A symbolic attitude took place in United States Capitol, this Tuesday (17), when a statue of a black teen who fought against segregation replaced that of a Confederate general who defended the preservation of slavery.
The young woman depicted is Barbara Rose Johnswho was 16 when he led a strike in 1951 to protest conditions at his segregated high school for black students in rural Farmville, Virginia. This protest reached the US Supreme Court and resulted in the end of school segregation in the USA.
Johns’ image shows a young woman, her right arm lifting a book, as she stands next to a podium to address her peers. The statue’s pedestal quotes scripture: “…and a child will guide them.” »
Each U.S. state is represented by two statues in the halls of the Capitol, and Johns joins George Washington in representing Virginia, replacing the image of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, which had been there for more than a century.
In a few days, Johns’ statue will be moved to the crypt, where Lee was located until he was removed in the middle of the night five years ago. The decision to change the figures depicted at the Capitol came in 2020, amid US protests against racism following the death of George Floyd.
Lee’s statue was sent to the Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond, where it sits in a gallery that explores how symbols created a “lost cause” mythology in the American South.
This theory sought to present the soldiers of the Confederacy, supported by the Southern states during the American Civil War, as heroes who fought for “states’ rights” and an idealized agrarian way of life, downplaying the war’s connection with the attempt to maintain slavery.
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