Barbara Rose Johns (1935-1991)

Prince Edward County · dedicated 2020 · 900 Griffin Blvd., in Farmville

Barbara Johns, civil rights pioneer, was born in New York and moved to her parents' native Prince Edward County as a child. In April 1951, at age 16, she led a student walkout to protest conditions at the segregated Robert Russa Moton High School, where facilities were vastly inferior to those at the county’s white high school. The students, demanding a new school, sought aid from the Virginia NAACP, which instead offered to represent them in a lawsuit seeking an end to segregation. Davis v. Prince Edward was the only student-initiated case consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education (1954), in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public school segregation was unconstitutional.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

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More markers nearby

Oliver White Hill Sr. (1907-2007)under 1 mi
Robert Russa Moton High Schoolunder 1 mi
Martha E. Forrester (1863-1951)under 1 mi
Longwood Collegeunder 1 mi

On the National Register nearby

Moton, Robert Russa, High School160 ft

Places within about 300 feet of this marker that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A nearby listing is not always the marker's own subject.