Spartan Echo

Section: News

Virginia Tech poet Nikki Giovanni, left, and NAACP chairman, Julian Bond, second form left, greet spectators as they look over the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial on the grounds of the State Capitol in Richmond, Va., Monday, July 21, 2008. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) _ Half a century after black schoolchildren and civil rights champions struggled to desegregate Virginia's schools, statues honoring them desegregated the state Capitol grounds.

Thousands of people crowded Capitol Square in 95-degree heat Monday, July 21, for the dedication of the civil rights monument alongside those of Convederate icons.

The Capitol a few steps away was once the seat of Confederate government.

When a gray drape was pulled from the massive, rectangular monument, some in the crowd clapped and cheered. Some dabbed away tears.

Governor Tim Kaine called it a proud moment in Virginia's tragic and triumphant history. Poet Nikki Giovanni hailed it as "a celebration of the road we have traveled."

A bronze figure featured on the monument is that of the late Barbara Johns. As a schoolgirl, she led the 1951 student walkout at all-black Robert Russ Moton High School.

For generations thebronze ranks of statues have included only the most elite figures in Virginia history: Statues of Maj. Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, former Gov. William "Extra Billy" Smith Sr. and author Edgar Allen Poe are among those standing on the grounds outside Virginia's capitol in Richmond.

All are storied figures and all are white.

That changed on when officials dedicated a sculpture honoring a group of black Prince Edward County students who became civil rights icons for speaking out against the separate but unequal school doctrine.

The Civil Rights Memorial, with the late Barbara Johns as its focus, was unveiled near the executive mansion. Johns was 16 when she organized a student boycott in 1951 against substandard conditions at the all black R.R. Moton High School in Farmville.

Attorneys would later bring that case and others nationwide together, producing the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case that would ultimately end school segregation.

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