley, 14; Carole Robertson, 14; and Denise McNair, 1 1 .

THE RESULT: One defendant was convicted in 1977. In 1997 the FBI

reopened the case, prompted by pressure from the community. An in-

vestigation led to a second conviction in 2001 and a third in 2002. A

fourth alleged participant died in 1994, and therefore was never tried.

THE CASE: Ben Chester White, 67, a Black sharecropper, was driven

into a national forest and murdered in 1966 by Ernest Avants, who

was reported to be a Mississippi Ku Klux Klan member.

THE RESULT: White was murdered on federal land, so the five-year

statute of limitations didn't apply. In 2003, at the instigation of civil

rights groups, Avants, 72, was convicted in Jackson, Mississippi.

THE CASE: Emmett Till, 14, was abducted in August 1955 after al-

legedly whistling at a White woman in Money, Mississippi. His mu-

tilated body was found in the Tallahatchie River several days later.

THE RESULT: In 1955 two White men were acquitted by an all-

White jury. In 2004 the FBI reopened the case, in part because of

new information uncovered by documentary filmmakers. This year

the case was turned over to the state's attomey in Mississippi. At

press time no cha fes had been filed. —D.M.O.

STOLEN GIRLSCONTINUro FROM PAGF i b6

pictures arrived in Washington, D.C, someone important,perhaps President John F. Kennedy himself, orchestrated thegirls' release.

All the girls know for sure is that in the first week of Septem-ber 1963, just after school opened, they were herded into a policewagon and transported back lo Americus. They'd had some inklingI hat they were soon to be released: Fops had muttered it to them,and the dogcatcher, Mr. Story, hrought scraps of news from thegirls' families as he delivered meats. On arriving back in Ameri-cus. several of the girls were brought before officials at the localcourthouse. There they learned that some families had beencharged $2 per day as a "boarding fee" for the time their childrenspent in prison. But the parents, overjoyed to see their daughtersalive, focused only on getting them home safely.

Carol Barner Seay, who was 13. remembers tbat she and hermother were told to appear before a magistrate who asked ifshe would promise to stay away from the protests and other"mess" in the future. Carol retorted angrily. "Mess, what mess?!"as her mother tried in vain to shush her. "We always knew thatmarching could mean jail or death," Seay, a minister, says now."But I was not afraid, and neither were the others. We were will-ing to do what we had to do to gain our freedom."

"It's like I'm drawn back here"On a crisp, clear day in January 2006, a caravan of cars zoomspast wide-open cotton fields, magnolia trees, marshland andpeanut stands in scenic southwest Georgia. Forty-three yearsafter their imprisonment, some of the women are returning tovisit the place where their innocence was stolen.

Many of the Americus girls have moved away from theirhometown and are scattered all over the country. Some havebecome educators, business owners, nurses, real estate agents,urban planners, scientists and ministers; others have workedat factories and fast-food places, and some are retired. Most aremarried with adult children, some have grandchildren, and sev-eral have passed away. Though their lives have followed manydifferent trajectories, they all say they were forever marked bywhat they endured in the summer of 1963.

The Leesburg Stockade along Highway 32 has been slightlyaltered over the years, and its name, etched into a wall of thestructure, has been obscured by a public-works sign, "A lot ofsad memories in this place." says Sandra Russell Mansfield, asmall, fragile-seeming woman who still lives in Americus, andwho begins weeping almost from the moment she steps out ofher car. "1 drive down sometimes. It's like I'm drawn back here.Every time I come, I leave a piece of myself,"

For some of the women, like Robertiena Freeman Fletcher.this is the first trip back. Others, like LuLu Westbrooks Griffin,now 57 and a resident of Springwater, New York, and GloriaBreedlove. 57, of Philadelphia, have made regular pilgrimagesto both Americus and Leesburg over the last decade, taking pic-tures and videotaping the site to preserve the history.

A documentary. LuLu and the Girls of Americus, Georgia 1963,

premiered in Americus at the Rytander Theatre in July 2003,the fortieth anniversary of the girls' imprisonment. Filmmak-ers Richard J, McCollough and Travis W. Lewis of Mirus Vide<iProductions in Rochester, New York, spent hours and their ownmoney documenting the incident. "It's one of those untold civilrights stories that everyone needs to know about," says McCol-lough, 49, a broadcast journalist who first met LuLu in 1999,after reading about her in their local newspaper. Completedin 2003, the documentary has won several awards, includingthe prestigious Telly, which honors the best in cable, news andvideo, in 2004, Yet the filmmakers believe that not enoughpeople have seen the fibn, "The story of what happened to thesewomen deserves national exposure," says Lewis.

LuLu (above, at 13) wore a flour sack after her dress was torn in the march.

Shari K. Thompson. 34. an adjunct professor in film and me-dia arts at Temple University, couldn't agree more. She is work-ing on her own documentary about the women. She becameaware of them in the late nineties after Philadelphia attorneyCalvin Taylor. Jr., who had met Gloria Breedlove, approachedThompson to tell the story on film, Taylor thought the docu-mentary would help him build a legal case on behalf of thewomen. Intrigued, Thompson traveled to Americus to see thestockade and meet the women, "This story has a spiritual con-nection for me," she reflects. "I haven't been able to let it go."

