Up Above My Head: I See Freedom in the Air

By Carol Seay

These young colored girls suffered enormously in an abandoned ninety-eight-year-old civil war era stockade in 1963, and most Americans dont even know it happened.

Indeed, this too-little-known incident of the civil rights era haunts all who learn of it.

Many of the authorities involved, including Sheriff Fred Chappell and Police Chief Ross Chambliss, have died, and court records that might document the girls imprisonment have proven impossible to locate.

The year 1963 also had its triumphs. On August 28 of that year, while the girls shored up their courage by singing civil rights anthems inside the stockade, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his indelible I Have a Dream speech in Washington, D.C.

This book is written to raise awareness. Its a very gripping story, one that needs to be preserved. These girls took a stand for justice and dignity at a very young age, and those who remain refuse to be silent after fifty-two years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503553286

Carol Seay

Carol Barner Seay is the daughter of the late Willie Fred Barner Sr. and Helen Wright Barner. She was born in Americus, Georgia, in July 1950. In 1968, she was a graduate of AS Staley High School, Americus, Georgia. In 2003, she was a graduate of Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia. In 2014, she received her doctorate from Andersonville Theology Seminary, Camilla, Georgia. She has traveled stateside and abroad. She worked as a long-turn substitute teacher for thirty-nine years in public and Christian schools. She founded and pastored Faith Temple Deliverance Christian Center of Americus, Georgia. Dr. Seay pastored for fourteen years. Now she is an apostle chosen by God, also an author. Carol is one of the originator fifteen girls of the Leesburg Stockade and feature in Essence Magazine, June 2006, “The Stolen Girls.” She was inducted in the Voter Rights Hall of Fame Museum, Selma, Alabama, in March 2007. She is the proud mother of one son, Ja’Marcus Fonte’ Ingram.

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Copyright © 2015 by Carol Seay.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015904048

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5035-5327-9

             Softcover         978-1-5035-5329-3

                eBook             978-1-5035-5328-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 05/16/2015

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Foreword

The Overview

Introduction

Here am I, Send Me

The Letter S

Interrupt Play

Mass Meeting

Determination

The March

Dawson, Georgia

The Leesburg Stockade

The Last of the Saga

Children of God

I’m a Soldier

A Salute to the Fallen Soldiers (Girls) of 1963

Children of the Dream

Dr. King’s Famous Speech

Free or Not?

Sold Out Life

Hands Up

Quotes

Songs of Freedom

What do you Want? Freedom! When do you Want it? Now!

What May Be May Not Be

One Thing

Survivor

Time Line of the Americus-Sumter County Movement

Civil War to Civil Rights at Andersonville

What Manner of Love

This book is dedicated to her beloved mother,

Helen Olivia Wright Barner.

A strong woman who has weathered the storm, the good, bad, and I don’t know.

A woman who is made of good durable leather.

The mother who could not, would not,

stand in the way of her young daughter’s endeavors.

She knew that once her daughter makes up her mind to do

something, not even the power of the military could stop her.

This daughter of hers was a strong-willed, headstrong,

consistent little girl.

For this mother, my hat goes off to her. Thank you for

believing in whatever Carol set her mind to do, and she will

always love and be grateful to you, for not standing in the

path of history but for helping create history instead.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

S he is grateful to the late J. R. Campbell, Sr., pastor of Allen Chapel AME Church, who thought it not robbery to take a stand in the movement, when others with his title were cowards, and open the doors of the church he pastored to hold the very first mass meeting and following. Reverend Campbell was known as the godfather of the movement in Sumter County. He was a husband, father, leader of his community, and a servant of God, who believed that segregation was not the will of God because God created all men equal, because we all are created in his image. Rev. Campbell was a great man and was not afraid to stand up for equality, not knowing whether he would lose his life for what he believed. But his trust was in the Lord. Finally, to all of you who risked your life and families to protest against segregation in the Deep South, Americus, Georgia, in Sumter County.

Special thanks

To the girls who shared the Leesburg Stockade with Carol in Leesburg, Georgia. These girls were known then as The Leesburg 33. Today they are known as The Stolen Girls.

I pen for you Sumter County, Americus, Georgia’s youngest unsung heroes:

Carol Barner, Lorena Barnum, Pearl Brown (deceased),

Bobbie Jean Butts, Agnes Carter (deceased), Pattie Jean Collier,

Mattie Crittenden (deceased), Barbara Jean Daniels, Gloria Dean,

Carolyn Deloatch, Diane Dorsey, Juanita Freeman,

Robertina Freeman, Henrietta Fuller, Shirley Ann Green, Verna Hollis,

Evette Hose, Mary Frances Jackson, Vyrtis Jackson,

Dorothy Jones, Emma Jean Jones, Emmarene Kaigler,

Barbara Ann Peterson, Annie Lue Ragans (deceased), Judith Reid,

Laura Ruff, Sandra Russell (deceased), Willie Mae Smith,

Billie Jo Thornton, Gloria Westbrook (deceased), LuLu Westbrook,

Ozellar Whitehead (deceased), and Carrie Mae Williams.

