Washington DC - A new statue featuring civil rights icon Barbara Rose Johns was recently erected at the US Capitol, replacing one of Civil War general Robert E. Lee.

According to The Guardian, a number of lawmakers attended an unveiling ceremony at Emancipation Hall on Tuesday, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Republican Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin.

"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," Johnson told the crowd.

The event was also attended by over 200 members of the Johns family.

"She put God first in her life. She was brave, bold, determined, strong, wise, unselfish, warm and loving," said Terry Harrison, one of Johns' daughters.

In 1951, Johns, who was just 16 at the time, staged a walkout at Farmville's Robert Russa Moton High School to protest segregated schools' poor conditions compared to nearby White-only schools.

The legal battle that emerged from the walkout became one of the five cases the Supreme Court reviewed in Brown v. Board of Education, which led to the court's historic ruling that segregated schools are unconstitutional.

Johns' statue took the place of one of Robert E. Lee, which stood for 111 years before it was removed from the US Capitol in December 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.