Civil Rights Movement Photographs
Georgia on My Mind

[Almost all of these photos were taken by Danny Lyon, Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery.]

The Leesburg, Stockade

Arrested for demonstrating in Americus, Georgia, teenage girls are kept in a stockade in the countryside near Leesburg. They have no beds and no working sanitary facilities. I made pictures through the broken glass of the barred windows. Shirley Green (today Dr. Shirley Green-Reese) holding the bars.
Photo by Danny Lyon.

 

Leesburg prisoner, Billie Jo Thornton.
Photo by Danny Lyon.

 

Young girls held without charges in Leesburg stockade.
Photo by Danny Lyon.


Photo by Danny Lyon.

 

Photo by Danny Lyon.

 

Their only source of water is a dripping shower-head.
Photo by Danny Lyon.

 

The only toilet is unusable.
Photo by Danny Lyon.

 

Leesburg prisoners Lulu Westbrook and Mae Smith
Photo by Danny Lyon.

I am 13 years old and was in Leesburg stockade from August 31 to September 8. There were 32 kids in there with me. There were no beds, no mattresses, no blankets, pillows, no sheets. The floor was cold. You lay down for awhile and soon it starts hurting you so you sit up for awhile and it starts hurting so you have to walk around for a while.

The hamburgers were dry and were not cooked well because when you break your meat open you can see a lot of red meat inside.

The smell of the waste material was bad. I went to the bathroom there to urinate, but didn't have a bowel movement during the entire nine days I was there. I urinated where the water from the shower drains down. Some of the girls used a piece ot cardboard that came from the boxes, the cardboard boxes, that the hamburgers were brought in.

The water was hot and it was running all the while. The man gave us three cups for the 32 of us.

There was a shower but it wasn't clean enough for you to bathe in. Cardboard with waste material had been put there and it needed cleaning and scrubbing.

At night the mosquitoes and roaches were at us. In the middle of the week the white man gave us some blankets. They were the ones which had been burned. He put them out in the sun and then gave them back to us. Two or three of us slept on one blanket.

Sworn before me on this 13th day of September, 1963,

Lois Barnum Holley

Notary Public, Ga. State
at large
My commission expires 8-29-67

Henrietta Fuller

Henrietta Fuller

 

Albany, GA, August, 1962

 

Segregated drinking fountains in the county courthouse in Albany, Georgia.

By Danny Lyon, from Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery

 

On a hot August night, a mass meeting packs the Shiloh Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia.

By Danny Lyon, from Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery

 

Charles Sherrod, the leader of SNCC's effort in southwest Georgia.

By Danny Lyon, from Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery

 

A meeting in Mt. Zion Baptist Church.

By Danny Lyon, from Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery

 

A northern student in Mount Zion Baptist.

By Danny Lyon, from Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery

 

 

Night march, Albany GA.


Freedom march, Southwest GA. Date & location unknown.

 

Southwest Georgia, Charles Sherrod (right) & Randy Battle (seated) visit a supporter.

 

Ralph Allen taking an affidavit from Carolyn Daniels in Terrell County, Georgia, Aug. 1962


SNCC workers at Albany mass meeting. 1962? 1963?
Penny Patch, Charles Jones(?), Peggy Dammond, Charles Sherrod

Atlanta, Winter 1963 — 1964

 

One of high school student Taylor Washington's numerous arrests is immortalized as he yells while passing before me. The photograph became the cover of SNCC's photo book, The Movement, and was reproduced in the former Soviet Union in Pravda, captioned "Police Brutality USA."

By Danny Lyon, from Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery

 

SNCC staff singing in the Raymond Street office, Atlanta 1963 or 1964. (From left) Mike Sayer, McArthur Cotton, Forman, Marion Barry, Lester MacKinney, Mike Thelwell, Lawrence Guyot, Judy Richardson, John Lewis, Jean Wheeler, and Julian Bond.

By Danny Lyon, from Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery

 

A Toddle House in Atlanta has the distinction of being occupied during a sit-in by some of the most effective organizers in America when the SNCC staff and supporters take a break from a conference to demonstrate.

By Danny Lyon, from Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery

Danny Lyon's Website is bleakbeauty.com.

 

Copyrights © to these photographs belong to the photographers. Commercial use of these pictures is prohibited without the express written permission of the photographer. To identify the photographer (if known), simply let your cursor hover over the image to display the photographer's name, or view the image metadata.

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