Augusta Mini Theatre honors Carrie J. Mays on anniversary of 1970 riots

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - The Augusta Mini Theatre is honoring Carrie J. Mays on the anniversary of the 1970 Augusta riots, which ended with six people losing their lives in a protest of police brutality.

Fifty-six years ago this week, Mays, then a mortician, received 16-year-old Charles Oatman’s body. Authorities said he fell from his bed in the Richmond County jail, but Mays knew something was wrong.

She alerted the public that Oatman had been beaten to death.

“The best thing that my mother-in-law did... I think there’s some people today that don’t have enough courage to do it, is to tell the truth,” said Raye Robinson Mays, daughter-in-law of Carrie J. Mays. “When she saw actually what really happened to Oatman, she wasn’t afraid to stand up and speak up.”

The Augusta Mini Theatre is educating many who never knew Mays’ legacy.

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“I learned about this was in 2020 when the exhibit was first being put together. And I was like, how did I not know about this?” said Shantelle Wheeler, public relations for Augusta Mini Theatre. “Our hope is that her example can be an inspiration to others, especially now, and especially for our young people, that when they see something, they will say something.”

Raye Robinson Mays said her mother-in-law’s lesson was to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

“If you don’t know your history, you can be doomed to repeat it,” she said. “So we want times, of course, to be better and better and better for each generation.”

Mays is also known as the first Black woman elected to any city council in the Southeast. The Augusta Mini Theatre said her courage to speak up was a catalyst for that success and one of her defining traits.

“The impact of what she did lives on,” Wheeler said. “And through this, we hope to give people something else to help them think about her and remember her.”