Category Archives: –LEE COUNTY GA–

Shady Grove Baptist Church, 1963, Lee County

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Shady Grove Baptist Church was established in the late 1870s by freedmen families, and in 1880 members James Harris, Paul Tracy, Billy Pope, and Boss Scrutchins purchased the land on which the congregation still worships today. Rev. Samuel Lamar was the first pastor.

On 14 August 1962, Shady Grove was the first of four Black churches (including Mt. Mary, Mt. Olive, and I Hope) to be burned by arsonists in Lee and Terrell Counties. Unsurprisingly, local officials who inspected the Shady Grove site dismissed arson as a cause, blaming it instead on “faulty electrical wiring.” The FBI disagreed and in October charged domestic terrorists Jack Smith and Douglas Parker with the crime.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who visited the ruins of the church, wrote (in part) in the September 1962 issued of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Newsletter, in an essay entitled “The Terrible Cost of the Ballot”: “Tears welled up in my heart and my eyes not long ago as I surveyed the shambles of what had been the Shady Grove Baptist Church of Leesburg, Georgia. I had been awakened shortly after daybreak by my executive assistant, the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, who informed me that a SNCC (Student Non violent Coordinating Committee) staffer had just called and reported that the church ·where their organization had been holding voting clinics and registration classes had been destroyed by fire and/or dynamite.

Lee Count y is one of the three southwest Georgia counties where for years an attempt to register to vote has been tantamount to inviting death...

The naked truth is that whether the object of the Negro community’s efforts are directed at lunch counters or interstate busses, First Amendment privileges or pilgrimages of prayer, school desegregation, or the right to vote, he meets an implacable foe in the southern white racist. No matter what it is we seek, if it has to do with full citizenship, self-respect, human dignity, and borders on changing the “southern way of life ,” the Negro stands little chance if any, of securing the approval, consent or tolerance of the segregationist white South.

Exhibit “A”: The charred remains of the Shady Grove Baptist ·Church, Lee County, Georgia. This is the terrible cost of the ballot in the Deep South.”

Shady Grove was one of the three burnt churches to be rebuilt in 1963, with Dr. King present at the groundbreaking ceremony. Fundraising efforts successfully netted $70,000 (over $700k in 2024 dollars) and were led by baseball star Jackie Robinson, who along with Dr. King helped bring attention to the problem. Joe Amisano, representing the Georgia branch of the American Institute of Architects, designed the new church, as well as those at Mt. Mary and Mt. Olive.

Byne Plantation House, Circa 1883, Lee County

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This exquisite Georgian Cottage, heavily influenced by the Greek Revival, is, architecturally, one of the finest houses in Lee County. According to the History of Lee County, Georgia (1983), it has traditionally been known as the Byne Plantation. It’s still at the center of a large working farm in the historic Oakland community.

Gilbert M. Byne (1825-1910) was the first member of the Byne family to live in Lee County, establishing a large plantation near this site upon his arrival. He married Georgia Virginia McKnight (1854-1924) of Coweta County in 1883 and continued to expand his land holdings throughout his life. He also served as a Lee County commissioner. Gilbert’s grandfather, the Rev. Edmund Byne (1730-1814), migrated from King and Queen County, Virginia, to Burke County, Georgia, in 1781, and founded two churches there.

I first thought the house to be of antebellum construction but after consulting the Lee County history, believe it was built in the early 1880s, soon after Gilbert was married. The history notes that he had a new road cut through the area to accommodate such a place. The Bynes’s only child to live to adulthood, Marilu Byne (1890-1979), married Alvah Wallace Barrett, Sr. (1889-1956), and they continued to maintain the plantation until the waning days of the Great Depression, when they lost the property through a mortgage to the Haley family.

The Georgian Cottage type, two bays deep divided by a central hallway and therefore symmetrical in layout, is inherently Greek Revival in spirit, and this house certainly exemplifies that. It’s a well-maintained beauty.

Precinct House, Lee County

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I’m out on a limb identifying this structure, but I believe it’s an old precinct house, or courthouse as they’re often known in Southwest Georgia. It certainly looks like dozens of other structures used for this purpose that I have documented over the years. I’ll go further and suggest it may be the Oakland, or Oakland Road, precinct. [I found Oakland, Georgia, on Google Earth, just up the road from this building. Oakland never had a post office; it’s just one of those places that is/was locally known as a neighborhood.] Historically, this area has been characterized by large plantations centered primarily around extensive pecan orchards. It’s a very rural area on the fringes of Albany’s continued northward expansion.

I’ll gladly update if I learn more.

Leesburg Stockade

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According to local history, this structure was built as the Lee County Public Works Building, likely in the 1930s or 1940s, and is variously known as the Leesburg Stockade and the Lee County Stockade.The word stockade usually evokes romanticized notions of Western cattle drives. In the Jim Crow South, a stockade was more likely to be a stark place used for the warehousing of Black prisoners, a reminder that the racial order would be maintained. It was an element of an inherently racist ideal driven by White Supremacy and White Christian Nationalists with the approval and participation of most, if not all, of the county’s elected officials.

