Virginia’s tribute to Barbara Johns a step closer to Statuary Hall

The Joint Committee on the Library’s approval of the maquette means Weitzman, a Maryland sculptor, can continue his work on a full-size model of the Johns statue for the National Statuary Hall collection.

The full-scale model will enable the sculptor to incorporate further detailed refinements to Johns’ facial expression, her hair and her clothing. Weitzman has been working closely with members of Johns’ family, said Julie Langan, director of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

Johns, who died in 1991, was 16 years old in April 1951 when she led a student walkout at Moton High School in Farmville to protest the segregated school’s substandard facilities. Civil rights lawyers Oliver Hill Sr. and Spottswood Robinson took up the case, and it became part of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled race-based school segregation unconstitutional in 1954.

Next the sculptor will submit a full-scale model of the statue to the state commission that chose him to create the statue. Once the state panel approves the full-scale model, it will go to the Architect of the U.S. Capitol and back to the congressional panel for approval.

Once all of the authorities have signed off on the statue, the sculptor will produce it in bronze, leading to a final round of the same three-part approval process and plans for its installation. State officials expect to unveil the statue at the U.S. Capitol sometime late in 2024.

Langan said the full cost of the project — including installation — appears to be coming in right at the legislature’s appropriation of $500,000.

“Commissioning a statue for placement in the U.S. Capitol is a monumental undertaking,” Langan said in a statement.

“We knew from the outset that this would be a lengthy process, as it should be for something so enduring and impactful. All involved are pleased with our progress and that we are a bit ahead of schedule,” Langan said.

The Johns statue will replace Virginia’s statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that the state removed from the U.S. Capitol in December 2020. Each state gets two statues in the collection. Virginia’s other statue depicts George Washington.

The miniature version of the statue depicts Johns at 16, holding a book aloft in her right hand while her left hand touches a podium. The pose is meant to symbolize Johns’ actions to rally fellow students and to highlight the importance of education.

One side of the statue’s base features a quote from the Book of Isaiah: “and a little child shall lead them.” Another side of the base quotes Johns’ challenge to her fellow students on April 23, 1951: “Are we just going to accept these conditions, or are we going to do something about it?”

The front of the statue’s base features Johns’ name, the years she was born and died and the words Prince Edward County, Virginia.

Johns went on to graduate from Drexel University, married William Powell, raised a family and worked as a librarian in Philadelphia, where she died in 1991.

Virginia moved to replace the Lee statue at the U.S. Capitol in 2020, a year of reckoning about racial injustice following the murder of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis. The Lee and Washington statues had represented Virginia in the U.S. Capitol since 1909.

In December 2020, the state panel, The Commission For Historical Statues In The United States Capitol, recommended to the state legislature that the statue honor Johns.

The five finalists to be depicted on the statue were all storied Virginians who were people of color: Johns; Hill; John Mercer Langston, Virginia’s first African American member of Congress; Pocahontas; and Maggie Walker, the first African American woman in the U.S. to charter a bank.

Robert Johns, one of Barbara Johns’ brothers, told a state panel in March 2021 that the family has few images of her as a teenager because someone burned the family’s home in Prince Edward County to the ground after the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Family members say they appreciate other tributes to Barbara Johns, but that they have not always looked like her when the artist depicted a sitting model.

In January, on the day the state panel announced him as the sculptor, Weitzman stressed that he would work in tandem with the Johns family.

“The Johns family won’t merely have final approval on what it will look like,” Weitzman told Robert Johns. “If you will allow me, you will be making sure that she will look exactly like what you remember.”