Virginia to replace statue of Robert E. Lee with Barbara Johns effigy – By Darryl Coote (UPI) / Dec 16 2020
Dec. 16 (UPI) — A commission in Virginia on Wednesday selected to replace the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee representing that state in the U.S. Capitol with an effigy of a black teenage girl who protested segregation.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced Wednesday that the Commission on Historical Statues in the Untied States Capitol had chosen to replace Lee with Barbara Rose Johns whose decision at 16-years-old to walkout of her Farmville high school in April of 1951 would lead to the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court case that declared segregation unconstitutional.
“As a teenager, Barbara Johns bravely led a protest that defied segregation and challenged the barriers that she and her African American peers faced, ultimately dismantling them,” Northam said in a statement. “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.”
The civil rights icon was selected by the eight-member commission from a list of five finalists, including Oliver W. Hill, a Black attorney who took up Johns’ case; John Mercer Langston, the first Black person to in Virginia to serve as a congressman; Maggie Lena Walker, the first Black woman to establish and become president of a U.S. bank; and Pocahontas, an iconic figure in American history and a mythic character in the narrative of Virginia’s founding.
