Joi Bass reported this story
On April 23, 1951, 16-year-old Barbara Johns organized a student walk out at Robert Russa Moton High School. The walk out would form part of the foundation of Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark Supreme Court decision that paved the way for school desegregation.
Joan Johns Cobbs, her sister, says she was as surprised as everyone else the day of the walk out.
“When she came to school and came to the auditorium, got on the stage and asked us to go out on a strike for a better school, just like everybody else in there, I was completely in the dark,” Johns Cobbs said.
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Virginia commission chooses civil rights leader Barbara Johns to replace Robert E. Lee statue in U.S. Capitol
Gregory S. Schneider, The Washington Post
Dec. 16, 2020
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RICHMOND, Va. - The statue of a Black teenage girl who dared to challenge segregation in Virginia schools could soon stand beside George Washington in the U.S. Capitol.
Barbara Rose Johns, who as a 16-year-old in 1951 led a protest of poor learning conditions for Black students in Farmville and helped dismantle school segregation nationwide, has been chosen by an advisory commission to replace Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee as one of two figures representing Virginia in the Capitol s Statuary Hall.