A Virginia civil rights activist is now memorialized at the U.S. Capitol. A statue depicting Barbara Rose Johns protesting the conditions at her segregated high school was unveiled in a December 16 ceremony. The statue replaces one of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that was removed in 2020.
Johns’ Historic Leadership
At 16 years old, Johns led a student walkout at Robert Russa Moton High School on April 23, 1951. The demonstrators were protesting the overcrowded and inferior conditions at the all-Black school in comparison to nearby Farmville High School, which had an all-white student population.
Johns’ efforts caught the attention of the NAACP, and lawyers filed suit at the Richmond federal courthouse. The lawsuit became one of five that the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed in the pivotal 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case when it declared segregation unconstitutional.
Unveiling Ceremony
The statue now stands in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger all attended the unveiling. Johnson told the Associated Press that more than 200 members of Johns’ family were also on hand for the ceremony.
“Today we gathered in Emancipation Hall of the U.S. Capitol to dedicate the Barbara Rose Johns statue, to honor her legacy as a trailblazer, and ensure her story of courage and conscience is a story for generations to come. You can’t tell the story of Virginia, or the story of how our nation overcame segregation, without telling the story of Barbara Rose Johns,” Youngkin said in a social media post.
The statue depicts Johns standing beside a lectern while holding a book over her head. The tattered textbook, titled The History of Virginia, represents the “subpar, second-hand materials the school district provided for Moton students,” according to the Architect of the Capitol’s website.
The pedestal features a quote from Johns, saying “Are we going to just accept these conditions, or are we going to do something about it?” It also has a quote from the Book of Isaiah, “And a little child shall lead them.”
The new statue is part of the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection. Each U.S. state is allowed two statues. The second one representing Virginia is of George Washington.
Feature image courtesy Gov. Glenn Youngkin/Facebook
