[View here as a Twitter thread]
Scholastic Magazine asked me to rewrite one of my articles about Barbara Johns for a younger audience. What? You don’t know who Barbara Johns was? She was 16 years old in Farmville, Virginia, in 1951. She led a walkout of her high school to protest segregation.
[From a 1951 newspaper:]
Yes, before Rosa Parks and before MLK, Jr. embraced nonviolence as the way to equality. After she and her classmates turned the town upside down, the NAACP stepped in. . . You can read one of my articles here: https://terikanefield.com/dev/1images/IMAGINE-THIS-WAS-YOUR-SCHOOL.pdf …
Barbara and her classmates became plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education. Why wasn’t she given credit for the first protest of the modern Civil Rights movement? argues that because she was a child. I add she was a girl, poor, and black.
Wait. I guess I should add that I’ve written the ONLY book about Barbara Johns. (It won a few prizes, including the Jane Addams Book Award.) I’m sure it’s in your local library. This book went far and wide.
View as a thread on Twitter:
(1/3) Scholastic Magazine asked me to rewrite one of my articles about Barbara Johns for a younger audience.
What? You don't know who Barbara Johns was?
She was 16 years old in Farmville, Virginia, in 1951. She led a walkout of her high school. . .
[From a 1951 newspaper:] pic.twitter.com/1ZNSnBxJ9A
— Teri Kanefield (@Teri_Kanefield) December 20, 2018
