Join us at the Lee Council House for our first Council Club Speaker Series of 2025 featuring Dr. Susan Bragg.

Dr. Susan Bragg, Professor of History and Co-Director of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Georgia Southwestern State University will present The “Electric Girls” Visit Americus:  Late 19th c. “Girl Power” on the Vaudeville Stage.

In the mid-1880s, Americus residents enthusiastically celebrated a series of ‘electric girls’ who presented their ‘mysterious forces’ at Glover’s Opera House.  The most well-known of these performers was Lulu Hurst but Mattie Lee Price and Annie Abbott also visited the region to perform exhibits of physical dominance over larger (and often more reputable) male members of the community.  In an era of vaudeville, traveling circuses, and popular magic shows, these electric girls might seem like just one more spectacle in an expanding world of commercialized entertainment.  Yet exploring Americus reactions to these teenage celebrities provides us an excellent case study demonstrating how girls used the public stage to stimulate debates about girlhood opportunity and social status in the New South.

Join the Sumter Historic Trust for the annual meeting to discuss recent and upcoming events. Light refreshments will be served, and this event is free and open to the public.

Dr. Pamela Tyler will be speaking on Americus in the 1920s. Dr. Tyler earned her B.A. and M.Ed. at Georgia Southwestern, then Ph.D. in History at Tulane University. She held tenured faculty positions at North Carolina State University and then at the University of Southern Mississippi, teaching the history of the American South and the history of women in the United States. Now retired and living in New Orleans, Dr. Tyler enjoys the food and the music, but not the price of flood insurance.

Dr. Tyler is also the author of two books:

Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes: Women and Politics in New Orleans, 1920-1965 (University of Georgia Press 1996) 

New Orleans Women and the Poydras Home: More Durable Than Marble  (LSU Press, 2016)

Join us at the Lee Council House for our first Council Club Speaker Series featuring Bill Robinson.

While serving as a crew chief aboard a U.S. Air Force rescue helicopter, Airman First Class William A. Robinson was shot down and captured in Ha Tinh Province, North Vietnam.  He spent 2,703 days in multiple North Vietnamese prison camps, including the Hanoi Hilton, the notorious Briarpatch, and the Zoo.  No enlisted man in American military history has been held as a prisoner of war longer than Robinson.

Among the first three dozen captives taken by the North Vietnamese, Robinson has a unique story to tell.  He became an iconic figure of the war when a staged capture photo was circulated for propaganda purposes; his image appeared on Communist postage stamps and calendars.  Among his many ordeals was an appendectomy without the benefit of anesthesia.  The Air Force recognized Robinson’s exemplary service by awarding him the Air Force Cross, a combat award that ranks second only to the Medal of Honor.  

His time in captivity and his life in general is an object lesson in triumph over tragedy.  

The Sumter Historic Trust will hold its Spring Party and Auction, garden style! Don your spring colors or florals and join us on the veranda at the Lee Council House. Hor d’oeuvres along with a full bar will be available. Enjoy live music from Andy Miller and The Old Hats while bidding on our auction items. All proceeds benefit the Sumter Historic Trust and its mission to preserve and promote Sumter County Georgia’s history.

Tickets can be purchased from a board member or via Venmo @SumterHistoricTrust for $30.