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“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. There wasn’t any fear.
I just thought — this is your moment. Seize it!”
—Barbara Rose Johns
Barbara Rose Johns
(1935 - 1991)
Barbara Rose Johns was born on March 6, 1935, in New York City, to Robert and Violet Johns. Shortly after her birth, the family returned to Prince Edward County, Virginia, where she was raised on a tobacco farm by her uncle, the Reverend Vernon Johns— a prominent and outspoken minister who strongly influenced her political and moral development. Barbara attended the segregated Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia, which was overcrowded and severely underfunded compared to white schools in the area.
On April 23, 1951, at the age of 16, Barbara Johns led a strike at Moton High School to protest the inadequate and unequal conditions Black students endured. With careful planning, she organized a student walkout, demanding better facilities and educational equality. What began as a call for improved resources quickly evolved into a legal fight for integrated schools. The students contacted the NAACP, which agreed to take up their case on the condition that the goal shifted from “equal” to integrated schools. This led to Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, one of the five cases combined into the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated public education unconstitutional.
Due to threats and backlash after the strike, Barbara’s family sent her to live with relatives in Montgomery, Alabama, where she finished high school. She later earned a degree from Spelman College in Atlanta and a graduate degree in library science. As an adult, she worked as a librarian in the Philadelphia public school system. She married William Powell, raised five children, and led a quiet, impactful life away from the spotlight.
Barbara Johns passed away from cancer on September 25, 1991, at the age of 56. Though she rarely sought public attention for her early activism, her courageous stand became a catalyst for the national civil rights movement. In the years since her death, her legacy has been increasingly honored: Barbara Johns Day was established in Virginia in 2001, and in 2020, she was chosen to represent the Commonwealth in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol, replacing a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
