A state building which once served as the headquarters of “Massive Resistance” campaign against the racial integration of Virginia’s public schools was renamed on Thursday in honor of Barbara Johns, a student activist who played an important role in the civil rights movement. Johns was only 16 when she led a student protest that would one day become part of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 landmark decision in the Brown v. Board of Education.
Like the most segregated schools at time, Johns attended the all-black high school in Farmville, Virginia, which was overcrowded, underfunded and dilapidated in comparison to the white schools in the Prince Edward County. On April 23rd, 1951, Johns persuaded all the 450 of her classmates to stage a strike and march to the City Hall in protest of the school’s substandard conditions.
Johns enlisted help of the NAACP, which filed a suit on behalf of 117 students against the Prince Edward County, challenging Virginia’s laws requiring the segregated schools.
“This was before Little Rock Nine, this was before Rosa Parks, this was before Martin Luther King. This was a 16-year-old girl who said that we will not tolerate separate but not equal,” said Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who announced in January that the newly renovated Ninth Street Office Building would be renamed in Johns’ honor.
The building was once known as the Hotel Richmond which is located at 202 N. Ninth St. During the 1950s, the General Assembly members stayed at the hotel when they came to the capital for the legislative session. The building also became the unofficial headquarters of the Byrd Organization, the dominant pro-segregation political machine at that time.
James Lindsay Almond, the attorney general at that point, originally defeated Johns’ case by claiming that segregation was a way of life for the Virginians. Now the building, which houses the state attorney general’s office, has been christened the Barbara Johns Building. The current Attorney General Mark Herring said that the renaming will serve as a reminder to him and his staff that the mistakes of the past cannot be repeated.
The case, Davis v. School Board of Prince Edward County, was appealed to the Supreme Court and combined with four similar segregation suits under the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. On May 17th, 1954, the court ruled unanimously that racial segregation in the public education was unconstitutional.
Powerful members of the General Assembly then met in the very building which now bears Johns’ name to plot against the desegregation of the Virginia’s public schools.
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Led by the U.S. Sen. Harry Byrd and his political machine, the state engaged in a campaign of the “Massive Resistance” against desegregation. This led to the shutdown of schools all across the Virginia when lawmakers decided they would rather see them close than integrate. It was not until 1968, when the Supreme Court ruled their plan as unlawful, that large-scale desegregation took place in the Virginia.
On Tuesday, the House of Delegates joined the Senate in passing a resolution declaring April 23rd, the anniversary of the strike, as the Barbara Johns Day in Virginia.
Mrudula Duddempudi.
