Overview
- The bronze was dedicated Dec. 16 in Emancipation Hall with Speaker Mike Johnson, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Gov. Glenn Youngkin and roughly 200 of Johns’ relatives in attendance.
- Sculpted by Steven Weitzman, the piece shows the teenager raising a book, with a pedestal bearing her challenge to classmates and the Bible verse “And a little child shall lead them.”
- The statue joins the National Statuary Hall Collection as Virginia’s second figure alongside George Washington after final approval by the Architect of the Capitol and the Joint Committee on the Library in July.
- It replaces the Robert E. Lee statue that represented Virginia from 1909 until its 2020 removal, after which Lee’s likeness was relocated to the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.
- Johns led a 1951 student strike at Farmville’s Moton High School that fed into the cases consolidated in Brown v. Board of Education, a legacy speakers said they want young visitors to see.