The Girl from the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement

Before the Little Rock Nine, before Rosa Parks, before Martin Luther King Jr. and his March on Washington, there was Barbara Rose Johns, a teenager who used nonviolent civil disobedience to draw attention to her cause. In 1951, witnessing the unfair conditions in her racially segregated high school, Barbara Johns led a walkout-the first public protest of its kind demanding racial equality in the U.S.-jumpstarting the American civil rights movement. Ridiculed by the white superintendent and ...