Civil rights crusader set to oust Robert E. Lee
Virginia wants statue at US Capitol replaced
Barbara Johns, who at 16 led student protests against segregated schools in Virginia, is likely to have her statue erected in the U.S. Capitol, replacing Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, a fellow Virginian, in National Statuary Hall.
Amid a national reckoning over the country’s history and self-conception, Confederate monuments have been removed for their fraught racial legacy.
“As a teenager (in 1951), Barbara Johns bravely led a protest that defied segregation and challenged the barriers that she and her African American peers faced, ultimately dismantling them,” Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said in a statement after the Commission on Historical Statues in the United States Capitol voted Wednesday to recommend her statue.
“I am proud that her statue will represent Virginia in the U.S. Capitol, where her idealism, courage, and conviction will continue to inspire Virginians, and Americans, to confront inequities and fight for meaningful
change now and for generations to come,” Northam continued.
As a teenager, Johns coordinated a student strike at her Farmville, Virginia, high school. Johns led calls denouncing the overcrowded and under-resourced conditions in the town’s segregated Black schools. “It was time that Negroes were treated equally with whites, time that they had a decent school, time for the students themselves to do something about it,” Johns said in her diary, according to records kept by Longwood University in Farmville. “There wasn’t any fear. I just thought – this is your moment. Seize it!”
In April 1951, Johns led more than 400 students out of Robert Russa Moton High School in protest after a school bus accident killed five Black students, including a close friend of Johns.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed a lawsuit on behalf of Johns and other Farmville students. Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County was incorporated into the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case that ended school segregation. Three-quarters of the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education were from Farmville.
Johns died in 1991 at the age of 56. “Virginia deserves to be represented in the U.S. Capitol by a figure who embodies the values of our Commonwealth, and we believe there is no better choice than Barbara Johns,” Reps. Donald McEachin, D-Va., and Jennifer Wexton, D-Va., said in a joint statement.
Johns’ statue would be the only Black person, and one of the only women, to officially represent a U.S. state in the Capitol building.
Mary McLeod Bethune, an African American civil rights activist, is slated to replace Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith as one of Florida’s statues but has not been placed.
Busts and statues of other African Americans, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, were added to the Capitol by the federal government, most in the past decade.
After the replacements, 10 Confederate leaders would still officially represent U.S. states in the Capitol Hill Statuary Hall Collection.
Each state sends two statues to represent it in the Capitol. Virginia is represented by Gen. Lee and President George Washington. Both statues were placed in 1909. Lee’s statue will be removed in the coming weeks.
In July, Northam signed legislation that called for the removal of Lee’s statue from the Capitol. A commission to replace the statue included members of the General Assembly, academic historians and citizens of Virginia.
“Her likeness would make a powerful statement to the millions who visit the Capitol each year – American visitors, international tourists, and especially school children,” Alice Lynch, former executive director of the Virginia Capitol Foundation, wrote in a letter recommending Johns to the commission.
Other Virginians considered included civil rights attorney Oliver Hill; African American financier Maggie Lena Walker; Pocahontas; and Rep. John Mercer Langston, the first Black man to represent the state in Congress.
The Virginia General Assembly must approve the replacement before a sculptor can be commissioned for Johns’ statue.
The short-lived Confederate States of America, a secessionist movement that sought to preserve chattel slavery in the South, left a brutal legacy still felt today. In the decades after the Confederacy’s defeat, white Southerners reimposed a racial hierarchy that politically and economically disenfranchised Black Americans through state repression and acts of terrorism.
A USA TODAY Network census found hundreds of Confederate memorials, statues and namesakes dot the country, especially in the South.
Some of those commemorations, challenged for decades, are being removed after the death of George Floyd, a
Black man in police custody, renewed calls for racial justice this year.
Statues of Confederate figures have been removed in Birmingham, Mobile and Montgomery, Alabama; Alexandria, Portsmouth and Richmond, Virginia; Louisville and Frankfort, Kentucky; and Jacksonville, Florida.
In June 2020, Mississippi’s Legislature decided to remove the Confederate emblem from its state flag. Last month, a ballot measure on a new flag design passed overwhelmingly. In 2015, after a white supremacist shot and killed nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, removed the Confederate battle emblem from its state flag.
In June, the House of Representatives voted to remove dozens of Confederate statues from the Capitol building. The bill has not passed the Senate.
Critics argued the removal of statues erases history. Proponents said the removal reframes history by changing who is honored.
“It’s time for us to start singing the songs of some of these great people who’ve done some wonderful things,” Virginia Del. Jeion Ward, D-Hampton, said. “When I think of Barbara Johns I think how brave she was.”
“A lot of the notable things that have been done by Black people have not been heralded in the history books because people didn’t care to know about what Black people were doing,” state Sen. Louise Lucas said.
“We’ve got a bunch of old white guys in Statuary Hall,” Lucas said. “I think it’s time we put a young person in Statuary Hall.”
“It’s time for us to start singing the songs of some of these great people who’ve done some wonderful things.” Virginia Del. Jeion Ward