Commission: Barbara Johns to replace Lee statue in U.S. Capitol

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.

The General Assembly would need to approve the pick to put a statue of her in the place of honor next to Washington, Virginia’s other representative.

The eight-member commission, appointed by the legislature and Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, consists of lawmakers, historians and residents who took input from Virginians in hearings over the past few months.

A long menu of suggested names was whittled down to five finalists that the commission considered Wednesday:

■ Johns, whose high school walkout contributed to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education

■ Oliver Hill Sr., a noted civil rights attorney who argued Johns’s case, which was rolled into Brown v. Board

Maggie Lena Walker, a Richmond business leader who in 1903 became the first Black woman to charter a bank in the United States

■ John Mercer Langston, who in 1890 became the first African American to represent Virginia in Congress

■ Pocahontas, legendary daughter of the powerful Powhatan Indian chief who encountered the English settlers at Jamestown and is reputed to have saved the life of colonist Capt. John Smith

Johns, who died in 1991 at age 56, was born in New York City and moved to Prince Edward County, outside Farmville, during World War II.

After suffering through years of poor conditions in Black-only schools, watching White students ride by in comfortable buses to well-maintained buildings with heat and new books, Johns led a walkout at Robert Russa Moton High School.

The action got the attention of Hill, an NAACP lawyer, and his partner, Spotswood Robinson, who filed a federal suit against the school system. Eventually rolled into the landmark Supreme Court case, the suit helped tear down segregation nationwide.

It led to a years-long program of

“massive resistance” in Virginia that saw some school systems close rather than integrate.

White children went to private schools, while a generation of Black children missed years of education.

Johns has become increasingly recognized in recent years. A statue of her and other civil rights figures stands on Richmond’s Capitol Square, and the building that houses the state’s attorney general was renamed in her honor.

The commission was created this year by the General Assembly with a twofold mission: to decide whether Lee should be replaced, and if so, to recommend a replacement.

In July, the panel voted unanimously that Lee should come down, and Northam notified the U.S. Capitol.

The action came as Richmond has confronted its Confederate legacy in response to a summer of protests over racial inequity, triggered by the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police.

Northam ordered the removal of a massive, state-owned statue of Lee on Richmond’s Monument Avenue in June, and a brother of Johns’s spoke at the announcement.

And while that action is now tied up in a court battle, the city’s other Confederate monuments are mostly gone. Some were toppled by protesters, and most of the rest were removed on the orders of Mayor Levar Stoney, a Democrat.

House Speaker Eileen FillerCorn, D-Fairfax, also ordered the removal in July of a life-size statue of Lee and busts of other Confederate figures from the state Capitol’s historic Old House Chamber.

The General Assembly will vote on the commission’s recommendation during the 2021 session that convenes Jan. 13.