[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 67 (Wednesday, April 25, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H3563-H3565]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RECOGNITION OF BARBARA JOHNS DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fitzpatrick). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr.
Garrett) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority
leader.
Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor, the likes of which I can't
think of a comparison, to stand here, in this week of April 2018, and
commemorate a battle undertaken by a student that I would argue was a
continuation of the American Revolution.
The American Revolution began when a group of White male landowners
cast off the tyrannical throne which lorded over them from across an
ocean, but it moved forward 80 years later when a million Americans,
through disease and starvation and battlefield death, gave their lives
to rid this Nation of the horrific institution of slavery. Then 55
years later, I would argue that it continued when the franchise was
extended through women's suffrage to women.
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Then 30-plus years after that, by a 16-year-old high school student
at the R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia, who had heard
about the foundational ideas espoused by a slave owner named Jefferson
who wrote that all people are created equal, but couldn't reconcile
that with her life experience, because in the county where she lived, a
brand-new high school had been built, but only some kids could attend
it.
So in extending this American Revolution that continues to this day,
this 16-year-old young woman, Barbara Rose Johns, led a school walkout
that was the only student-initiated case amalgamated into the decision
in Brown v. Board of Education, which rid America of the ridiculous lie
that was ``separate but equal.''
So her walkout was not to take rights from others, but to extend
rights to all, and the idea of an American Nation founded on the idea
that all people had fundamental rights, and that it was the role of
government to protect those.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), my
colleague.
Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join my colleague from Virginia,
Congressman Garrett. I want to thank him for organizing this evening's
Special Order, but first I want to commend him for his work as a
Virginia State senator for making April 23 Barbara Johns Day in the
Commonwealth of Virginia.
This April 23, Monday, marked the first official recognition of this
important day in the Commonwealth.
Almost 64 years ago, the Supreme Court struck down lawful school
segregation in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. What few people
know is that Virginia was one of the four cases decided that day. There
were three other States, and Washington, D.C., had another case that
was decided the same day.
Virginia's involvement in Brown v. Board of Education stood out
because that effort was led by a student, namely Barbara Johns. She was
only 16 years of age. This stalwart figure in the struggle for equal
education stood up to challenge the notion that African Americans
should receive separate and unequal education under the law.
Barbara Johns grew up in Farmville, Virginia, and attended Robert
Russa Moton High School, an all-Black school serving more than 450
students despite the fact that the facility was designed for only 180.
She described the inadequacies of the school as having shabby
equipment, no science laboratories, no separate gymnasium. Conditions
were so bad at the high school that, in 1947, even in Jim Crow
Virginia, the State offered money to improve the school, yet the all-
White Prince Edward County School Board refused to accept the State's
funding.
Barbara took her concerns about the school to a teacher, who
responded by asking her to do something about it.
After months of contemplation and imagination, she began to formulate
a plan. Seizing on the moment, on April 23, 1951, Barbara Johns, a 16-
year-old high school student, led her classmates on a strike to protest
the substandard conditions at Robert Russa Moton High School.
Her leadership and advocacy ultimately garnered the support of NAACP
lawyers Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill to take up her cause and
the cause of more equitable conditions at Moton High School.
After meeting with the students and the community, they filed suit in
Federal court in Richmond, Virginia.
The Virginia case was called Davis v. County School Board of Prince
Edward County, and, in 1954, Davis became one of the four cases decided
in the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education.
There is a saying that ``courage is not the absence of fear, but the
assessment that something else is more important.'' Her courage led to
the powerful language in the Brown decision that still rings true
today.
In the case, the Court said:
``Today, education is perhaps the most important function of State
and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great
expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the
importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in
the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service
in the Armed Forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship.
Today, it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural
values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in
helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is
doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life
if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity,
where the State has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be
made available to all on equal terms.
``We come, then, to the question presented: Does segregation of
children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the
physical facilities and other `tangible' factors may be equal, deprive
the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?
We believe that it does.''
And the Court concluded: ``We conclude that, in the field of public
education, the doctrine of `separate but equal' has no place. Separate
educational facilities are inherently unequal.''
Those powerful words were provoked by the courage of Barbara Johns
and others like her who led the charge to bring the cases to the
Supreme Court.
The example of Barbara Johns should serve as an example for all of
us. She did not sit on the sidelines, and neither should we.
We should speak out when we see injustice, we should act when we see
inequity. The best way to honor her legacy is to act in the same spirit
that she did.
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Virginia (Mr. Garrett), for
providing an opportunity to remind us of our obligation to do the right
thing.
Mr. GARRETT. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Scott for his comments.
I refer to myself as a nerd--which is okay, because the nerds usually
win in the end--who loves history. My acquaintance with the story of
Barbara Johns did not begin as a school student taking Virginia history
in Virginia, it did not begin as a student at a top tier university
studying history.
It began when I became a candidate for the State Senate of Virginia.
The district that I wished to represent and had the honor of
representing included Farmville. So when I went to Farmville, I had the
opportunity to attend a function at the Moton Museum, which stands
where R.R. Moton High School stood and, in fact, encompasses the bulk
of that facility.
I heard about Barbara Johns, and I thought: Who is Barbara Johns? And
the more I learned about Barbara Johns, the more I was amazed that I
didn't know the answer to that question.
