Voting Station

Barbara Johns

Please vote to return to collections.

Advocate

The Resume

    (March 6, 1935-September 25, 1991)
    Born in New York City, New York
    Led a student strike at segregated R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia (April 23, 1951)
    With legal support from the NAACP, filed Davis et al v. Prince Edward County
    Case consolidated with four others heard by the Supreme Court as Brown v. Board of Education (1954), resulting in the decision that 'separate but equal' schools were unconstitutional

Why she might be annoying:

    To organize the strike, the principal was tricked into leaving the school with a phone call claiming some students were causing trouble downtown and about to be arrested.
    She then forged a memo from the absent principal telling the teachers to bring their students to a special assembly and then return to their classrooms. She then delivered a speech to the assembled students calling for a strike to protest the school's condition.
    The initial goal of the strike was getting facilities at the black school upgraded to be as good as those at the local white school; integration became the goal only after the NAACP got involved.

Why she might not be annoying:

    At the time of the strike, enrollment at Moton High School was twice the number of students the school had originally been designed to hold; the school did not have science labs, a gymnasium, or a cafeteria; and most classrooms lacked desks and blackboards. The response of the all-white school board was to build several tar-paper shacks -- which lacked heating and had leaky roofs -- to relieve overcrowding.
    She said about organizing the strike, 'There wasn't any fear. I just thought, 'This is your moment. Seize it!''
    Davis was the only suit included in Brown that had been initiated by students.
    During the student strike, the KKK burned a cross on the lawn of her family's house.
    She earned a degree from Drexel University and became a librarian for the Philadelphia school system.
    The Virginia Commission on Historic Statues voted to have a statue of her replace Robert E. Lee in the US Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection (2020).

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 7 Votes: 14.29% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 15 Votes: 53.33% Annoying