by Kandiss Edwards
December 17, 2025
Greater than 200 members of Johns’s prolonged household attended the ceremony to have fun her legacy of braveness and dedication to justice.
On Dec. 16, a brand new statue honoring civil rights pioneer Barbara Rose Johns was unveiled within the U.S. Capitol.
The statue of Johns replaces a long-standing monument to Accomplice Gen. Robert E. Lee. The bronze determine of Johns was revealed in Emancipation Corridor at a ceremony attended by nationwide and state leaders, relations, and civil rights advocates. The Capitol ceremony, posted to YouTube, featured Republican Home Speaker Mike Johnson, Democratic Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger.
“We’re right here to honor one in every of America’s true trailblazers, a lady who embodied the essence of the American spirit in her battle for liberty and justice and equal therapy below the legislation, the indomitable Barbara Rose Johns,” Johnson mentioned throughout the occasion.
Gov. Youngkin celebrated the monument in a publish on X, calling Johns’s contribution to Virginia an integral piece of the state’s historical past.
“Right this moment we gathered within the Emancipation Corridor of the U.S. Capitol to dedicate the Barbara Rose Johns statue, to honor her legacy as a trailblazer, and guarantee her story of braveness and conscience is a narrative for generations to return. You may’t inform the story of Virginia, or the story of how our nation overcame segregation, with out telling the story of Barbara Rose Johns,” he wrote.
Johns was 16 years outdated in 1951 when she led a scholar strike at R.R. Moton Excessive College in Farmville, Virginia, to protest substandard and segregated college circumstances. The scholars’ actions helped draw the eye of NAACP legal professionals. The legal professionals would file one of many 5 instances that the excessive courtroom consolidated into Brown v. Board of Schooling, which dominated that “separate however equal” public colleges had been unconstitutional.
The statue depicts Johns holding a tattered e book above her head and stands as one in every of Virginia’s two contributions to the Nationwide Statuary Corridor Assortment. It was created by sculptor Steven Weitzman and will likely be displayed within the Capitol Crypt.
Greater than 200 members of Johns’s prolonged household attended the ceremony to have fun her legacy of braveness and dedication to justice.
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