Squaring matters

March 3, 2008 12:16 am

SOME WRONGS take a long, long time to right. So it is with the lingering evils of slavery and segregation. Their handmaidens, racism and prejudice, live with us still. But lest one despair that individual acts of conscience are irrelevant in confronting powerful persecutors, events in the heart of Virginia's capital offer hope.

On the great stage that is Richmond's Capitol Square, the Old Dominion is, at last, about to memorialize some of the courageous souls who vanquished Jim Crow policies in public education. Last week, ground was broken for the square's first monument to the commonwealth's African-Americans.

Without the labors and sacrifices of blacks, of course, Virginia would have amounted to much less. Having landed at Jamestown a few scant years after the first English colonists, African slaves helped build Virginia's plantations and fortunes, enabling the planter aristocracy to take root and flourish.

But on the grounds of the state Capitol, until very recently, it was if this long, proud, and complex black heritage didn't exist. Nowhere did a marker signal the accomplishments of the state's African-Americans, a fact made more painful by the history of this same building: It was once the capitol of the Confederate States of America, whose victory would have indefinitely preserved slavery in the South.

As one enters the grounds, an imposing monument to Virginia native George Washington and other Founding Fathers evokes wonder. A few yards north of the Capitol stands a row of other notable Virginians: William "Extra Billy" Smith, congressman, Confederate general, and two-time governor, who opposed suffrage for ex-slaves; Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, the extraordinary battlefield tactician; Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire, chief surgeon of Jackson's Second Corps, later a medical innovator and humanitarian; Edgar Allan Poe, poet and novelist, who called Richmond home; Gov. and U.S. Sen. Harry Flood Byrd Sr., who championed Virginia's Massive Resistance campaign to block school desegregation.

Of those five, three are Confederate icons and one prolonged the injustices of the Jim Crow era. To any fair-minded visitor, this bronze parade of white leaders seems sadly out of step with our more inclusive times.

That's more or less the realization a daughter of Virginia's 69th governor had one day as she strolled the square, which encompasses both the Governor's Mansion and the Capitol, home to the nation's oldest sitting legislature. She asked her mom, Lisa Collis, why it was so.

Which led the first lady, wife of Gov. Mark Warner, to endeavor to fill in some of the gaps in Virginia history her child had found in the statuary of this inspiring public space, site of Thomas Jefferson's "temple to liberty," the Greek-style Capitol he designed for its hilltop. So this summer, the square will gain another piece of artistry, the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial.

"There is no more fitting place for this tribute than the grounds of this historic capitol, designed by the man who wrote that we are all created equal," Gov. Kaine said of the project. Just so.

The four-sided memorial will honor participants in Virginia's piece of the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown vs. the Board of Education ruling that desegregated America's public schools: a 1951 student walkout at Farmville's all-black Moton High School demanding classrooms that didn't freeze in winter and roofs that kept out the rain. Five school desegregation cases underpinned Brown; the Moton strike was the only one begun by the students themselves.

Likenesses on the civil rights memorial will include Barbara Jones, the 16-year-old freshman who led the walkout; the Rev. L. Francis Griffin, a civil rights pioneer; and the lawyers who spearheaded the legal fight, Oliver W. Hill and Spottswood Robinson III. These courageous individuals, deserving of unstinting admiration, risked much in pursuit of an ideal, and the nation is immeasurably better because of them.

Hats off, then, to Ms. Collis and her husband for making the memorial happen (visit vacivilrightsmemorial.org to learn more). Thanks, too, to the dozens of private donors from all across Virginia and the United States who are financing the $2.6 million effort.

Symbols matter. This one, in a place of honored symbols, is long overdue.