Every child in America should know the name of
Barbara Rose Johns,
because her actions helped to ensure that every American child gets the
education she/he deserves. In 1951, Barbara was a 16-year-old student
at Robert Russa Moton High School in Prince Edward County, Virginia, an
all-black school with deplorable conditions—the school itself was badly
in need of repair, the equipment was shabby, there was no gymnasium or
science lab, and more than 400 students were crammed into a building
meant for 150. Trying to learn in that environment became so frustrating
for Barbara that she spoke to a teacher. When the teacher dismissively
told her to “do something about it,” Barbara was discouraged at first,
and then began to formulate a plan that would eventually lead hers to
become one of the five cases in
Brown v. Board of Education.
On
April 23, 1951, Barbara led a student strike against the substandard
conditions at her school—she rallied her fellow students with an
impassioned speech and her belief that they could draw attention to
their plight and create change, and they followed her out of the
school. By May 3, Barbara was standing at the podium of the First
Baptist Church in Farmville, speaking to a crowd of over 1,000 that
included students, parents, and two lawyers for the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People. The lawyers, Oliver W. Hill and
Spotswood Robinson III, filed a lawsuit against Prince Edward County
stating that segregation was unconstitutional. This case was known as Davis v. Prince Edward because ninth-grader Dorothy E. Davis was the first named plaintiff in the list of 117 students. Davis eventually became one of the cases in Brown v. Board of Education,
the 1954 case in which the Supreme Court declared that segregation is
unconstitutional, and all children have a right to a decent education in
a decent school.
But Barbara’s story doesn’t
end there. Heroines are heroines not just because they do the
extraordinary, but because they bear the cost of doing the
extraordinary.
Despite the Supreme Court ruling,
Prince Edward County and the State of Virginia fought integration.
Virginia passed a series of laws allowing schools not to integrate—these
laws were struck down in 1959. Still, Prince Edward didn’t comply.
Rather than integrate, the county closed its schools and opened an
all-white private school. This situation continued for five years,
until 1964. In such an environment of stubborn, vicious racism, you can
imagine what Barbara’s life must have been like. She was harassed, and
a cross was burned on her lawn. Eventually, she moved to Alabama to
live with relatives.
In her essay “Looking to
the Side and Back,” Alice Walker discusses the life of a girl like
Barbara who paid the price of courage:
“I knew a
young girl who ‘desegregated’ the local white high school in her small
town. No one, except her teachers, spoke to her for four years…This
girl suffered acute anxiety, so that when she dragged herself home from
school every day, she went to bed, and stayed there until the next
morning, when she walked off, ramrod straight, to school. Even her
parents talked only about the bravery, never about the cost.”
I
don’t know if Ms. Walker is referring to Barbara Johns, but she could
be. Or she could be discussing another unsung heroine of the Civil
Rights movement, another brave girl who changed history but is rarely
discussed in history classes.
As we remember and
celebrate Barbara, it is important to recognize that her courage
included sacrifice. I live in Farmville, in Prince Edward county, where
the Robert Russa Moton High School is now the
Robert Russa Moton Museum,
recently named a top six Virginia destination for its important place
in our nation’s history. That history is still here, alive and with
us. Things are better, but we still have work to do—you can feel it in
the air, our need to heal. I believe we are healing, and will continue
to do so. And I believe Barbara’s courage and sacrifice can continue to
show us the way.
