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?

Pictures at the Protest is the ninth book in The Virginia Mysteries series. The books make perfect complements to social studies units, field trips, and family vacations. If you enjoy mystery and adventure like the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Magic Tree House, or National Treasure, you’ll love author Steven K. Smith’s exciting middle-grade series-modern-day fictional mysteries with twists of real locations and events from Virginia history for ages 7-12.