Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Editorial: Lessons still being learned
Virginia's newly unveiled Civil Rights Memorial is a historical marker with lessons for all.
From the RoundTable blog
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A private, nonprofit foundation unveiled the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial Monday in Richmond's Capitol Square.
Now, among the statues of Virginia heroes of the Revolutionary and Civil wars that dominate the square, stands a memorial to an entire people and the battle they engaged to realize the finest ideal of the Founders of a new nation: All men are equal under the law.
The sculpture pays tribute to a movement that black Virginians -- indeed, all Americans who embrace that ideal -- are living out still. Artist Stanley Bleifeld calls his 18figure work "a living memorial" to an ongoing struggle for black civil rights: specifically, the right to equal education.
The sculpture is anchored in a key event in the commonwealth: a 1951 walkout by black students in Prince Edward County to protest deplorable conditions at their segregated Robert R. Moton High School in Farmville. The demonstration prompted a challenge to segregated schools in the form of a lawsuit that eventually was folded into Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that bars racial segregation in public schools.
Four of the 18 figures in Bleifeld's bronze and granite piece are real Virginians the artist plucked from that historic movement to stand among the statuary on the state's Capitol grounds: Barbara Johns, who as a 16-year-old led the student demonstrators; the Rev. Francis Griffin, whose moral leadership rallied the community behind them; and NAACP lawyer Spottswood Robinson III and lead attorney Oliver Hill, who filed the Virginia suit, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County.
A measure of the courage of all involved is the fact that, even after the Brown decision, Virginia's leaders fought desegregation with a "massive resistance" campaign that ultimately proved futile.
All Virginians should know the events as some of the most shameful and, at the same time, proudest in the state's history. The sculpture stands as a reminder of lessons each generation needs to learn about equality -- and the value of a good education.
