Focusing on the often under-reported role that massive numbers of children played in civil rights protests of the 1960s, “The Rebel Girls,” a 22-minute short film written, directed and produced by Felicia D. Henderson, is a fictionalized account of a true event in the history of the Civil Rights Movement.
The film is an entry in the Pasadena African-American Film Foundation’s Black August Film Festival set for August 15-17, an annual commemoration and prison-based holiday that honors freedom fighters and political prisoners, highlighting Black (and other) resistance against oppression.
“It is so important that we have local talent to produce films of this quality with social and emotional impact,” said PAAFF Founder and publisher of Pasadena Black Pages, Dennis Haywood.
The multiple award-winning film is Henderson’s imaginative retelling (based on interviews with actual survivors) of the Leesburg Stockade Girls’ story of civil rights protest and ultimate triumph as they challenged authority, were arrested, jailed and subjected to inhumane confinement and conditions in Americus, Georgia in 1963. The “Moesha,” “Soul Food,” and “The Punisher” producer said a close friend sent her this little-known fact about young girls who were rounded up like cattle in 1963, shortly before President Kennedy’s assassination.
“They were thrown into a stockade that was more than a hundred years old,” says Henderson, “a place first built to contain Union soldiers captured during the Civil War in the 1860s.”
These fifteen young freedom fighters, girls ages 12 to 15, were part of the 500 children who peacefully marched from Friendship Baptist Church to the Martin Movie Theatre to challenge the Jim Crow laws that perpetuated racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans. The children attempted to purchase tickets at the front entrance of the theater and sit on the main floor of the theater instead of in the colored-designated balcony.
Law enforcement arrested the children, never formally charging them with crimes and without providing their families with information or knowledge of their whereabouts. The children were held for almost 60 days in the Leesburg Stockade, a deteriorating Civil War-era structure, under what can only be described as inhumane conditions.
Henderson and the child actors in the film create an imaginative narrative of how the children survived, effectively weaving the MLK historic “I Have a Dream” speech as the jailed children sing freedom songs and imagine how they would realize those dreams after their ordeal was over. They create a world of fantasy to preserve their spirits.
After almost 60 days in captivity, the children were released because of the secretive efforts of local photographer Danny Lyon of The Student Voice, who photographed and published images of the girls, which were picked up by newspapers across the country.
Soon after the 1963 March on Washington, during the same week of the bombing deaths of the five little girls at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963, and just prior to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, law enforcement released the Leesburg Stockade Girls and returned them to their families.
Theatrical trailer for The Rebel Girls.
Ultimately, the activism of thousands of African American children in 1963, including the Leesburg Stockade Girls, provided the momentum for the March on Washington and contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act the following year.
The film’s A-list crew includes music composer Kurt Farquhar, casting director Leah Daniels Butler, showrunners Mara Brock Akil and Caroline Williams and Dr. Bernice A. King, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s daughter.
While girls and women regrettably continue to fight for equality in the workplace and society, stories like The Rebel Girls are instrumental in raising the voices of the silenced.
Produced and directed by Henderson, the film stars Nika King, Kyanna Simone, Honey Robinson, Nia Sondaya, Josephine Lawrence, Maxcianna Saintilus, Avynn Crowder-Jones, and Asia Holiday.
Homegrown Filmmaker
In a recent interview, Local News Pasadena spoke to Henderson about her early influences.
“I come from Northwest Pasadena, a very working-class, blue-collar part of town. I love my community. I love Pasadena. I love Altadena,” says Henderson. “I went to James Madison Elementary School, Wilson Junior High, and Pasadena High. So I’m as local as you can get. We lived on the corner of Madison and Ashtabula, right across the street from Madison Elementary, so we never had any excuse to be late for school.”
“I still remember the teachers from elementary school who made the biggest impact on me,” continues Henderson. “They believed in me. I had bright, crazy, creative writing stories. I always felt odd, and yet they nurtured me, rather than saying, ‘Look at the little odd girl.’ My AP English teacher at Pasadena High School was probably the most influential teacher I had.”
“There was a fellowship at the University of Georgia sponsored by Peabody and NBC, offering a full ride to individuals interested in management and business in television,” relates Henderson. “I was accepted into that program, so NBC paid for my MBA, and then I got a job in their management training program.”
“That’s where I first got my first exposure to the entertainment industry, says Henderson. “NBC President Warren Littlefield said, ‘The kind of notes you give on scripts, I’m pretty sure you’re a writer.’ He told me about the Warner Bros. writers workshop boot camp. And so I applied, and I have been writing ever since, and that was 25 years ago.”
“No one wants to be preached at or hear a message. They want to be entertained.” – Felicia Henderson
“I started in sitcoms and then finally got offers to ghostwrite screenplays and rewrite movies and doctor scripts. However, I needed to return to television, where what you write more often gets produced. So I do both now. “Soul Food” was my big break, transitioning from comedy to drama. I just started on a new show called ‘Tiara from Detroit.’ But my passion is this story, The Rebel Girls. I wanted to write, direct, and produce it. History is important, and yet my job, first and foremost, is to entertain. No one wants to be preached at or hear a message. They want to be entertained.”
