This is a tribute to Barbara Rose Johns, an unsung heroine of the civil rights movement, who in 1951 led a student strike to draw attention to the substandard conditions of her segregated high school. Author’s Note, Timeline, Bibliography.

This short children's biography tells the important story of a young black teenage girl named Barbara Rose Johns, who decided that it was manifestly unfair for black children to be schooled in shacks while the whites were schooled in brick buildings in Prince Edward County in the middle of Virginia. Advised by a teacher to do something herself, Barbara organized a walkout and protest for her classmates in 1951, contacted the NAACP, and was one of the cases consolidated into the landmark Supreme Court case, Brown vs. the Board of Education that ended the segregation doctrine of "separate but equal." ( )

Summary: This is a biography about Barbara Rose Johns. She was attending a high school back in the year 1950 which was only for African American children because segregation was happening at this time. This powerful story is of Barbara taking a stand again the board of leaders (all white men) for the school and demanding at first that they have better learning conditions and facilities. Her strike grew and eventually turned into a fight to end segregation.

Critique of Genre: Biography because it's the true story about Barbara Rose Johns life through the writings of the author.

Age: Intermediate

Media: Not listed.

The Girl from the Tar Paper School, by Teri Kanefield, takes us into the life of Barbara Rose Johns, from Prince Edward County in Virginia. She and her classmates at Moton High School in Farmville decided to protest the unequal and so-called “temporary” classrooms that had been built to accommodate the growing student body. Moton High was for the black students in the area, while white students attended Farmville High School, a large, modern building with labs, a cafeteria, and auditorium. This is the 1950s, and author Teri Kanefield takes us into the life of Barbara Johns and the growing Civil Rights Movement in the South. The book is more or less in chronological order, once the opening chapter has established the main events. However, the narrative style of the author ensures that the book does not read like a timeline of events. After the opening chapter, we hear about Barbara’s family, both immediate and extended, and then her childhood and early high school days. Kanefield writes about how upset Barbara had become one morning after she missed the school bus and had to wait on the side of the road, hoping to catch a ride for the 15-mile trip to school. While waiting, a bus for white students approached, “shiny and new-and half empty”, but she could not ride on it. Barbara later said, “Right then and there, I decided something had to be done about this inequality- but I still didn’t know what”. Barbara goes on to organize her classmates in a protest against the inequalities of their education, but first, the author goes into more detail about Barbara’s childhood and the exposure she had to literature, music and religion. Her upbringing meant that education was important to her, and she couldn’t stand for the way things were. Unlike some other Civil Rights- era activists, Barbara actually had a white friend growing up, though they had to hide the friendship. This detail was interesting to me, and gave the story a different perspective. Another difference between this story and some others, such as that of Claudette Colvin, was that Barbara herself was a campus leader. As one of her brothers later stated, “Barbara was the boss”. That meant, as the author interviewed her family and former classmates, that she had the respect of those in the school community, which led to her protest being more successful. Barbara Johns went on to lead a student strike in 1951, whereby hundreds of students stayed out of class for two weeks. After threats to her life, she was sent to Montgomery to stay with family and graduated high school there, in 1952. However, the case of the Moton High students against the school board of Prince Edward County went all the way to the Supreme Court. It became one of the cases consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education, with the plaintiffs represented by Thurgood Marshall. The case was decided in 1954 and declared that segregation in schools was unconstitutional. However, back in Prince Edward County, the outcome was not what many had hoped for; instead of integrated schools, the white students went on to attend a new school, Prince Edward Academy, and black students found themselves without a school at all until the mid-1960s. The local school board had literally ordered the superintendent to change the locks on the school doors. Schools in the county were not truly integrated until the 1980s. Barbara Johns went on to marry, graduate from college, and become a school librarian. The book ends with a brief summary of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s, and how innovative Barbara’s approach had been. As Kanefield states, “Barbara’s peaceful strike, intended to shut down a public institution to attain racial equality, was a novel idea at the time- and, for many of Barbara’s contemporaries, a shocking and frightening one. While Barbara’s strike…did not unfold as she’d envisioned, the larger civil rights movement- encompassing the entire nation- did”. This book is tells a thorough and complete story of one individual within the larger movement sweeping the South. Kanefield’s research is thorough and no doubt her legal background- she is a practicing lawyer as well as a writer- gives her a solid foundation to write about social justice. ( )

An excellent look at an important but largely overlooked part of the early Civil Rights Movement. An inspiring story of young people organizing and taking action against injustice. ( )