In 1963 a group of African American Teenagers were locked up for protesting for Civil Rights in Americus, Georgia. They were taken without their parent's knowledge and housed in unsanitary conditions in a stockade. The author does a very good job with text and photographs describing what it was like to be a African-American teenager in the South. This is an important forgotten piece of Civil Rights History. The contributions of young women in the fight is often overlooked. This book will appeal to anyone interested in Women's History and the Civil Right Movement in the South.

I'm of two minds about this book. At first, I didn't love it. In part because the early chapters assume we know nothing about the Civil Rights movement. I'm all for covering your bases, making sure your audience understands what's going on, but this one might go too far. On the other hand, most books we get about the movement focus on Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, and school integration. It was interesting to explore this "new" aspect of a familiar piece of history. And the boldness of the young people involved was inspiring.

Heather Schwartz delivers a powerful and horrifying account from the 1960s civil rights era that I was previously unfamiliar with. She deftly wove the story of young, teen women arrested in Americus, GA into the larger stories of the time. Ultimately, Schwartz points out the continuing struggles for equality in the nation. The work is straight-forward, eye-opening, and difficult to swallow but so important.

A powerful narrative nonfiction book about the shocking imprisonment of groups of teenage girls in Georgia during the Civil Rights protests. Some were held for weeks without explanation or even being officially charged. If not for the courage of other activists they may have been in jail even longer in horrendous conditions. The author does a good job of making the narrative clear and compelling, which will appeal to elementary and middle school students.