Civil rights leader Barbara Rose Johns statue set to be approved for U.S. Capitol
VENN
RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) -- The Commission for Historical Statues is set to approve a bronze statue of 20th-century civil rights leader Barbara Rose Johns in mid-June, after which it will be installed in the U.S. Capitol.
The Commission for Historical Statues in the United States Capitol will hold a public meeting at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 18, in the Reynolds Leadership Center on the second floor of the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, located on 428 N. Arthur Ashe Boulevard in Richmond.
During the meeting, the commission will reportedly review photos of the completed bronze statue depicting civil rights leader Barbara Rose Johns, which was created by Maryland sculptor Steven Weitzman. In addition, the commission will receive an update regarding the statue's production.
Johns was born in 1935 and became known for her civil rights activism when she was a 16-year-old student at segregated Robert Russa Moton High School in Prince Edward County, according to the Department of Historic Resources.
In 1951, the department said Johns led a student walkout to protest the “overcrowded and dilapidated facilities at the school,” which were inferior to those at the county’s high school for white students.
Following this, the Virginia NAACP led a lawsuit on the students’ behalf seeking to end segregation.
The resulting case, known as Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward, was the only student-initiated case to be consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public school segregation was unconstitutional in 1954.
After the statue receives the final approval from the commission, as well as the Joint Committee on the Library and the Architect of the Capitol, it will be installed in the U.S. Capitol as one of Virginia’s two contributions to the Statuary Hall Collection.
According to the department, production of the full-size statue began after the commission and the committee approved the maquette in 2023. The statue of Johns will replace the statue of Robert E. Lee that was removed in January of 2020.
Johns was selected to replace the statue of Lee after the commission reviewed a list of names of historical figures submitted by Virginians. The committee approved the commission’s request to erect a statue of Johns in the U.S. Capitol in 2021.
For more information on the meeting, which folks can attend in-person or virtually, visit the commission's website.