Henderson declares, “Stories of MLK are told over and over again because of his obvious prominence in the movement. We’ve seen several movies from various points of view, as well as TV series, mini-series, TV movies, and, of course, feature films. So the prominent stories, and, quite frankly, the stories of the great men are told, and of women less often, and certainly not stories of the children. This story of these children who arguably reinvigorated the whole movement has never been told.”
Adultification Bias and Black Girls
This reviewer is reminded of recent reporting by Local News Pasadena regarding adultification bias of young black girls, a national movement spearheaded by the local Pasadena Chapter of the NAACP to bring awareness to the ongoing unjustified treatment of young black girls in the legal system.
“I am also a professor at Northwestern University,” states Henderson, “so I know the issue. My PhD area is the media, focusing on women and people of color in the media.”
“We portray young girls in the media and particularly in commercial advertising and film, as ‘Pretty Babies, ‘ like the film with Brooke Shields,” says Henderson. “When you see boys in ads, they are being portrayed as boys, but when you see girls, it is the short dress, and it’s just a little blush and colored lipstick, and it’s okay.”
“Adultification bias was not the issue during this time,” continues Henderson.
“We were born into the movement. So it was absolutely normal to protest.” – Dr. Bernice King
“Dr. Bernice King, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.’s daughter, is one of my executive producers, and I think she said it best. We were born into the movement. So it was absolutely normal to protest. If you were a kid during that time, going out to march, going to meetings, that was part of your childhood. It was not odd. It was the times, and this is what we did.”
“I’m not suggesting a monolithic look at it,” says Henderson, “but all people were the same and did the same. This is what we did because we were right. We were all fighting hard. We all had to do this.”
Sometimes, 50-100 children were placed in jail cells that were made for 12 adult men. Other times, children were kept in jails only on the weekends, going back to school on Monday. But parents knew where their kids were. The idea that children were willing to miss school through protest was viewed as a privilege, and they were willing to give up school for the sake of the protest.
At other times, the parents didn’t know where their kids were. They agreed to let them march, knowing that jail was a possibility. In this particular spring and summer of the crusade, the children first marched in Birmingham. It was so successful that they then marched in Americus, where my story takes place.
“They marched the children,” states Henderson, “because the national press stopped covering the movement when MLK got arrested. The movement was waning. They hoped the national media would never stand by and watch children be arrested and put in jail. And that’s exactly what happened. The National Press coverage came back and reinvigorated the movement.
Creative License and Authenticity in the Film
“Two of the characters are based on real people still living,” says Henderson. “Obviously, some characters are re-imagined in my head. It’s not so much about the license with their stories, but creative ways to tell them. I added magical realism and fantasy because we’ve always had the ability to escape from our reality mentally. It’s how we survive, and not only survive but thrive. Some of the choices were creative choices, e.g., nobody took showers.”
“So I’m not saying we need to stop telling our stories. We need to just tell them in a more entertaining way that also depicts people three-dimensionally from their own point of view. Politics is what you teach underneath.”
Of her decision-making process, Henderson states, “It was important to me that I cast girls who were really, really dark, because I want to say something about the whole rainbow of darkness. It was important to me that the darkest-skinned girls got the biggest close-ups, because dark-skinned girls never get the close-ups, if they even get the parts.”
How Did the Young Girls Get Out of Jail?
“At one point, the children escaped in the middle of the night. But they realized they were not in Americus. They didn’t even know where they were. They were completely lost, cold, and scratched up from the brush. They were hungry and started to feel ill. They actually went back to their captors.”
“Their release is the story I will tell in the full-length version,” Henderson continues, “as well as how the surreptitiously taken photographs by Danny Lyon were published and how MLK used them in a tense meeting with President Kennedy to get the girls released.”
Coming Home to Fire-Devastated Pasadena
“When I’m not in production, I teach two quarters a year,” relates Henderson. “The day of the fire, I was in Chicago. My sisters were being evacuated. My nephew, who works for the City Water and Power Department, didn’t stop working for weeks, working seven days a week. He sent a video to me, and he started pointing out the areas I was familiar with. I just collapsed, and I didn’t stop crying for two days, because I knew people in so many of those houses in that neighborhood. My childhood was in that neighborhood.”
“When I’m home, I attend Victory Bible Church in Pasadena, where 53 members of the congregation lost their homes in the Eaton Fire. It’s been overwhelming. The house that my high school friend inherited from her parents burned down. I used to eat dinner at that kitchen table,” she laments.
“It still overwhelms me to talk about it, but to be part of this PAAFF festival, making my film debut as a director, is a privilege. I’m executive producing in Atlanta, but I am coming back for this screening in Pasadena. I would not miss it. It’s in my hometown.”
DEETS
- Sunday, August 17, 2025, 7:00 PM, Special screening of “The Rebel Girls” and other festival selections
- Victory Bible Church, 1497 N Hill Ave, Pasadena, CA 91104
- Pasadena African American Film Festival
- August 15-17, 2025, various locations.
- Tickets
Loved this. Deb Halberstadt