FOREWORD

W hen Carol Barner-Seay was only thirteen years old, she and more than a dozen other African American girls endured a nightmare that no one could have imagined—locked away in a godforsaken hellhole deep in the Georgia woods for forty-five days.

And for much of that time, their families didn’t know where the girls were or what had happened to them.

For simply exercising their constitutional rights, the girls were severely, unfairly, and unconscionably punished by being incarcerated in an abandoned Civil-War-era prison. Their home was a twenty-by-forty-feet musty concrete room that reeked of urine and mildew. The barren, filthy room had no beds or any furnishings other than a pile of rotting mattresses in one corner. It was lit by a lone bare lightbulb that dangled from the cracked ceiling. The glass panes on the barred windows were broken and jagged, allowing flies, cockroaches, and mosquitoes full access inside. In the bathroom, the lone commode had no water in it and didn’t work. Water dripped from a single broken showerhead.

This was the price that Carol and other young committed African Americans paid in the struggle for freedom in America in the 1950s and 1960s—the defining decades in the civil rights movement in our country.

Too many black adults risked losing their jobs, homes, and even lives for getting actively involved in the movement. So it was left up to the young African Americans like Carol to supply the manpower for the fight against oppression, prejudice, and injustice. They organized boycotts, walked picket lines, and conducted sit-ins. They led marches, demonstrations, and protests. They integrated schools, lunch counters and movie theaters.

But the battle was costly and difficult. They were often bloodied, beaten, arrested, imprisoned and, yes, even murdered. They sacrificed some of the best years of their lives at a time when other kids their age were dancing to rock ‘n’ roll, hanging out at drive-ins, and going to the movies.

In this stark, raw, and spiritual book, Carol recounts how courage and faith were intertwined in her soul and helped her carry the torch of freedom when so many others couldn’t. Because of the dedication, commitment, and bravery of young people like Carol, hundreds of discriminatory laws and unjust social customs on the local and state level were eventually abolished, especially in the Deep South. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 were passed by the Congress. And racial attitudes began changing for the better.

When the 1960s drew to a close, those young people who sacrificed so much and fought so hard against racial injustice had secured rights not only for themselves but also for future generations. They had helped make America a better, fairer, more just country.

John Lewis, a former student activist and Freedom Rider who today is one of the most respected members in Congress, once said this about the teenage foot soldiers of the civil rights movement: We allowed the spirit of history to use us … to give a little bit of blood to redeem the soul of America.

For Carol Barner-Seay, her spirit and spirituality helped shaped that redemption.

—Allan Zullo, author, Young Civil Rights Heroes

I

THE OVERVIEW

A s a civil rights activist, Carol became involved at the age of twelve. At this early age, she attended mass meetings, sit-ins, marches, and boycotts and picketed many stores, even going to jail twice. She is the only girl from Sumter County, Americus, Georgia, who went to Mississippi with Martin Luther King, Jr., to help the garbage workers there. She went door-to-door, inviting people to come and get involved in making a difference in our county, but most of all in their personal life. Also, she helped with the voter registration.

When someone says the words civil rights, the first thing that comes to her mind is a place called Leesburg, Georgia. Why this place? Because the stockade in Leesburg, Georgia, was her last prison stop. Carol was alone with thirty-two other girls at one time, but only fifteen of them spent forty-five days there, sleeping on the concrete floor, no working toilet or shower. They were given four hamburgers a day, burned around the edges, but raw in the middle, and no condiments. In other words, she didn’t have a choice of having it her way. There were broken window panes, no wire mesh to keep bugs out, and no curtains for privacy. The only pillows she and others had was another girl’s shoulder. To keep their sanity, they prayed and sang freedom songs.

Let’s described the civil rights movement and other moments of African American activism as freedom struggles. It’s not difficult to see that you were struggling against Jim Crow during the early sixties. It’s not difficult to see that you were often struggling against physical signs of segregation: the colored only labels, the back of the bus. Can you share with us examples of the inner struggles you encountered as you made decisions to march, to sing, to protest, to go to jail? What enabled you to overcome any doubts or second thoughts about your efforts and to maintain your optimism when or if you didn’t seem to be making