Barbara Rose Johns
By
John C Abercrombie
Barbara was the spark for a case that was consolidated into the Brown v Board of Education case. It was the only student case among the 5.
We often don’t realize the courage it takes to lead during the hard fought time of struggle for civil rights for all. 400 Black students were housed in a school designed for 150. Although Black parents asked for better facilities, they only were given tokens in the form of Tar Paper Shacks.
Students were housed in building so poorly constructed and maintained that they had to open umbrellas when it rained to keep their papers and books dry. Some teachers forced by the conditions of the physical plant held classes in the buses. Teachers had to arrive early to build fires in the potbellied stoves to provide heat. Many students were forced to walk long distances.
The White students enjoyed many amenities such as heat, running water, well maintained and constructed schools.
Taking a stand was an extremely courageous act as people who participated were often subjected to violence, cross burning with the intent to intimidate an entire population. Parents, relatives, friends and neighbors were subject to being fired from their job. In many cases, houses and churches were bombed. People have suffered Lynchings for standing up for their rights.
In the case of Barbara Rose Johns, she describes how she developed the desire to do something about the condition. Gathering support for her plan and putting it in motion. So resistant to the idea of equal education and avoiding integration, the entire Prince Edward County School system closed for 5 years. Denying an education to all, except the affluent White families who could afford private school.
As discussed in the videos, this is not a story of Black History, it is a story of American History. It is a story that shows the courage of people to stand up for changes as we seek to make this a “More Perfect Union”.
Imagine a story such as this being hidden when it should be extolled. Showing that Americans have the courage to tackle the difficulties that hinder us all. When we deny a group or segment of society the opportunity to achieve excellence, we all suffer.
Rather than hiding this story, it should be highlighted and spoken about publicly, often and loudly!
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Barbara Johns Civil Rights Leader
Documentary from PBS on Barbara Johns of Farmville, Virginia and her role in the Supreme Court case “Brown v. Board of Education”
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Politics and Social Sciences
Many people are intimidated and put off about politics, but this is here the decisions that affect lives are generated. It is better to be involved in the development instead of running up after the facts. The search begins with our Amazon affiliate link below
ABH – Politics and Social sciences
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The Girl from the Tar Paper School:
Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement Before the Little Rock Nine, before Rosa Parks, before Martin Luther King Jr. and his March on Washington, there was Barbara Rose Johns, a teenager who used nonviolent civil disobedience to draw attention to her cause. In 1951, witnessing the unfair conditions in her racially segregated high school, Barbara Johns led a walkout–the first public protest of its kind demanding racial equality in the U.S.–jumpstarting the American civil rights movement. Ridiculed by the white superintendent and school board, local newspapers, and others, and even after a cross was burned on the school grounds, Barbara and her classmates held firm and did not give up. Her school’s case went all the way to the Supreme Court and helped end segregation as part of Brown v. Board of Education.
ABH – The Girl from the Tar Paper School
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Law
Law is a complex subject but studying what you want when you want gives you the opportunity to absorb the meat of the subject that you can apply. Laws affect us and laws can be changed once they are understood and the place to start is with our link below
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Joy Cabarrus Speakes – Farmville, VA.
Joy talks about her childhood and being a part of the 1951 student strike led by Barbara Rose Johns at R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, VA.
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Arts – Crafts and Sewing
The productive mind is a creative mind, and the creative process is often freed by arts, craft and even sewing. People can even make a living by becoming good at it. The search starts with the link below
ABH – Arts – Crafts and Sewing
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Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County:
A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle Combining hard-hitting investigative journalism and a sweeping family narrative, this provocative true story reveals a little-known chapter of American history: the period after the Brown v. Board of Education decision when one Virginia school system refused to integrate.
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Israel on the Appomattox:
A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom through the 1790s Through the Civil War WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZEA New York Times Book Review and Atlantic Monthly Editors’ Choice Thomas Jefferson denied that whites and freed blacks could live together in harmony. His cousin, Richard Randolph, not only disagreed, but made it possible for ninety African Americans to prove Jefferson wrong. Israel on the Appomattox tells the story of these liberated blacks and the community they formed, called Israel Hill, in Prince Edward County, Virginia. There, ex-slaves established farms, navigated the Appomattox River, and became entrepreneurs. Free blacks and whites did business with one another, sued each other, worked side by side for equal wages, joined forces to found a Baptist congregation, moved west together, and occasionally settled down as man and wife. Slavery cast its grim shadow, even over the lives of the free, yet on Israel Hill we discover a moving story of hardship and hope that defies our expectations of the Old South.
