Film on 1963 Leesburg ‘Stockade Girls’ in production

LEESBURG — In the summer of 1963, a group of 15 girls was held captive in a stockade facility, now located across the street from the Lee County High School Ninth Grade Campus. The girls lived in conditions that included roaches, dirty floors, blood-stained blankets and no running water. There was no toilet tissue, and broken glass on the floor.

The youngsters were detained as a result of a peaceful protest, and it cost them two months of their freedom. They have become known as the 1963 Leesburg Stockade Girls.

Word has spread in the last three years about the plight of those girls. When the story reached El Shaddai Productions in Atlanta, officials with the company wanted to get involved in spreading the word by making a narrative film.

David Lee Adams, director and producer of the film, said he heard the story on NPR and found himself emotionally drawn to it.

“It touched me,” he said. “I wanted to find out more about it.”

Adams is in southwest Georgia this week with his wife, Vanessa Adams, who is also a producer of the film. They had already visited the stockade facility and interviewed some people a few weeks ago, but came again to interview a few others connected to the stockade — including a few more of the women who had been among the Stockade Girls and the children of a few of the seven deceased women from that group.

Also among them was Opal Cannon, who was an educator in Lee County at the time.

“We would have done something if we had known,” she said.

The producers reached out to Shirley Reese, a member of the group, who agreed to take part in the film. The script is currently being written, and filming is expected to begin this summer ahead of a release early next year.

“I have gained appreciation for the girls and what they went through,” David Adams said.

Reese, an Americus native who acts as a spokeswoman for the group, was 13 when she went into the stockade after a truck picked up the group — first taking the girls, all ranging in age from 12-15, to Dawson before going to Leesburg because the jail in Americus was full.

All of this was done without their parents knowing their whereabouts.

To this day, many of the surviving members of the group do not want to talk about it. Until 2015, Reese did not either. She said she wanted to do more research on what happened to her.

“We had a hard time in this stockade,” she said.

Vanessa Adams said she was moved by the story in that it involves children making a sacrifice for the civil rights movement, a component in the fight for equality not often talked about.

“It became one of those types of stories that is empowering,” she said. “Change hurts, but there is always a greater good. On 9/11, nobody saw color.”

David Adams said the production is looking for support from officials within Lee County, for the film as well as the surviving Leesburg Stockade Girls.

The Adamses said it is not clear yet who will distribute the film, but Netflix and theaters are among the options being looked into. They said they see the stockade facility, later used as a public works building, as an educational tool to teach a new generation about black history.

“(We need to) bring their story to light, to people who can appreciate it like we do,” David Adams said.

Jennifer Parks