1937 - July 1, 2023
A feisty, impactful trailblazer, Susan Mitchell Rogers died peacefully at her LaFayette home on July 1. She was 86 years old.
A decades-long Lafayette resident, Roger’s treasured her family: her three sons – Eason, Sam and Dodd; her four grandchildren – Zoe, Dylan, Collier and Ashton; her great grandson, Shiloh; and her last surviving sibling, Perry.
Lafayette had a special place in her heart, and she chose to be buried at the LaFayette Cemetery, where she was laid to rest on July 5.
In 1989, she moved to LaFayette from Atlanta, where she was born and raised.
In the 1960s, she gave birth to her three boys and founded and ran two schools, the Red Door School and the University Day School.
During that time, she also was a civil rights activist, teaming up with her mother, Sara Mitchell, and Martin Luther King Jr. to help right civil rights wrongs in Atlanta and beyond. She was so committed to the cause, when she was not marching on the front lines of civil rights protests, she was the only white person to sing in the choir at Martin Luther King Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church during his lifetime.
Rogers was married and divorced several times before living the last 40 years of her life alone. In her later years, she half-jokingly said no man was good enough to be her husband.
In the late 1980s, she embarked on work in LaFayette that would be even more challenging and impactful, founding the Healing Bridge for Incest Survivors. She counseled hundreds of survivors over three decades. Many of those survivors considered Rogers to be a savior as well as a confidant and adviser.
During the last few months of her life, she explained why she wanted to be buried in LaFayette: “Because this community has been good to me.”
A celebration of life for friends of the family will be held on Wednesday, July 5th at 3:30 pm at 4430 Highway 151 in LaFayette, Georgia.
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