In July 1963, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organized a protest in Americus, marching from Friendship Baptist Church to the segregated Martin Theatre. According to a story on Georgia Public Radio, a group of Black girls joined the line to purchase tickets and were arrested on site. They ranged in age from 12-15. After being briefly held in Dawson, they were transferred to the Leesburg Stockade. Their parents knew nothing of their whereabouts until a janitor got word to them of their incarceration. They came to be known as the Stolen Girls.

Conditions in the stockade were horrible. The girls slept on concrete floors with barely-running water and a non-functioning toilet. Food was brought to them but was often under-cooked or substandard. It’s hard to imagine a society that thought it was acceptable for this to happen to anyone, let alone children. But so it was.

The story of the Leesburg Stolen Girls was widely publicized by SNCC. When photographer Danny Lyon’s images were published in Jet magazine it brought an unwelcome national focus on Lee County and the girls were released in September 1963. They were not charged with any crimes but were billed for their stay in the facility. Dr. Shirley Green-Reese, one of the Stolen Girls, helped lead the initiative to have a Georgia historical marker placed at the site in 2019.

New Hope A. M. E. Church, Circa 1950, Smithville

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New Hope A. M. E. Church is located just down the street from New Hope Methodist Church. The two were built around the same time and have strikingly similar architecture.

The following abridged history is from an entry entitled “New Hope Methodist Church: County’s Oldest Church” in Smithville Georgia: A Glimpse of the Past (1976): “One of the first Methodist Churches in Lee County was organized in 1853, for the slaves. It was some two miles west of the later site of Smithville. First a brush arbor was erected to hold their services in, then they built a small log cabin church and in 1868, this building was destroyed by fire. Leaders of that project were H. M. Mitchell, Sr. and P. J. Griffin. It was…used for school purposes, being the first school for Negroes in this area.


The old building became dilapidated and the membership increased until it was necessary to start the third one in 1923. It was started by Rev. E. A. Clark and was finished by Rev. S. Fields. In September, 1949, that building was also destroyed by fire. The present building was started in 1950.

Smithville Methodist Church, 1946, Lee County

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The following abridged history is from Smithville, Georgia: A Glimpse Into the Past (1976). “Sometime after the Civil War, a number of Methodist families living in Smithville
community banded together and erected a meeting house near the Sumter and Lee
County line, about one mile Northwest of Smithville. This building was by the side of
the Old Smithville-Dawson Road, near the present site of the colored Primitive Church.
The earliest official record of the Smithville congregation occurs in 1878 when the
South Georgia Annual Conference created the Dawson and Smithville Circuit. Rev. W.
M. Hayes was appointed pastor.

At the beginning of 1881, a new pastoral charge was created with Smithville as
head. The congregation was moved into town and erected a new house of worship on
Whitaker Street. This building set well back into the lot; its architecture was typical of
the day, featuring a spacious porch with wide columns across the front.

In 1912, the prosperous Smithville congregation erected a new building, featuring
a corner tower. Rev. N. H. Olmstead was pastor and was serving his second appointment to the Smithville Circuit. This structure on Whitaker Street was the home of the congregation until the end of World War II. At that time, the building had fallen into ill repair, due to wartime restrictions on materials and labor.

The congregation under the leadership of Rev. J. D. McCord boldly erected a
concrete-block building in a modified Gothic style on Church Street in early 1946. It
was dedicated in October of the same year by Bishop Arthur J. Moore.“

Historic Storefront, Smithville

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This typical turn-of-the-century storefront is located on Muckaloochee Street, near the train tracks. I consulted a history of the community but was unable to identify the structure.

Smithville Rosenwald School, 1928, Lee County

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According to the November 2005 issue of Reflections, a newsletter of the Georgia African American Historic Preservation Network, a school for Black children in Smithville was established in an abandoned house by A. R. Robinson in 1903. The students performed so well that the county school board built a three-room schoolhouse for their use. It was destroyed by fire at some point, and classes were held in the Masonic lodge and local churches.

A new four-teacher school, which taught students through the eighth grade, was built in 1928, with the aid of the Julius Rosenwald Fund. It also included a library and auditorium.

After the Brown v. Board decision in 1955, the Smithville Rosenwald School closed. It was used for a time as an apartment building, according to Smithville, Georgia: A Glimpse Into the Past (1976). It has been abandoned for many years and at this time is in derelict condition. There has been some interest in restoration but I’m unaware of the progress at this time.

Single-Pen Tenant House, Lee County

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I photographed this house in 2013 and have since lost the location. I would be surprised it it’s still standing. It’s included in my Lee County files, so I presume that’s where it was located. It’s a nice single-pen tenant house, which was expanded a couple of times throughout its history. Like many such uninsulated dwellings, it was later covered with tar paper to help with temperature control. If anyone knows its whereabouts or fate, please get in touch.

Commercial Block, Leesburg

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There are few historic commercial structures remaining in Leesburg. This commercial block, which appears to have contained three storefronts at one time, is the most significant, and is used today as city offices.

Leesburg was first known as Wooten Station, in 1870, for the railroad stop established here and renamed Wooten in 1872. It was renamed again, as Leesburg, in 1898.