A Woman to Know: Barbara Rose Johns
It seemed like reaching for the moon. — Barbara
(Photo via Richmond Times-Dispatch)
In 1951, 16-year-old Barbara walked out of her tar paper shack classroom. And she took the entire school with her — the walkout became a news-making student strike for equal (not "separate but equal") education.
Barbara's protest energized the fledgling civil rights movement, and her school's subsequent lawsuit, Davis v. Edwards County, led to the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education.
Add to your library list:
The Girl from the Tar Paper School (Teri Kanefield)
Pieces from the Past: Voices of Heroic Women in Civil Rights (Joanne Prichard Morris)
Students on Strike: Jim Crow, Civil Rights, Brown and Me (John Stokes)
Parting the Waters: American in the King Years (Taylor Branch)
Voices from Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement (Henry Hampton)
Read more:
The Girl Who Made Brown v. Board of Education Possible (Salon)
Black students on strike! (Smithsonian National Museum of American History)
The black women pioneers of education (For Harriet)
Remembering Barbara Johns and the Students of Moton High School (University of North Carolina)
Barbara Rose Johns Powell (Moton Museum)
Before Rosa Sat Down, Barbara Walked Out (Political Gates)
Listen more:
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