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Quick Facts
- NAME: Barbara Johns
- OCCUPATION: Civil Rights Activist
- BIRTH DATE: 1935
- DEATH DATE: 1991
- PLACE OF BIRTH: New York, New York
Best Known For
In 1951, Barbara Johns led her fellow students in a walkout to protest school segregation. She then started a lawsuit that became part of Brown v. Board of Ed.
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Play NowBarbara Johns. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 05:11, May 24, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/barbara-johns-206527.
Barbara Johns. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/barbara-johns-206527 [Accessed 24 May 2013].
"Barbara Johns." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 24 2013, 05:11 http://www.biography.com/people/barbara-johns-206527.
"Barbara Johns," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/barbara-johns-206527 [accessed May 24, 2013].
"Barbara Johns," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/barbara-johns-206527 (accessed May 24, 2013).
Barbara Johns [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 24] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/barbara-johns-206527.
Barbara Johns, http://www.biography.com/people/barbara-johns-206527 (last visited May 24, 2013).
Barbara Johns. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/barbara-johns-206527. Accessed May 24, 2013.
Synopsis
Barbara Johns was born in New York City in 1935, but grew up in Prince Edward County, Virginia, where blacks and whites had separate schools. In 1951, she led her fellow African American high school students in a walkout to protest the inequality of segregated schools. She then started a lawsuit that became part of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case that eventually ended school segregation.
Profile
Social activist. Born in New York City in 1935. Johns grew up in Prince Edward County, Virginia. At the time, the schools were segregated. White students went to one set of schools while African Americans went to another. The conditions of the African American schools were much worse than the whites-only schools. Johns attended the Robert Russa Moton High School, which suffered from overcrowding and poor facilities. The building was meant for only approximately 150 students, but by the 1950s there were more than 400 students enrolled. The county??s all-white school board tried to fix this problem by erecting three tar-paper buildings on school grounds, which have been described by some as ??chicken shacks.??
In 1951, Johns took a stand against the unequal treatment of African American and white students in the county. The niece of the outspoken minister, Vernon Johns, she bravely stood in front of her fellow students at an assembly and delivered an impassioned speech. She urged them to join her in a strike against the school system to force them to make changes. Following her lead the students left the school in protest of overcrowding. This walkout was one of the first of its kind.
Johns then contacted two lawyers, Oliver W. Hill and Spottswood Robinson III, who were with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. They agreed to help with a lawsuit aimed at ending racial segregation. The case was called Davis v. Prince Edward. It later became part of Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 case in which the United States Supreme Court declared that segregation was unconstitutional. For her part in the integration movement, Johns was harassed and reportedly went to live with relatives in Alabama after a cross was burned in her family??s yard.
Despite the Supreme Court ruling, Prince Edward County and the state of Virginia resisted integration. The state passed a series of laws that superseded the court??s decision, allowing schools not to be forced to integrate. But in 1959, these rules were struck down in state and federal courts. Still Prince Edward County pressed on with its anti-integration efforts, closing its schools rather than having black and white students use the same facilities. The schools remained closed for five years, reopening in 1964.
Once at the center of the public debate on segregation, Johns spent the rest of her life relatively quietly. Committed to education, she became a school librarian and married Rev. William Powell. She died in 1991.
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View groupAfrican-Americans have a long history of activism in America, from fighting for the right to vote to pushing for integrated public spaces. Activists like Stokely Carmichael organized freedom rides, James Meredith fought to integrate blacks and whites at the University of Mississippi, and Rosa Parks instigated the Montgomery Bus Boycott. These protests were often legal and nonviolent, and made a powerful impact on civil rights in the United States. With the help of activists like these—and many others—the country slowly worked to acknowledge the basic rights and contributions of African-Americans. Activists outisde of the U.S. include Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, who have fought against apartheid in South Africa. Learn more about the many black activists who fought against the odds in order to achieve equality.
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