Statue of Little-Known Civil Rights Activist Replaces Robert E. Lee in U.S. Capitol

Conservative News DailyDecember 17, 2025

The U.S. Capitol replaced the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee with a bronze statue of Barbara Rose Johns, a Black teenager known for leading a 1951 student strike against school segregation, which helped pave the way for the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v.Board of Education decision. The statue depicts her passionately addressing classmates while holding a tattered textbook, symbolizing the inequities in educational resources for Black students. While the replacement has been praised by political leaders for honoring a civil rights trailblazer, it has also faced sharp criticism from some conservatives, notably commentator Matt Walsh, who questioned Johns’s significance compared to Lee and criticized the selection as reflecting a lack of historical heroes on the political left.

When it comes to well-known civil rights activists, there are some obvious heavy hitters.

Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and Malcolm X are generally going to be the first names brought up, especially in America.

(Outside of America, Mahatma Ghandi is another name that’s most often brought up.)

And if you ask AI to give you more names on top of the above, you’ll get slightly more obscure (at least compared to what’s taught in textbooks) figures like Fannie Lou Hamer, Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, and Thurgood Marshall.

When the decision was made to replace the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in the U.S. Capitol with a civil rights activist, most assumed that it would be one of the more well-known names listed above.

The decision went … in a slightly different direction.

Lee’s statue was replaced by a bronze statue of Barbara Rose Johns, a black teenage girl who had spoken out against segregation.

The Architect of the Capitol website described: “Artist Steven Weitzman depicts Johns during a pivotal moment in her life: she is 16 years old speaking to her classmates at Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia, convincing them to join her and other student organizers to strike for better school facilities and supplies.

“Her focused expression and clenched left fist show her passion and intensity as she exhorts her classmates. In her right hand, Johns brandishes a tattered textbook, titled The History of Virginia, indicative of the subpar, second-hand materials the school district provided for Moton students.”

United Press International added: “Johns is celebrated for leading a walkout of her Farmville high school in April of 1951, which helped lead to the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka decision that declared segregation unconstitutional.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, many conservative voices were less than thrilled with the replacement of Lee.

And perhaps no voice came out more vociferously against this bronze statue than The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh.

Nobody knows who “Barbara Rose Johns” is. Robert E Lee was about a million times more historically significant. He was also a million times more honorable and courageous than all of the politicians applauding in this video. https://t.co/n2AauZDNhg

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) December 17, 2025

“Nobody knows who ‘Barbara Rose Johns’ is. Robert E Lee was about a million times more historically significant. He was also a million times more honorable and courageous than all of the politicians applauding in this video,” Walsh posted. And by his metrics, that means Lee is a million times more honorable and courageous than the Speaker of the House or the governor of Virginia.

“Today, we are here to honor one of America’s true trailblazers, a woman who embodied the essence of the American spirit in her fight for liberty and justice and equal treatment under the law: the indomitable Barbara Rose Johns,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said at the unveiling, according to United Press International. Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin also spoke glowingly at the event.

Walsh wasn’t done with that above post. He soon took aim at the vitriol directed at the Confederacy.

“The Left tells us that we can’t have monuments to confederate generals because they supported slavery and fought against the federal government and lost,” Walsh posted. “And yet they also tell us that we must honor Native American tribes who supported slavery and fought against the federal government and lost.”

Walsh then responded to an Ed Krassenstein X post, which encouraged leftists to antagonize conservatives who were less than thrilled with the new statue.

One of the most striking things about the modern left is that they have no historical heroes at all. Every once in a while they come along and erect a statue to some unremarkable nobody, calling her an “icon” even though they had to check Wikipedia to find out who she even was.… https://t.co/cnYpA0CJqj

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) December 17, 2025

“One of the most striking things about the modern left is that they have no historical heroes at all,” Walsh posted. “Every once in a while they come along and erect a statue to some unremarkable nobody, calling her an ‘icon’ even though they had to check Wikipedia to find out who she even was. They have no real heroes. All of the true icons of history are too ‘problematic.’

“We stand on the shoulders of giants. They stand on the shoulders of like three or four random black women who did very little and achieved even less.”