US Capitol statue of teen civil rights leader Barbara Rose Johns to fill Robert E. Lee's place [View all]

Source: AP

Updated 12:02 AM EST, December 16, 2025


Starting Tuesday, the U.S. Capitol will display a statue of a teenaged Barbara Rose Johns as she protested poor conditions at her segregated Virginia high school, a pointed replacement for a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that was removed several years ago.

The unveiling ceremony of the statue representing Virginia in the Capitol will take place in Emancipation Hall, featuring Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Virginia’s congressional delegation.

Johns was 16 years old in 1951 when she led a student strike for equal education at R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. The students’ cause gained the support of NAACP lawyers, who filed a lawsuit that would become one of the five cases that the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed in Brown v. Board of Education. The high court’s landmark 1954 decision declared “separate but equal” public schools unconstitutional.

Johns later married the Rev. William Powell and became Barbara Rose Johns Powell, raised five children and was a librarian in the Philadelphia Public Schools. She died at 56 in 1991.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/barbara-rose-johns-statue-capitol-7601aed0b9b6a6ab1f307b1ccccd289f

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The below is a scale model of what will replace the traitor Lee's statue in the Capitol Statuary Hall - https://encyclopediavirginia.org/ms-johns-goes-to-washington/


Maquette of Barbara Johns statue by Steven Weitzman. Photo by Julie Langan courtesy of
the Virginia Commission for Historical Statues in the United States Capitol.

45 will probably direct MAGA Mike to remove it as "DEI" after it is unveiled, and then put the traitor back, not caring what VA thinks.