I just realized that it's April 23.
That means it's the anniversary of the Farmville, Virginia Motion High School student strike.
What? You don't know about that?
Well, in 1951, Barbara Johns was fed up with the deplorable conditions in her segregated school, so she organized a strike. She was inspired by labor strikes.
After she and her classmates turned the rural town of Farmville upside down, she called in the NAACP.
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The NAACP took their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Their case, called Brown v. Board of Education, was combined with cases from other states and became the landmark case that desegregated schools in the U.S.
https://history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka
She led her walkout more than 4 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, and before MLK, Jr. embraced nonviolence as the way to equality.
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OK so, why wasn’t she given credit for her role as an early leader in the Modern Civil Rights movement and one of the first to use nonviolence as a means of achieving racial equality in the US?
👇argues that Barbara wasn’t given credit because she was a child.
I'll add that she wasn't recognized because she was a girl, poor, and black—what scholars call the “triple invisibility.”
After her strike, her life was threatened and her family home was burned down.
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For years her family was afraid to talk about what she'd done.
I’m proud to be the author of the only book about Barbara Johns. (I think it's still the only one)
I had the honor of meeting her family members during a few research trips in Virginia and learning her story first hand.
She became a school librarian because of her passion for bringing quality education to children.
If anyone asked her about what she'd done, she talked about it.
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But for most of her life, nobody asked.
She died in 1991.
Things have changed. Today is designated Barbara Johns Day.
A Barbara Johns statute in Virgina, and check this out:
https://dhr.virginia.gov/blog-posts/barbara-rose-johns-maquette-approved-for-us-capitol/
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Thank you for this.
All completely new to me. I mean, not Brown v BOE, but the origin story.
Your contributions make #Mastodon so valuable.
Excellent thread! Thank you for sharing this. She was an inspiration. Still is.
I'm not trying to be negative here but I wonder if the racist administration will allow the statue to move forward
Thank you!
Barbara Johns was a librarian. I believe she would love to know that you're supposing your local library.
If you are in Virginia, I'd think my book is in your library. If not, get them to order it! There are schools in VA that assign it.
Thank you for posting! I had never heard about this.
For anyone researching Barbara Rose Johns or her #FamilyTree, I have added the information about your book to her profile on #FamilySearch , along with the cover image, the ISBN number, and the #GoodReads link. I also added the link to the article about her statue as a Source in her profile
Her FamilySearch ID number is GZQT-MRS .
Learn something new every day!!
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