ABH – Israel on the Appomattox
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Grocery and Gourmet Food
Good food, both in taste and nutrition are essential and the place to get it here and have it delivered to your front door is with our Amazon affiliate link below
ABH – Grocery and Gourmet Food
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Dedication of the Barbara Johns Building in Richmond, Virginia WCVE
PBS, a Community Idea Station, presented a live video broadcast of the dedication of the Barbara Johns Building in Richmond, Virginia on February 23, 2017.
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The Vernon Johns Story
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Robert Russa Moton Museum
One of the most remarkable — and least known — stories in the Civil Rights movement occurred in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Rather than integrate the public schools as mandated by Brown v. Board of Education, the county defunded its school system. All public schools — black and white — were closed. Local funding did not resume for five years. The Robert Russa Moton Museum — a grantee of the National Endowment for the Humanities — tells the story of Prince Edward County and the people who lived there..
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The Upward Path A Reader For Colored Children ( Illustrated ):
stories and poems by Negro writers, which colored children could read with interest and pleasure INCLUDES THE WORKS OF: Paul Laurence Dunbar William H. Holtzclaw Booker T. Washington William H. Holtzclaw Augusta Bird H. Cordelia Ray W. E. B. DuBois Paul Laurence Dunbar Angelina W. Grimke Charles W. Chesnutt James E. Shepard James Weldon Johnson William J. Edwards H. Cordelia Ray James Weldon Johnson W. E. B. DuBois Lottie Burrell Dixon H. Cordelia Ray Lieut. Henry Ossian Flipper, U.S.A. Phyllis Wheatley William H. Holtzclaw Alston W. Burleigh Walter F. White A. O. Stafford Joseph S. Cotter C. Emily Frazier William Pickens Jessie Fauset Frederick Douglass W. H. Crogman William Henry Sheppard Lillian B. Witten Joseph F. Cotter, Jr. Azalia Hackley Lillian B. Witten Matthew A. Henson William Wells Brown Charles W. Anderson John W. Cromwell Fenton Johnson William Stanley Braithwaite Emmett J. Scott William Stanley Braithwaite Leila A. Pendleton Emmett J. Scott Roscoe C. Jamison George W. Ellis H. Cordelia Ray Silas X. Floyd Joseph F. Cotter, Jr. L. J. Coppin W. H. Crogman Ralph W. Tyler James Weldon Johnson Emmett J. Scott Daniel A. Rudd and Theodore Bond Edward Smyth Jones Silas X. Floyd Ruth Anna Fisher Benjamin Brawley William J. Simmons James Weldon Johnson William Henry Sheppard William C. Jason Kelly Miller HISTORY IS NOT POLITICALLY CORRECT Words, phrases, and even ideas that were commonplace and accepted a hundred years ago are considered inappropriate today – but if we alter the language of the past, we alter the truth. THE UPWARD PATH contains some of those no-longer-proper words and ideas, but this is what was considered the right kind of reading for African-American children and students in 1920; to pretend it was different would rob us of the chance to understand the past a little bit better. Between these covers are some of the best writing by, for, and about African-American authors in the 19th and early 20th Centuries.
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Kitchen and Dining
An outstanding source starts here
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U.S. Rep. Tom Garrett Speaks Out In Favor of Awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to Barbara Johns
U.S. Rep. Tom Garrett (R-VA) discusses the Barbara Johns Congressional Gold Medal Act to honor Civil Right Movement pioneer Barbara Rose Johns. On April 23, 1951, at 16 years old, she led a student strike for equal education facilities at Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. Following the student strike, Johns gained legal support from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who filed Davis v. Prince Edward County, which made her case the largest and only student-initiated one that was consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 United States Supreme Court decision declaring segregation and the “separate but equal” principle unconstitutional.
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We see in this post on Barbara Rose Johns that leadership is based on more than age. it is the product of dedication to duty. It is a person seeing a wrong that needs to be righted and not accepting excuses. Yes, it takes courage, but it comes with the prospect of providing what you can do and it comes from deep inside.