HISTORY-MAKERS HONORED AT LAST

HISTORY-MAKERS HONORED AT LAST

4,000 attend unveiling of monument to black Prince Edward youths



By Jim Nolan

Times-Dispatch Staff Writer



It took five years of work and fundraising to acknowledge an act of bravery 57 years ago, but there is now a civil-rights memorial at the state Capitol. In granite and bronze it celebrates the courage of black men and women -- who, until yesterday, could not be found among the iconic statuary on the grounds once occupied by the Confederate Congress.

Sen. Henry L. Marsh, III, D-Richmond, stands in front of representations of two of his former law partners, Oliver W. Hill and Spottswood Robinson, at the dedication of the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, in Capitol Square in Richmond, VA .Prince Edward County schoolgirl Barbara Johns and her classmates walked out of Robert R. Moton High School on April 23, 1951, and marched to the county courthouse, daring to challenge the inequity of Virginia's segregated educational system. But for many of the 4,000 people who endured 95-degree heat, yesterday's unveiling in Richmond was hundreds of years in coming. A symbolic recognition of the largely ignored and unwritten history of black people in Virginia, the memorial honors their pivotal role in the civil-rights struggles of the 20th century.



"This is a great day," said Del. Dwight Clinton Jones, D-Richmond. "Today I want you to know that history is being made and the tide has changed. Thousands of young people who come here from schools all over the commonwealth of Virginia will not get half of the story or part of the story, but they'll get the whole story," Jones said. "They will be taught that Virginia is not just for a select few, but that Virginia is for all Virginians." Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said the recognition -- in the state and on the grounds of the Capitol -- was long overdue. "The statues we have are great, and they recognize people of great accomplishment. But let's be honest: They only recognize one kind of person. They don't recognize all who have been Virginians," Kaine said.



"The first thing we do today . . . that does make this a new Virginia, is we open up Capitol Square to recognize African-Americans, recognize women, recognize all who have been part of history, the tragic but triumphant history of this wonderful commonwealth." Johns and her classmates made history that day in 1951. A month after their walkout, noted civil-rights attorneys Oliver W. Hill Sr. and Spottswood W. Robinson III took on their case. It and four similar suits eventually became the basis for the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. The court unanimously struck down the doctrine of "separate but equal," effectively mandating desegregation of public schools. Yesterday's dedication occurred less than 200 yards from the statue of the late U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd Sr., D-Va., the architect of the state's Massive Resistance strategy that kept the state from fully integrating its schools for years after the court's decision.



"I hope as you contemplate this memorial you'll think of . . . the tens of thousands of others who experienced the tragedy and triumph that is the history of Prince Edward County and the history of our national struggle to come to grips with the unresolved problem of race," said NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, the grandson of a slave. Few were closer to the struggle in Prince Edward than Johns' sister, Joan Johns Cobbs. "I was shocked and I was afraid because at that time we didn't think any one of us, as black people, could do anything to upset the establishment," she recalled yesterday after the dedication. After the unveiling, she touched the bronze likenesses of her sister and the others depicted in Stan Bleifeld's four-panel sculpture and wept.



"This is a wonderful day. I'm just happy to be able to witness something like this in my lifetime, because I never thought that this would happen," said Cobbs, 70, whose sister died in 1991.
"I think [Barbara] would have been very pleased and very surprised." Johns' daughter, Terry Harrison, agreed. "It's incredible. It's amazing. It still hasn't hit me," she said. "I think she would be overwhelmed. All this for a little girl from Farmville?"



To Harrison, the statue is there to "help kids see the potential in themselves. It's like a continuation of what she did during her life." Actor Blair Underwood, an honorary co-chairman of the memorial dedication, said the new sculpture "tells more of the story" of Virginia. "We have a flawed history, we all do, every state," said Underwood, whose parents live in Petersburg. "We learn from mistakes, we learn from the victories and triumphs of the past. This is part of telling the complete story. Not instead of, but in addition to."



Bleifeld wanted to make a living memorial. "A living memorial to me is one in which people that see it engage with it," he told the crowd. "They want to know why it's there. Who are the people? What are they doing, and what's behind it? If they think that way, for me, it's successful." Hundreds from the crowd walked up to and around the piece. They touched it and posed next to the figures of Hill and Johns and the Rev. Francis Griffin, like admired family relatives or famous ballplayers. Heroes. Earlier, Bleifeld told the audience that his vision for the memorial sprang from the thoughts of a friend who said that the achievement of civil rights is a continuing struggle. Three sides of the rectangular memorial honor the past; the fourth looks to the future.



"Young people of all kinds and types striding forward together, confident of their future, into a society that they will help to create," he explained. "It's their energy that infuses this work. And that's my message." Yesterday, it was a message worthy of remembering, poet Nikki Giovanni said. "This is about us celebrating ourselves, and a well-deserved honor it is," said Giovanni, thrilling the audience with a lyrical, rapid-fire homage to the contributions of black women.



"Light the candles. This is a rocket. Let's ride!"