The Girl from the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement by Teri Kanefield (review)

The “separate but equal” doctrine established in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson certainly wasn’t working in Prince Edward County, Virginia in 1951. Moton High School, the black high school for the legally segregated district, was obviously substandard to the white high school, and junior Barbara Johns was determined to do something about it. Protests and petitions that went through appropriate board meeting channels were dismissed with vague promises of better conditions to come, but when nothing concrete materialized, Jones organized a student strike. Kanefield follows the students’ strategies with an immediacy that will have readers chuckling and cheering and marveling at their clever audacity, as they lure the principal away from the building on a wild goose chase, forge notes to convene an all–school assembly, rally classmates to defy the probable censure of their parents, and call in the big guns from the NAACP to provide legal support. The Moton High School case was joined with similar cases in 1954 Brown v. Board, and although it was instrumental in rendering racial segregation unconstitutional, it failed to make any immediate change in Prince Edward County and was largely forgotten. Just as Hoose’s Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (BCCB 2/09) left readers wondering why they hadn’t heard of Claudette Colvin before, however, Kanefield’s work will invoke a similar response for teen activist Barbara Johns. Based largely on interviews, memoirs, and other primary source material, and liberally illustrated with photographs, this well-researched slice of civil rights history will reward readers who relish true stories of unsung heroes.