When we put in a bill to commemorate April 23, the day that this
courageous, and I would stress without ceasing, 16-year-old student--
when I was 16 years old, I think I was more concerned with the zit on
my nose and whether I could get a homecoming date than whether I was
going to change the world.
But when I learned more about her and we put in a bill to commemorate
April 23 as a holiday in the Commonwealth of Virginia, it was my hope
that one day someone would look at a calendar and see Barbara Johns Day
and say: Who was Barbara Johns?
Someone had the temerity to say to me: Well, Tom, this is Black
history.
I reject that on its face. This is not Black history or Brown history
or White history. It is American history, and it is red, white, and
blue.
{time} 1715
That this country is the worst nation in the world, except for all
the others, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, is something that I am
proud of.
That we were founded by geniuses like Jefferson, who was a flawed and
fallen man by virtue of his participation in an evil, evil enterprise
that was the slave trade, does not diminish the brilliance of the idea
expanded upon by Locke and Rousseau and Hume, of natural law that all
people have certain fundamental rights. That is who we are as a
country.
The reason I postulated earlier that the American Revolution should
never end is because in the preamble to the Constitution, our Founders
gave us not a perfect union, but sought to establish
[[Page H3565]]
a more perfect union. And the word more's inclusion is important
because it implies the perpetual need to act because, in any
institution governed by flawed and fallen human beings, there will
always inherently be imperfection, but that does not absolve us of our
duty to do the best we can.
You can judge a nation and its character by the people whose virtues
it extols. And to suggest that Barbara Johns is an American hero is to
understate it.
Again, a revolution to cast off a tyrannical crown, followed decades
and decades later by a civil war to abolish a horrific, horrific
activity, followed by a fight for generations to ensure suffrage to an
entire sex, followed 30-some years later by a young girl with the
courage to stand up and assert that justice should be equal for all,
and that transcends even educational opportunity, inarguably.
So I hold in high regard foundational heroes like Patrick Henry, and
I have spoken from this spot on this floor before and talked about his
speech: ``I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give
me liberty or give me death.''
But my favorite ``Patrick Henryism'' was when, on speaking on
separating from the crown, someone from the back of the room shouted
``Treason,'' and Henry said: ``If this be treason, make the most of
it,'' a willingness to stand and fight and die because something was
the right thing to do.
Now, let's skip forward to a 16-year-old girl in the segregated
South. She undoubtedly had the fortune of a strong family. I have had
the honor of speaking on multiple occasions with her sister and an
amazing uncle in Vernon Johns, a pastor first educated at Virginia
Theological Seminary and then at Oberlin and, I believe, at the
University of Chicago.
But Vernon Johns studied what? The classics and natural law, the
Jeffersonian ideas that liberty was inherently a gift to humans, not
from a government, but to be protected thereby. And so I like to
imagine, and presume it is true because I asked Joan Johns, with whom I
spoke last, if they ever discussed these sorts of things with their
Uncle Vernon, and she said, of course; that someone had to stand up and
assert these God-given rights in a land where they weren't protected by
the government in accordance to its responsibility.
Who did that? A 16-year-old young woman.
Okay. What was the cost? Well, no different than Patrick Henry, who
said: ``If this be treason, then make the most of it,'' quite
literally, Barbara Johns had to move away for fear for her life.
People think about the civil rights movement as many things. Many
don't realize that well over 1,000 people died, a lot in civil unrest,
but also in things like horrific bombings of churches based on the
color of the skin of the people who attended them.
So the threat to Barbara Johns was existential and real but, in the
face of that threat, she stood, and she led. And it wasn't about self-
aggrandizement. There was no future political career. Barbara John's
aspiration in life was to be a librarian. She became one.
But when her moment came, she led. And she led, not to take from
anyone, but to give to everyone what is inherently their right and
should be cherished and protected by government.
And so we have, with incredible humility, had the opportunity to
serve in this hallowed institution, and this week, have filed for
Barbara Johns to receive the Congressional Gold Medal. It is the
highest award that can be bestowed by this Chamber.
Tragically, Ms. Johns passed from this life in 1991, but I would
submit that she is well-worthy of this honor. And then if bestowing
this honor upon her posthumously will lead more American young people
to read and learn about the leadership and courage demonstrated by this
school student from Prince Edward County, Virginia, then it is well
worth doing.
I in no way, shape, or form mean to make light, but if Bob Hope and
Roberto Clemente and John Wayne and Arnold Palmer and Dr. Muhammad
Yunus and Louis L'Amour can receive the Congressional Gold Medal, then,
by gosh, Barbara Rose Johns Powell deserves it.
This is a story that should be told. And it is not a political story,
it is an American story. It is not a black or white story, it is an
American story. It is not a story about a powerful woman, it is a story
about a powerful human being.
We, collectively, are great because individuals have been allowed and
encouraged and supported and uplifted and extolled for doing great
things. And it is ridiculous that I should have studied Virginia
history, American history, and then majored in history in college,
grown up less than 100 miles away from where this young woman did this
amazing thing, and have never heard her name.
So today, I genuinely and sincerely thank my colleague, and I hope
that somebody at home somewhere is Google searching Barbara Rose Johns,
because hers is an amazing story, and we stand on the shoulder of such
giants. It is overdue that she be recognized for her contribution to
our American family.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________