Pictures at the Protest

Brothers Sam and Derek and their friend Caitlin are back, with a new mystery at hand—identifying in long-hidden photographs the brave African American teenagers who courageously stood up for civil rights nearly sixty years ago.

The latest volume in the fun and informative middle-grade series combining history, mystery, and adventure, shines a light on the civil rights protests of 1963 and the fight to desegregate schools.

In 1959, the Prince Edward County, Virginia public schools closed. For five years. Back then, it wasn’t over a health pandemic, but because county leaders refused to desegregate white and Black schools. So when long-hidden photographs surface from the student protests along Main Street in Farmville, Sam, Derek, and Caitlin are on the case to help identify the brave teenagers who stood for justice nearly sixty years ago.

Their search winds through Virginia’s checkered racial past of Jim Crow and Massive Resistance, sending them to key sites like the Moton Museum, Evergreen Cemetery, Jackson Ward, and the Virginia State Capitol, and courageous voices like Barbara Johns, Oliver Hill, and Maggie Walker. But when protests over Confederate monuments and cries for social justice ignite their city, will the kids use their lessons from history to take a stand in the present? How far they will go to support new friends while confronting faces from the past?

Middle-graders will love the fast-paced modern-day adventure with a twist of history of a critical time in our nation’s civil rights journey. The Virginia Mysteries: Pictures at the Protest provides an entertaining way of communicating the importance of history, particularly in today’s current landscape of the social justice dilemma our country faces. Throughout his Virginia Mysteries series which spans nine titles, author Steven K. Smith expertly combines fictional mystery plots with real historical locations and figures like Mount Vernon, Jamestown, St. John’s Church, Colonial Williamsburg, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and many others, making them a hit with families and educators alike.

Also by Steven K. Smith:

The Virginia Mysteries Series
Book 1 – Summer of the Woods
Book 2 – Mystery on Church Hill
Book 3 – Ghosts of Belle Isle
Book 4 – Secret of the Staircase
Book 5 – Midnight at the Mansion
Book 6 – Shadows at Jamestown
Book 7 – Spies at Mount Vernon
Book 8 – Escape from Monticello
Book 9 - Pictures at the Protest

Brother Wars Series
Brother Wars
Cabin Eleven
The Big Apple

Final Kingdom Trilogy (Ages 10+)
The Missing
The Recruit
The Bridge


Genre: Children's Fiction