Post #2025306

2026-04-23 23:09 UTC

Taylor Branch, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, argues that Barbara wasn’t given credit because she was a child. I’ll add that she wasn’t recognized because she was a girl, poor, and black—what scholars call the “triple invisibility.” I believe I am still the author of the only book written about Barbara Johns. Today there are monuments and museums in her honor. But when I started writing this book in 2021 (wait, what??? that long ago!) 3/

Replies (2)

@Teri_Kanefield@mastodon.social 2026-04-23 23:11

. . .nobody knew who she was and her family was afraid to talk to me because so much violence had come their way. After the NAACP took up the case, the family home was burned down. A cross was burned in front of the school, and Barbara was sent south to Alabama to live with her uncle for her safety. (Wait? South? For safety?? Yup.) I could write a book about the experience of going through Virginia trying to get the information for this book. 4/

Open ##2025307
@twasink@aus.social 2026-04-23 23:45

@Teri_Kanefield Possibly also because it was one of several such examples that got bundled into Brown vs Board? Also, it sounds like it was spontaneous and didn't have the prepared media strategy that Rosa Parks had. It's not like Parks was the first black woman or black person to refuse to sit in the assigned spot – she was just the first one to do it as part of an organised campaign. But it's good to see people like Johns getting that recognition now. It's the often silent, often overlooked protests that shift momentum.

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