Indeed, this too-little-known incident of the civil rights era

ESSENCE 218 6 . 2 0 0 6

haunts all who learn of it. Taylor, a specialist in litigation, sayshe cried the first time he discovered what had happened tothe girls in that sweltering summer of 1963. "I think they de-serve some type of reparation for this tragedy." says the attor-ney, who now represents Gloria and several of the other womenhut has not yet filed a lawsuit. "These women suffered enor-mously, and most Americans don't even know it happened."

"We took a Stand for justice"Roaming the grounds of the stockade on a crisp blue morninglast January, alternately crying and holding one another, thewomen reflect on the fact that, all these years later, many ofthem still have recurring nightmares. A few have sought coun-seling, but others have spent their entire adult lives buryingthe incident, refusing to talk about their time in the stockade,even with their spouses and children.

Nor has their hometown come to terms with its cruel re-sponse during that summer of protests. While the populationof Americus has grown to 17.000 (39 percent White and 58 per-cent Black), and the town now houses internationally knownorganizations like Habitat for Humanity, Americus has neverofficially addressed the stockade incident or other shamefulepisodes in its history. Many of the authorities involved, in-cluding sheriff Fred Chappell and police chief Ross Chambliss,have died, and court records thai might document the girls' im-prisonment have proven impossible to locate.

The women feel that an apology, and some form of legal re-dress, is appropriate given what they suffered. Officials at theU.S. Department of Justice, the federal agency charged with pur-suing civil rights violations, told Taylor that the five-year statuteof limitations has passed, but legal precedent exists for otheravenues of pursuit. "If there is a strong community outcry aboutwhat happened." says attorney Jacqueline A. Berrien of theNAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, "then legal re-course can still occur." (See "Delayed justice" sidebar.]

To raise awareness, several of the women have spoken pub-licly about their experiences, and all would like to see a memo-rial or museum erected at Leesburg to educate young people.Georgia congressman Sanford Bishop, who represents the Sec-ond Congressional District, which includes Americus and Lees-burg. has said that a memorial "is in the realm of possibility."He has already pushed through legislation to name the new U.S.courthouse in nearby Albany for civil rights attorney C.B. King.With support from the Georgia legislature, he says, the womenmight be honored with their own memorial as well. "It's a verygripping story." he says, "one that needs to be preserved."

Would any of the women choose to rewrite their fateful his-tory? Not one said she would. "The minute I became a freedomrider." reflects Gloria. "I was choosing to abandon my jump ropeand be a soldier for freedom. That motivation superseded fear."

Even so, the women are aware that many fellow soldiersnever lived to tell their story; that in the same year they werein jail, Medgar Evers was fatally shot in the back outside his Mis-

sissippi home; and that four little Black girls were killed in aBirmingham, Alabama, church bombing.

But 1963 also had its triumphs. August 28 of that year, whilethe girls shored up their courage by singing civil rights anthemsinside the stockade. Martin Luther King, Jr.. gave his indelible"I Have a Dream" speech in Washington. D.C. Few among the250,000 gathered to hear him knew that hundreds of miles awayin Georgia, another group of marchers was also serving the samecause. "We took a stand for justice and dignity, and I'm proudof what we accomplished, knocking down those ugly walls ofsegregation," LuLu says,

As the daylight slants lower over the stockade, the women,bound by shared experience, spontaneously come together ina circle and bow their heads to pray. Afterward, as they breakapart, each one lost in her own separate memory, you know thatin the pantheon of fighters who struggled and sacrificed for free-dom's cause, the girls of Americus, Georgia, deserve their right-ful place in history, too. DDonna M. Owens, an award-winning print and broadcast journalist,

lives in Baltimore.

THE GIRLS IN THE STOCKADE

In the summer of 1963. at least 33 girls from different protest

marches were held at the Leesburg Stockade. Most of

them had participated in the violent Americus march that

was intended to desegregate the local movie theater and

bus station. The following are among those who were re-

portedly detained. They are listed by their childhood names

1. Carol Bamer

2. Lorena Bamum

3. Pearl Brown (Deceased)

4. Bobbie Jean Butts

5. Agnes Carter (Deceased)

6. Pattie Jean Collier

7. Mattie Crittenden

(Deceased)

8. Barbara Jean Daniels

9. Gloria Dean

10. Carolyn DeLoatch

11. Diane Dorsey

12. Juanita Freeman

13. Robertiena Freeman

14. Henrietta Fuller

15. Shirley Ann Green

16. VemaHollis

17. EvetteHose

18. Mary Frances Jackson19. Vyrtis Jackson

20. Dorothy Jones

21 Emma Jean Jones

22. Emmarene Kaigler

23. Barbara Ann Peterson

24. Annie Lue Ragans

25. Judith Reid

26. Laura Ruff

27. Sandra Russell

28. Willie Mae Smitti

29. BillieJoThomton

30. Gloria Breedtove

Westbrooks

31. LuLu Westbrooks

32. OzellarWhitehead

(Deceased)

33 Ganie Mae Williams

Teresa Mansfield of Americus assisted in compiling this list.

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