In Chapter 5 we are introduced to the “St. Augustine Four,” a group of teenagers active in the NAACP Youth Council under the advising of Robert Hayling. The four young people—Audrey Nell Edwards, JoeAnn Anderson, Willie Carl Singleton, and Samuel White—are arrested for conducting a nonviolent sit-in at Woolworth’s in July, 1963. The local judge, Charles C. Mathis Jr., gives them a path to freedom if they are willing to sign a pledge not to participate in any other civil rights protests until they turn 21. Regarding that as a violation of their First Amendment rights, the four instead choose to go to jail. Unbeknownst to them at the time, they would remain in custody—first at the local jail, and then at notorious “reform schools”—for almost six months.

This plays out around a backdrop of escalating racial tension in St. Augustine. That includes a report from a state civil rights organization that characterizes the city as a “segregated superbomb” and says “the fuse is short.”