The Newnan premiere of new movie documentary “Mayhayley Lancaster, Legend of an Oracle” is Thursday, Nov. 17, at the Newnan Train Depot.
General admission tickets are $10 on Eventbrite.com or at the Newnan-Coweta Historical Society offices at McRitchie-Hollis Museum, 74 Jackson Street. There will be tickets at the door if any remain after pre-sales.
The new documentary is written, produced and directed by Rick Fowler, an Athens musician who is originally from Bowdon, Ga. The film premiered to a sold-out audience Oct. 22 in his Carroll County hometown.
Lancaster did not like the term “fortune teller.” The Heard County legend, made famous by her testimony in the 1940s John Wallace murder trial in Newnan, called herself the “Oracle of the Ages” and considered her talent as a clairvoyant a gift from God.
She was a pioneer in the struggle for women’s rights. In her early years Mayhayley Lancaster taught school, studied to be a lawyer, even ran for state office. But in later life this colorful figure attracted crowds to her home on a secluded road north of Franklin – people came to her seeking answers to their futures or how they might find something lost.
Copies of the DVD will be available for purchase, and there will be a reception with light refreshments.
Newnan educator, poet and author Melissa Dickson Jackson, who is among those featured in in the documentary, will speak on the life and times of Mayhayley Lancaster.
Interviewed and appearing in the documentary are author Dot Moore, who wrote a book about Mayhayley titled “Oracle of the Ages”; Melissa Jackson; Johnnie Huey; Nellie Dunaway Duke; Chanell Lowery; W. Jeff Bishop, executive director of Newnan-Coweta Historical Society and author of the original play “Flies at the Well” about the John Wallace trial; Jonathan Dorsey; and James Davis.
The movie runs 48 minutes. For more information go to mayhayleymovie.com.
The Newnan Train Depot is at 60 East Broad Street in downtown Newnan. For more information, contact the Newnan-Coweta Historical Society at McRitchie-Hollis Museum, 770-251-0207.
For tickets: www.eventbrite.com/e/newnan-movie-premiere-mayhayley-lancaster-legend-of-an-oracle-tickets-29015688706.
