Barbara Rose Johns Powell was a pioneering leader in the American civil rights movement. Powell led a student strike for equal education at R. R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. The only student-initiated case consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education was filed by Powell at the age of 16.
About Barbara Rose Johns in brief
Barbara Rose Johns Powell was a pioneering leader in the American civil rights movement. Powell led a student strike for equal education at R. R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. Powell’s uncle was an outspoken activist for civil rights. Powell was educated in segregated public schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia, in the 1950s and 1960s. The only student-initiated case consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaringseparate but equal public schools unconstitutional, was filed by Powell at the age of 16. She was the eldest of five children, with a younger sister, Joan Johns Cobbs, and three younger brothers: Ernest; Roderick, who served in Vietnam as a dog handler and was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart; and Robert. The NAACP agreed to assist in the suit as long as the integrated school system would be for equal facilities, and not just just an equal education.
The suit was eventually settled out of court in federal court in 1961, and the school system was fully integrated by the end of the decade. The case was decided in favor of the students, who were awarded $1 million in damages and $500,000 in attorney’s fees, and a settlement of $1,000,000 by the state of Virginia in 1962, and $100,000 more by the federal government in 1964, and an additional $200,000 if the case went to the U.N. for further review and possible settlement. For more information on the case, go to: http://www.justgiving.com/Barbara-Rose-Johns-Powell-Davis-v-Prince-Edward-County-Court-of-Families/Davis-V-Efforts-to-Enforce-Equal-Education-Brown-Board-Of-Education.
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This page is based on the article Barbara Rose Johns published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 23, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
