Gideon Resnick

Peters is appealing the sentence, and her lawyers have cited Trump's pardon push in their efforts to free her.

Let's talk about a story now out of Washington that flew under the radar this week, about a historic figure you might not be very familiar with, and a statue that honors her story.

Barbara Rose Johns, then a 16-year-old Black teenager, led a protest in the early 1950s that contributed to profound changes in the country.

On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries gathered in Emancipation Hall in the Capitol to unveil her new statue.

That's Rachel Triesman, a reporter who covered the unveiling for NPR.

Now, the hall is unique because every state legislature gets to select two notable people from its history to be represented there.

Virginia has George Washington, and for more than a century, it had Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

But back in 2020, Ralph Northam, the former Democratic governor of Virginia, requested that Lee's statue be removed, and a state commission selected Barbara Rose Johns in his place.

Treesman told us a bit about Barbara's life story.

She was born in New York, but went to school in Farmville, Virginia, where she started to notice how inferior her school was compared to the one for white kids.

And in 1951, she gathered all 450 students and organized a mass walkout.

Her sister Joan Johns Cobbs was by her side that day.

And in 2019, she spoke to The 74, an education news site.

Their strike lasted two weeks, and it caught the attention of the NAACP.

Their resulting fight for new schools reached the courts, and that had a big ripple effect.

The statue depicts Barbara Rose Johns as her teenage self in a rallying cry and holding a book in the air.

She's joining Illinois' Frances Willard, California's Ronald Reagan, and Arkansas' Johnny Cash, among others.

And Treisman said that the timing of the unveiling was notable as well.

After the walkout, Barbara had safety concerns and moved to Alabama to finish her studies.

She went to university and later returned to education as a librarian for Philadelphia Public Schools.