A statue honoring Barbara Rose Johns, the teenage civil rights activist whose courage helped spark historic change in American education, has been unveiled in the U.S. Capitol, replacing the once-prominent statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
On December 16, officials, lawmakers, family members, and supporters gathered in Emancipation Hall for the unveiling ceremony, where Johns’ bronze likeness now stands as one of Virginia’s two representatives in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection, alongside George Washington.
For more than a century, a statue of Lee, a Confederate general who fought to preserve slavery, had symbolized Virginia’s heritage in the Capitol. That statue was quietly removed in December 2020 amid a broader national reevaluation of Confederate monuments and relocated to the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.
.@SpeakerJohnson and others unveil the statue of Barbara Rose Johns representing the Commonwealth of Virginia in the U.S. Capitol Emancipation Hall. pic.twitter.com/pGfPGMSC0L
— CSPAN (@cspan) December 16, 2025
Barbara Rose Johns was just 16 years old in 1951 when she led a student walkout at R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia, to protest appalling conditions in her segregated Black school.
The protest, backed by the NAACP, helped lay the groundwork for the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision of 1954, which declared “separate but equal” public schools unconstitutional and set a legal precedent for dismantling school segregation.
The new statue captures that moment of defiance: Johns is depicted standing beside a podium, her arm raised high with a worn book above her head, a visual echo of her determination to demand equality and dignity in education.
The pedestal is engraved with her question to the world: “Are we going to just accept these conditions, or are we going to do something about it?” — and includes the biblical phrase, “And a little child shall lead them.”
Virginia House Speaker Mike Johnson called Johns “one of America’s true trailblazers,” praising her embodiment of the American spirit through her fight for liberty and justice. Her family, more than 200 members strong, joined the crowd, making the ceremony one of the most meaningful gatherings in Emancipation Hall in recent memory.
