WASHINGTON, D.C. – A state panel on Wednesday recommended that a statue of teenage civil rights heroine Barbara Rose Johns replace Virginia’s Robert E. Lee statue at the U.S. Capitol.
The Commission For Historical Statues In The United States Capitol voted 6-1 in favor of Johns, who was a 16-year-old student at Farmville’s Moton High School in 1951 when she led a student walkout to protest the students’ substandard segregated school facilities.
The Prince Edward County case was rolled into Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled government-segregated public schools unconstitutional.
“It’s time for us to start singing the songs of some of these great people who’ve done some wonderful things,” said Del. Jeion Ward, D-Hampton, who made the motion for Johns. “When I think of Barbara Johns I think how brave she was.”
Ward and Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, said it is important that young people and people of color see themselves at the U.S. Capitol.
Each state contributes two statues to the Statuary Hall collection. Virginia’s other statue depicts George Washington. While some African American luminaries such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass and Rosa Parks are depicted in the U.S. Capitol, as yet there are no African Americans in the Statuary Hall collection.