RICHMOND -- The students were lauded by Gov. Tim Kaine and interviewed by reporters from all over Virginia.

They met 100-year-old Oliver Hill and heard from the mouth of the civil rights legend himself about how the namesake of their school -- pioneer Roanoke educator Lucy Addison -- had been his childhood principal at Roanoke's Harrison School in 1918.

Four Lucy Addison Middle School students got the day off Monday, along with a powerful lesson on the history of Virginia's role in the civil rights movement.

Accompanied by Addison principal Robert Johnson Jr. and civics teacher Jinny Wooddall-Gainey, they were hand-selected to help unveil plans for the Capitol Square Civil Rights Memorial, due to be erected next year.

Why them? Because they and other Addison students were the only Virginia schoolchildren who thought to launch a fund drive for the memorial. Using Lucy Addison's story as inspiration, they managed to raise $400 for the cause -- most of it one dollar at a time.

Eighth-grader Keshawn Wiley made cakes to sell at a school fundraiser last year. So did seventh-grader Chandell Burch.

Eighth-graders Jameel McMillan and Myra Brown sold stickers of Lucy Addison, hung posters in their neighborhoods and asked their churches and Addison school alumni to pitch in, too.

On Monday, the four helped Kaine and other dignitaries unveil plans for the four-sided bronze memorial that will sit directly in front of the governor's mansion -- not far from statues of Stonewall Jackson and former Gov. Harry F. Byrd Sr.

The memorial features a likeness of Barbara Johns, the quiet but gutsy 16-year-old who in 1951 launched a two-week strike at her all-black Robert R. Moton High School in Farmville to protest the separate and unequal conditions in her school. Her act led to a lawsuit that culminated in the 1954 landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education -- argued by lawyer Hill and Spotswood Robinson, whose likenesses will also be on the memorial.

"She's Virginia's Rosa Parks," said Wooddall-Gainey, who teaches civil rights history, including the stories of Lucy Addison and Barbara Johns.

Early Monday, the students and teacher piled into principal Johnson's car, along with Johnson's father, Robert Russa Johnson Sr. Both Johnsons were named for Robert R. Moton, a Reconstruction-era educator for whom the Farmville school where Johns attended was named.

As a 10-year-old boy growing up in Prince Edward County, the elder Johnson was forced to move to Roanoke County to attend school after Gov. Byrd challenged the court's order to desegregate and encouraged many state schools, including those in Farmville, to close -- a move known as Massive Resistance.

Former first lady of Virginia Lisa Collis, who spearheaded the drive for the memorial in 2005, welcomed the group during an afternoon press conference. It's fitting, she said, to honor "those Virginians whose actions five decades ago brought about such sweeping changes to our society."

Hill did not speak at the event but sat for it in his wheelchair as speaker after speaker lauded him and Barbara Johns. Richmond state Sen. Henry Marsh recalled Hill standing before the Virginia General Assembly early on in the battle and challenging legislators to equalize the state's schools.

"He actually shook his fists at them and dared them," Marsh recalled.

"To have a black man stand up and threaten them ... I knew something was going to happen," Marsh said.

Though the Addison students were treated like celebrities at the press conference, they said later that their favorite part of the day was meeting Oliver Hill. They also met some of the movement's lesser-known figures, including Farmville secretary Rita Moseley, who choked up as she introduced herself to the students. Moseley recalled missing school for two years -- when she was 13 and 14, the Addison students' age -- when her school was ordered closed.

When she was 15, friends of her Brownie troop leader who lived in Blacksburg took her in so she could attend school at the Christiansburg Institute.

"I had never been away from home in my life, but they took me in; they just did it," said Moseley, who is halfway through an undergraduate program at St. Paul's College in Lawrenceville.

Moseley is a Brown Scholar, one recipient of the $2 million scholarship program for Virginia residents affected by Massive Resistance. "I didn't have education when I was your age ... but I want to thank you all," she said.

Earlier in the day, principal Johnson stopped in Farmville so the students could tour the Robert Russa Moton Museum, the former black school and the site of Barbara Johns' call to action. They stood in the same auditorium where Johns organized the two-week school boycott.

"She told the principal there was trouble downtown so he'd leave," Wooddall-Gainey explained. "The teachers tried to get her off the stage, but she knew they had to do something."

The students photographed the museum exhibits, including pictures of the 1940s-era tar-paper shacks the county school board had erected next door rather than build a new black high school.

"Just recently have these stories been told," said museum treasurer Hugh Kennedy, who added that the nonprofit museum opened in 2001 after buying the old Moton school back from the county -- for $300,000.

"We had no gym, no decent heating system, no cafeteria," Kennedy told the students. "We ate our lunch out of brown paper sacks."

During the drive home to Roanoke, Wooddall-Gainey and principal Johnson discussed their schedule for the Standards of Learning testing, due to begin next week. For the civil rights portion of the SOLs, Wooddall-Gainey teaches everything from Jim Crow laws to current events.

But never quite like this. "We had a big civics lesson today," she said.

"Huge," principal Johnson added.

On the Net: vacivilrightsmemorial.org