Barbara Rose Johns (1935–1991) was a young American civil rights hero who in 1951, at the age of 16, led a student strike for equal education at Moton High School in Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia. After securing NAACP legal support, her suit became part of the historic 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, in which the court ruled against "separate but equal" and thus ended de jure segregation in American public schools. Prince Edward County ultimately responded to the Brown Decision by closing its public schools from 1959 to 1964, the longest period of Massive Resistance in the nation's history.
Read more about Barbara Rose Johns: Early Life, Moton High School, Organizing The Strike and Filing Suit, After The Strike, Activist Legacy, Additional Reading
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“It was in and about the Martinmas time,
When the green leaves were afalling,
That Sir John Graeme, in the West Country,
Fell in love with Barbara Allan.”
—Unknown. Bonny Barbara Allan (l. 1–4)
“And in the next instant, immediately behind them, Victor saw his former wife.
At once he lowered his gaze, automatically tapping his cigarette to dislodge the ash that had not yet had time to form. From somewhere low down his heart rose like a fist to deliver an uppercut, drew back, struck again, then went into a fast disorderly throb, contradicting the music and drowning it.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The modern woman is the curse of the universe. A disaster, that’s what. She thinks that before her arrival on the scene no woman ever did anything worthwhile before, no woman was ever liberated until her time, no woman really ever amounted to anything.”
—Adela Rogers St. Johns (1894–1988)