When most people think of history makers, they picture adults in powerful positions, but change can start with just one student wanting to make the world better. Barbara Rose Johns is one of those students. Late last year, the US Capitol unveiled a statue in her honor, celebrating her courage and the difference one young person can make.
Barbara Rose Johns (later Powell) was born on March 6, 1935 in New York City as the eldest of five children before moving with her family to Virginia. She was the niece of Vernon Johns, an outspoken civil rights activist, who inspired Johns and her siblings to study Black history.
On April 23, 1951, 16-year-old Johns, then a junior at Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia, gathered all 450 of her classmates in the auditorium and convinced them to walk out in protest of their school’s conditions, such as overcrowded classes, crumbling ceilings, and not enough chairs and desks for the students. She wanted to campaign for a new building. The strike lasted roughly two weeks and caught the attention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
On April 25, 1951, Oliver W. Hill and Spottswood Robinson, lawyers for the NAACP, arrived in Prince Edward County to help the students of Moton High School with their strike. Johns and fellow students sought legal counsel from the NAACP as to what they could do to fight back against the unfair conditions they experienced at their school compared to the all-white school. The NAACP agreed to represent the students in a lawsuit as long as they would fight to integrate the school system, rather than just fighting for equal facilities.
The very next month, the NAACP filed Davis v Country School Board of Prince Edward County in federal court, which later became part of the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. Her case was the only one out of the five cases in Brown v. Board to be brought up by a high school student.
On December 16th, 2020, Virginia’s Commission of Historical Statues in the US Capitol voted to recommend that a statue of Barbara Johns represent Virginia in the National Statuary Hall Collection, replacing the statue of Robert E. Lee which was installed there. On December 16, 2025, exactly five years later, the statue of Johns was unveiled in the US Capitol, replacing the statue of the Confederate general which had stood there for over 100 years.
Barbara Rose Johns’ story matters to students today because it shows that age does not limit impact. By organizing her peers and taking a stand, Johns proved that young people can fight injustice and inspire real change. •