Consolidated with four similar suits, it was destined to reach the U.S. Supreme Court as part of the historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Had the student strike begun ten or fifteen years later, Barbara Johns would have become something of a phenomenon in the public media. In that era, however, the case remained muffled in white consciousness, and the schoolchild origins of the lawsuit were lost as well on nearly all Negroes outside Prince Edward County.
