Dr. Robertiena Fletcher to Visit Middle Georgia State University To Discuss Her Civil Rights Activism

Author: News Bureau
Posted: Tuesday, February 11, 2020 12:00 AM
Categories: School of Arts and Letters | Events- Students | Pressroom | Events- Public | School of Aviation | Knightly News | Students

Macon, GA

Dr. Robertiena Fletcher, who in the early 1960s was one of a number of girls locked away in an abandoned Leesburg, Ga., jail for protesting racial segregation, will talk about her experiences at 11 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 25, in the Arts Complex Theater of Middle Georgia State University’s Macon Campus. This Black History Month event is free and open to the public.

In July 1963, African American youth in Americus, Ga., made up the bulk of protesters who participated in marches and protests against the town’s segregated movie theater. Hundreds of young people were rounded up and arrested. Most were never formally charged but they were jailed by local authorities for weeks at a time. Their parents weren’t initially told where they were being held.

Dozens of girls, including Fletcher, were taken to the stockade, “a forlorn and remote building in Lee County. The building had no working toilet or fans and not enough beds." (Source: Atlanta Journal Constitution article, July 23, 2019.) The girls were released after photographer Danny Lyon secretly took pictures of some of them in jail and the photos were published.

Fletcher went on to become the first African American to chair Georgia’s Department of Human Services Board. She is retired as the pharmacy director at Houston Medical Center in Warner Robins.

For more information about this event, contact Dr. Mary Mears, Middle Georgia State associate professor of English, at mary.mears@mga.edu or 478.471.5717.