Up Above My Head

About the Book

These young colored girls suffered enormously in an abandoned ninety-eight-year-old civil war era stockade in 1963, and most Americans don’t even know it happened. Indeed, this too-little-known incident of the civil rights era haunts all who learn of it. Many of the authorities involved, including Sheriff Fred Chappell and Police Chief Ross Chambliss, have died, and court records that might document the girls’ imprisonment have proven impossible to locate. The year 1963 also had its triumphs. On August 28 of that year, while the girls shored up their courage by singing civil rights anthems inside the stockade, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his indelible “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. This book is written to raise awareness. It’s a very gripping story, one that needs to be preserved. These girls took a stand for justice and dignity at a very young age, and those who remain refuse to be silent after fifty-two years.

About the Author

Carol Barner Seay is the daughter of the late Willie Fred Barner Sr. and Helen Wright Barner. She was born in Americus, Georgia, in July 1950. In 1968, she was a graduate of AS Staley High School, Americus, Georgia. In 2003, she was a graduate of Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia. In 2014, she received her doctorate from Andersonville Theology Seminary, Camilla, Georgia. She has traveled stateside and abroad. She worked as a long-turn substitute teacher for thirty-nine years in public and Christian schools. She founded and pastored Faith Temple Deliverance Christian Center of Americus, Georgia. Dr. Seay pastored for fourteen years. Now she is an apostle chosen by God, also an author. Carol is one of the originator fifteen girls of the Leesburg Stockade and feature in Essence Magazine, June 2006, “The Stolen Girls.” She was inducted in the Voter Rights Hall of Fame Museum, Selma, Alabama, in March 2007. She is the proud mother of one son, Ja’Marcus Fonte’ Ingram.