There have been a variety of reactions to the student walkouts over the Parkland, Florida school shooting. Many people have been supportive, understanding that students are rightfully concerned for their own safety and the safety of others. Many have just ignored it, preferring to give their attention to more personal or more pressing concerns. And some have been dismissive, saying that these are kids who don’t know enough to protest or, even worse, that their concerns are not sincere, that they are “crises actors.”

Those are the ones who should be very afraid. Their brand of arrogance mixed with lethal doses of ignorance may well cause them to lose much more than what the children are asking for. Right now, their demands—if they can be called such—is that the adults in charge do their jobs and help secure their safety. It’s not a big ask, no more than any citizen young or old should expect.

But we have a variety of autocratic responses, from school authorities promising suspension to students who participate in the protest to the NRA’s suit against the state of Florida for raising the age limit for purchasing AR-15s. Essentially, these people are telling the students to sit down and shut up. Children should be seen and not heard.

There have already been parallels drawn between the protests triggered by the Parkland shooting and the student protests of civil rights movement and the anti-war protests of the late sixties. Both of these had far reaching effects beyond what the protesters were asking for when they started. The first brought about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The second brought down the president, the same president who signed the Civil Rights Act.

Both protests brought about major change and were led by students. That should be enough evidence to cause people to take the Parkland students and the students around the country who protested in solidarity with them seriously. But, again, adults are sometimes handicapped by arrogance, a lack of appreciation for history, tunnel vision, or just plain stupidity.

And they may try to point out some differences in the civil rights and anti-war protests and the current protests. The earlier ones were led by adults and college students. High school students did participate, but the focus was on the older people. They were massive (although the point might be made that having thousands of students across the country walk out in a coordinated protest qualifies as massive). And at least the anti-war protest was reflecting a majority opinion in the country (although it’s been reported that a majority of Americans are for tighter gun restrictions, background checks, and even the return of the 1994 ban on semi-automatic weapons).

For these people, I’d like to introduce Barbara Rose Johns, late of Prince Edward County, Virginia.

In 1951 Barbara Johns was a 16-year-old black student, by all evidence bright and ambitious. Her later career as an activist bears this out. However, as a student, Barbara didn’t think that she and her fellow students were getting as good an education as Virginia could offer.

Barbara’s sister describes the Robert R. Moton High School like this:

The school we went to was overcrowded. Consequently, the county decided to build three tarpaper shacks for us to hold classes in. A tarpaper shack looks like a dilapidated black building, which is similar to a chicken coop on a farm. It's very unsightly. In winter the school was very cold. And a lot of times we had to put on our jackets. Now, the students that sat closest to the wood stove were very warm and the ones who sat farthest away were very cold. And I remember being cold a lot of times and sitting in the classroom with my jacket on. When it rained, we would get water through the ceiling. So there were lots of pails sitting around the classroom. And sometimes we had to raise our umbrellas to keep the water off our heads. It was a very difficult setting for trying to learn.

There was a newer, better, all-white school across town. The students at the Robert R. Moton High School knew it was there. They knew it was better equipped. And that the students didn’t have to get an education in spite of the conditions. This was in a state that publicly said that it provided “separate, but equal education,” and privately held that since the blacks didn’t pay a lot of taxes, the state didn’t owe them a lot. It had been this way for years, and so far as the white citizens of Prince Edward County were concerned, it would always be this way.

However, Barbara Johns had other ideas. She recruited the best and brightest in her high school (the president of the student body, the senior class president, and others) and they spent six months formulating a plan. According to one account they met in a concrete building beneath the football stands and called their effort “the Manhattan Project,” a title both ironic and, in its way, prophetic. When they had completed their plan, they lured the principal away from the school (so that he wouldn’t be punished for being complicit), called an assembly (barring the teachers from entering it, so that they wouldn’t be punished for being complicit), and Barbara Johns made a speech. According to her sister, the assembly went like this:

She walked up to the podium and she started to tell everyone about the fact that she wanted us to cooperate with her because the school was going out on a strike. I remember sitting in my seat and trying to go as low in the seat as I possibly could because I was so shocked and so upset. I actually was frightened because I knew that what she was doing was going to have severe consequences. I didn't know what they were going to be, but I knew there were going to be some. She stood up there and addressed the school. She seemed to have everyone's attention.... At one point, she took off her shoe and she banged on the podium and said that we were going to go out on strike and would everyone please cooperate and "don't be afraid, just follow us out." So we did. The entire student body followed her out.

They marched down to the superintendent’s office, and Barbara told him that they lived in the modern world and wanted to be educated for it, that they wanted an education like the white students were getting. The superintendent threatened them with expulsion, and when that didn’t work, he threatened to have their parents arrested. A student pointed out that the jail wasn’t big enough to hold all their parents. 

Because the superintendent simply dismissed the students’ concerns, that meeting was the beginning rather than the end of the effort. There were meetings. There was a cross burning. There were economic reprisals. But the students didn’t give up.

Barbara Johns had to leave the county because her family feared for her safety, but the protest that she started became the largest and the only student-led case of the six suits that were folded into Brown v. Board of Education. That decision rendered “equal education” moot because it made “separate” education illegal.

Barbara Johns and her fellow students might well have been satisfied with a decent building, new books, and a chance to learn without having to be so obviously second-class citizens, but those in power dismissed their concerns, and the whole world of education was changed. Even after Brown v. the Board of Education, Virginia tried a number of maneuvers to avoid integration, including shutting down all public schools and promoting a plan to privatize education. Sort of an early version of Betsy DeVos’ plans. However, between the people in Virginia who felt that integration was wrong and the people who felt that defying what the court called had made the law of the land was wrong, Virginia finally came around. It took a while, but Barbara Johns and her schoolmates won much more than they originally asked for.

The gun-rights people should take a lesson from this. If you dismiss the children and their concerns, you may end up with much less than you would have had if you’d paid attention. Remember, they’ll be here long after we’re gone.