Johns, Barbara (1935-1991), was a Black civil rights activist. In 1951, at the age of 16, Johns led a walkout of her segregated high school in protest of poor and unequal school conditions. Segregation is the separation of people by race. Johns’s walkout helped launch the desegregation movement in the United States.
Barbara Rose Johns was born on March 6, 1935, in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. During World War II (1939-1945), Johns moved to Prince Edward County, Virginia, to live with her grandmother. Johns attended the segregated Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. The school’s facilities were not large enough to accommodate its students. Although the school was constructed to hold about 200 students, more than 400 students attended. Classes were held in school buses and in the auditorium. When parents asked the school board for additional space, several tar-paper shacks were built.
In the 11th grade, after years of frustration, Johns began mobilizing students to protest the poor and unequal school conditions. On April 23, 1951, the students—led by Johns—left the school and did not return for two weeks. The protest attracted the attention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Lawyers from the organization agreed to help the students, as long as they agreed to sue for an integrated (combined) school, rather than simply improved conditions at the all-Black school. The students agreed, and the suit became known as Dorothy E. Davis et al v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia. It became one of several cases consolidated into the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. In that case, in 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States declared racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional.
After organizing the walkout, Johns began receiving death threats. She moved to Montgomery, Alabama, to live with relatives and finish school. Johns married William Powell in 1954. She became known as Barbara Johns Powell. The couple raised five children. Johns attended Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, before earning a master’s degree in library science from Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1979. She became a librarian in the Philadelphia public school system. Johns died on Sept. 25, 1991.
In 2020, it was announced that a statue of Barbara Johns would be placed in Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol, representing the state of Virginia. It was to replace a statue of the Confederate General Robert E. Lee, which was removed for its association with racism and the legacy of slavery.
