The Leesburg Stockade was an event in the civil rights movement of the 1960s in which a group of African-American teenage and pre-teen girls were arrested for protesting racial segregation in Americus, Georgia, and were imprisoned without charges for 45 days in poor conditions in the Lee County Public Works building, in Leesburg, Georgia. The building was then called the Leesburg Stockade, and gave its name to the event. The young prisoners became known as the Stolen Girls.
In July, 1963, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (the SNCC), in cooperation with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, organized a protest march in Americus from the Friendship Baptist Church to a segregated movie theater. As part of the protest, a group of young women joined the line to attempt to purchase tickets at the movie theater, and were arrested for doing so. After being held briefly in Dawson, Georgia, the protesters were moved to the Leesburg Stockade. Estimates of the number of young women who were held there range from 15 to about 30 or as many as 33.
Some of the prisoners were as young as 12. Conditions in the stockade were poor: the prisoners had only concrete floors to sleep on, water only in drips from a shower, a single non-functional toilet, and poor food. The prison authorities did not inform the parents of the prisoners of their arrest or location, and they only found out through the help of a janitor. The young women were threatened with murder, and at one point a rattlesnake was thrown into their cell. After the SNCC and Senator Harrison A. Williams used a set of photos by Danny Lyon to publicize the situation, the young women were released, and did not face any criminal charges, but were nevertheless charged a fee for their use of the facilities.
Two of the Leesburg Stockade women were added to the Hall of Fame of the National Voting Rights Museum in 2007. The National Museum of African American History and Culture of the Smithsonian Institution publicized their story in 2016, and they were recognized by a resolution of the Georgia state legislature.