The Power of the Press- the Stockade Girls of 1963

While responding to a person positing a "false equivalency" between the MAGA hat wearing white bigots who taunted a Native American in D.C. with chants of "Build the Wall!" I mentioned the Leesburg, Georgia "Stockade Girls." That person had claimed that the chidlren of civil rights marchers had "looted" and "burned." Something that never happened. She also claimed that they were "Democrat parents" of those children, not knowing anything about Southern Democrats and the history of the civil rights era of the 1950's and 1960's.

I suggested she do a search for "Stockade Girls," and out of curiosity, although I knew the story (second hand- I didn't live here in those days), I was astonished at some sloppy reporting/editing on the part of WALB-TV's story from 2006.

Contrast the "violent march" to the "peaceful march" in these two stories about the same event. What the WALB story failed to mention was that the "violence" was directed towards the marchers by the white racists who opposed civil rights, and the authorities responded by locking up the victims of the violence- the peaceful marchers. Because that's the way it was in 1963...

http://www.walb.com/story/5190050/stolen-girls-remember-1963-in-leesburg/

"Stolen Girls remember 1963 in Leesburg

July 24, 2006 at 6:56 PM EST - Updated July 26 at 1:30 PM
July 24, 2006

Leesburg -- More than 30 Americus women are telling their story of injustice during the Civil Rights movement, 43 years after it happened.

IN 1963 THE GIRLS, SOME YOUNGER THAN THEIR TEENS, WERE LOCKED UP AFTER A VIOLENT MARCH IN THE STREETS OF AMERICUS. For 45 days the girls were kept in the Leesburg Stockade, not knowing where they were, or what would happen to them."

Contrast that with the full, accurate story (all caps are mine):

https://blackpast.org/aah/stolen-girls-july-august-1963

"In July 1963, APPROXIMATELY TWO HUNDRED AFRICAN AMERICAN YOUTH MET IN DOWNTOWN AMERICUS, GEORGIA, TO PEACEFULLY PROTEST LOCAL SEGREGATION. After sanctioning violent attacks by a white mob, police moved in to arrest the young protestors. While some protestors were shortly released, thirty-three young African American girls found themselves held in an abandoned Civil War-era prison for almost two months. Known as the “Stolen Girls,” this incident represented both traditions of youth social justice activism and the heavy hand of white authorities in shaping civil rights politics throughout the Deep South.

Black teens, part of a generation frustrated with the tokenism of change in the early 1960s, played a particularly critical role in challenging racism and inequality in Americus, the county seat of this agricultural region of Southwest Georgia. Their activism emerged as part of the Sumter County Movement of 1963–65, political organizing linking diverse but vibrant networks of local African Americans and members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

In late July 1963, African American youth began to demonstrate daily against segregation at the Martin Theater and the Trailways bus station. Peaceful protests grew raucous as white counter protestors met young activists with taunts and violence. Ultimately, local police borrowed a strategy developed by Albany Police Chief Laurie Pritchett in response to the earlier Albany Movement of 1961–62. To limit press coverage and break down the ongoing protests, Americus officers arrested protestors and held them indefinitely in jails spread out across the region."