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.