Virginia Civil Rights Memorial at Capitol Square

WHAT: Virginia Civil Rights Memorial at the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, Va. See and listen to a slideshow.

LOCATION: Capitol Square, Northeast Corner near Governor Street entrance.

ARTIST: Stanley Bleifeld.

DEDICATED: July 21, 2008.

DESCRIPTION: Cast in bronze, the 18 figures are slightly larger than life. The wall the statues back up to is 12 feet long, 8 feet high and about 5 feet wide. The $2.6 million granite and bronze memorial was privately financed.

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The following was culled from excerpts of the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s coverage of the statue’s unveiling:

A Commonwealth once synonymous with defiance of court-ordered school integration celebrated the latest symbol of its often-difficult embrace of equality with the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial in 2008.

It represents a key moment in the history of the civil-rights movement in Virginia.

The statue spotlights the African-American students in rural Prince Edward County whose 1951 walkout to protest their run-down school led to a lawsuit that was folded into the challenge that triggered the 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court banning segregated public schools.

Among the figures in the memorial is Oliver W. Hill Sr. holding a rumpled legal brief aloft as he stands shoulder to shoulder with law partner Spottswood W. Robinson III. They took on the case of the Prince Edward County students who protested the shabby condition of their school.

Barbara Johns was the one who called the school strike in 1951 and she is a key figure in the sculpture. Her statement “it seemed like reaching for the moon” is boldly featured.

The student protests garnered support from the local community, benefiting from the moral leadership of the Rev. L. Francis Griffin, known as the “Fighting Preacher” and is also featured in the memorial.

A plaque in front of Virginia Civil Rights Memorial reads:

On April 23, 1951, 16-year-old Barbara Johns and several fellow students led a strike to protest the deplorable conditions at their racially segregated Prince Edward County school. The Rev. L. Francis Griffin united parents in support of the strike and encouraged the students to contact NAACP attorneys Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson. The lawsuit that followed was brought before the U.S. Supreme Court and joined with four other cases as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), in which the Court ruled that racially separate educational systems are inherently unequal and unconstitutional.

This memorial is dedicated to these Virginians and countless others who courageously fought for the principles upon which the nation and this Commonwealth were founded.