U.S. Capitol unveils statue of teen civil rights icon Barbara Rose Johns, taking Robert E. Lee’s spot

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December 16, 2025

JONATHAN MATTISE, Associated Press

A statue of Virginia civil rights activist Barbara Rose Johns, whose statue will replace one of Robert E. Lee as one of Virginia’s two statues on display at the Capitol, is unveiled Tuesday in Washington, D.C.Mark Schiefelbein / AP

The U.S. Capitol on Tuesday began displaying 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.

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.

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