Barbara Johns, who led a courageous and history-changing walkout of students at her racially segregated high school in Farmville nearly 75 years ago, contributed far more to the commonwealth of Virginia and the nation than Robert E. Lee ever did. It is fitting that her likeness has taken the place of a statue in the U.S. Capitol that long honored the Confederate general in an insidious effort to whitewash his legacy and his cause.
More than 200 members of the Johns family recently joined lawmakers and others at the Capitol for the official unveiling of the statue depicting Johns at age 16, when she and 450 fellow Black students walked out of Robert Russa Moton High School in protest of substandard conditions at the segregated school.
The students would later file a federal lawsuit challenging the separate but supposedly equal structure of school segregation in Virginia and throughout the South. Their suit later became part of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Virginia, shamefully, was among the many recalcitrant states to fight the ruling ending desegregation, mounting a “Massive Resistance” campaign organized by the powerful Byrd political machine in Richmond and articulated by that city’s influential daily newspapers.
As part of this resistance, then-Gov. Lindsay Almond closed some schools in Norfolk as well as Charlottesville and Warren County. Public schools in Farmville’s Prince George County were closed from 1959 to 1964. Statewide, the order gave birth to private schools for white students, including some that are still open today and at least partially integrated.
Among the attendees at the statue’s unveiling was U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Newport News, who in 1992 became the first Black person elected to Congress from Virginia since Reconstruction. He asked those in the crowd who’d been denied an education during that period to stand for recognition.
Ralph Smith, who serves on the Manassas City Council, stood. “The devastating thing, that still hurts me to this day, is there were kids 5 and 6 years old (who) were 11 or 12 when they got their first education,” he said.
The statue is part of an ongoing and long-overdue effort, initiated in this century, to recognize Johns for her contributions and life. Moton High School, for instance, is now a civil rights museum preserving the story of Johns and her fellow students.
Traditionally, each state has had two statues honoring famous forebears. Lee and George Washington represented Virginia, but Lee’s statue — in place for more than a century — was removed following nationwide protests for racial justice following the 2020 murder of George Floyd. The removal angered many people who still revere Lee, but they’re committed to a largely fabulist version of his life.
Lee’s decision to fight for the Confederacy has long been portrayed by many Southerners as a profound act of conscience — a choice to protect his beloved Virginia — but it was at its core treason, motivated by a desire to preserve his ability and the ability of other wealthy white men like him to own other human beings. There is nothing heroic in his choice, which contributed to the deaths and maiming of hundreds of thousands of Americans, and cruelly prolonged the suffering of the enslaved.
Johns, who is depicted with an uplifted book in her hand, is a far more appropriate personification of the Virginia ideal and our nation’s long and imperfect struggle to live up to its central belief that all people are created equal.
Encouragingly, Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike attended the ceremony honoring Johns. But tributes grow hollow if they return to work without a real commitment to walk the walk precisely as Johns and many still-unrecognized, resilient Black Americans did for many, many years.
Johns would later say of the protest, “There wasn’t any fear. I just thought — this is your moment. Seize it!” Although we’re far closer to true equality than in 1951, the directive for our leaders — and us — remains the same: Seize it.
