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Jul-21-2008County Seeks to Heal Racial Wounds(topic overview)
CONTENTS:
- With tomorrow's dedication of the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial on Capitol Square, there's a lot of talk about the issue behind the new monument: public education. (More...)
- The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ordered the schools reopened, but only after many black students had fallen behind academically. (More...)
- As a soldier and a diplomat, Samuel V. Wilson has tried to explain in three languages -- Russian, German and French -- just what happened to the public schools in his home county in rural Virginia. (More...)
- My idea was on one side to honor the people and to suggest the history of the original school strike. (More...)
- Associated Press Writer July 19, 2008 RICHMOND, Va. - For generations their bronze ranks 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. (More...)
- Of the more than 100,000 people who visited the restored-and-expanded state Capitol during the past year, nearly 32,000 were students in kindergarten through 12th grade, said Mark Greenough, Capitol historian and guided-tour supervisor. (More...)
- Andrew Heidelberg, a banker who was among the first blacks to attend a previously all-white Norfolk high school, agreed. (More...)
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With tomorrow's dedication of the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial on Capitol Square, there's a lot of talk about the issue behind the new monument: public education. At the Library of Virginia this afternoon, more than 400 people attended a symposium examining the state's schools more than 50 years after the student strike in Prince Edward County that, in part, led to the historic decision by the U.S. Supreme Court outlawing segregated schools. [1] Virginia's Civil Rights Memorial will be unveiled at a dedication ceremony in the state Capitol at 10:30 today. The four-sided bronze and granite monument - it is situated on the Capitol grounds just west of the Governor's Mansion - pays tribute to several Virginians whose efforts helped bring about the end of school segregation in this state and across the nation. One of the people depicted on the memorial is Barbara Johns, who as a 16-year old in April 1951 led a student strike to protest the physical condition of the Farmville school she attended. Featured on the memorial are civil rights attorneys Oliver W. Hill Sr. and Spottswood Robinson III. Those men represented the striking students all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Their lawsuit was later combined with four other cases into the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas case.[2]
Among them: Democrat L. Douglas Wilder's victory as the nation's first elected black governor in 1989; and the apology for slavery, passed by a Republican-controlled General Assembly in 2007. Capitol Square statuary has, until now, recognized only white males, many of them figures from the Colonial and Civil War eras, when black Virginians could be chattel -- property, bought and sold, and denied the most basic rights. The new statue spotlights the African-American students in rural Prince Edward County whose 1951 walkout to protest their run-down school led to a lawsuit that was folded into the challenge that triggered the 1954 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court banning segregated public schools. "I've never viewed it as a statement of reconciliation or an apology per se," said Lisa Collis, the former Virginia first lady who called for the statue after her then-7-year-old daughter, Eliza, asked why only white males had been commemorated on the manicured grounds of Capitol Square. "It is a statement of knowing that these African Americans, who happen to be Virginians, at great personal risk brought about sweeping change to our society and legal system," she said.[3] The friend's comment spurred Bleifeld to do more. "That gave me the idea for bringing it into the present, with the young people." The memorial focuses on a turning point in Virginia and U.S. civil-rights history, when black students in Prince Edward County staged a walkout in 1951 to protest the rundown condition of their school. That protest led to a lawsuit that was part of the challenge that resulted in the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning segregated public schools.[4]
While the panelists agreed that the death of "separate-but-equal" schools often has meant more public money for education, classrooms are beset by new problems: students from singleor surrogate-parent homes, the absence of mentors for children and frequent violence. Some of those students end up in the courtroom of Judge Jerrauld C. Jones of Norfolk Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court. Jones, a former member of the House of Delegates, said such students are in "extreme crisis," adding, "the public schools are a stage where many of those problems are played out." Jones' educational journey led him from the segregated classrooms of Norfolk to a boarding school in Lynchburg, Princeton University and Washington and Lee University Law School. He was the first black clerk to a justice of the Virginia Supreme Court. Cynthia Johnson, a teacher in Prince Edward who left the county to complete her education, said that in dismantling segregation, "we have lost something along the way." That includes, Johnson said, black teachers as positive role models for black students.[5]
The event included a reading by Nikki Giovanni, a poet and professor at Virginia Tech. In her piece, Giovanni recalled a spirit of community within black America, reminiscing about a train trip into the South and how black porters looked out for black female passengers as if they were kin. Giovanni, however, wove through her poem pointed words for black conservatives, referring to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as a "poster boy for the lawn jockeys" and commentator Armstrong Williams as a "pitiful little dumb bunny." The privately financed, $2.6 million civil-rights monument, juxtaposed with those commemorating Colonial and Civil War figures, honors a group of black students in Prince Edward who went on strike in 1951 to protest their dilapidated high school.[5]
More than a half-century later, as the state readies to commemorate the struggle of black students in Prince Edward with the dedication today on Capitol Square of the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, Wilson and more than a dozen others wrestled with the aftermath of school segregation in a discussion at the Library of Virginia.[5] Associated Press 9:53 AM EDT, July 21, 2008 RICHMOND - Political and civil rights leaders are gathering on the state Capitol grounds to dedicate a memorial to Virginia civil rights icons. They include a group of Prince Edward County teens who became unlikely heroes after they walked out of Farmville's decrepit all-black R.R. Moton High School in 1951. The Virginia Civil Rights Memorial being unveiled Monday will center on Barbara Johns, who was 16 when she led the boycott.[6] All are storied figures and all are white. That changes on Monday when officials dedicate 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, is being 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.[7]
Capitol Square will fill up today as Virginians gather to take part in the unveiling of a statue some thought they'd never see. It's a memorial marking the civil rights movement in Virginia. It's been nearly 60 years since a young Barbara Johns led a group of students out of her Price Edward County school protesting the conditions she and her other black classmates had to endure.[8] Now Virginia is preparing to unveil a memorial dedicated to the bravery of Johns and so many others. It's an idea born out of a question during a walk through Capitol Square. "Lisa Collis, the governor's wife, Mark Warner's wife as I understand it was walking through the capitol grounds with her children. One of her daughters asked why there were no African Americans or any women on any of the statues here and that really is what got Lisa thinking about it," said Joe Seipel, a Civil Rights Memorial Commission member.[8] The unveiling and dedication ceremony for the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial will start at 10:30 a.m. on Capitol Square.[9] Herbert and Roma Allmon went to Capitol Square in yesterday afternoon's heat in hope of getting a glimpse of the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial. They got lucky.[4]
Over 60 years ago, the small Moten School for colored students, would eventually play a big role in the struggle for equality in america. As Virginia prepares for the unveiling of the Civil Rights Memorial, former students from the Moten School remember how horrible their educational life was before the Supreme Court decision to desegregate americas public schools. "Since the building was supposed to house 180 students and 1951 at the time of the walkout-they had well over 450 students here, it was like elbow to elbow-classes were being held on school buses, they were being held in tarpaper shacks so it was a pretty horrendous place to concentrate and study," says Bob Hamlin, former Moten student.[10] The U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in that matter paved the way for the end of public school segregation, which took years to be fully enforced in Virginia. Are the Warners teaching their daughter that BrownVBoard of Education was only to reverse a segregation law enacted by DEMOCRATIC State Legislators that 60 years earlier upheld segregation? Yes,teach her about PLESSYvFerguson ! Tell her about how the republican party was created as the anti slavery party ! Tell her about the creation of the KKK by the democrats in Congress to gain back power from BLACK REPUBLICANS. Tell her how hated the first seven blacks elected to Congress were despised by the democratic party.[9] When the Supreme Court decision came down, White County school officials refused to obey it. "They simpley decided not to fund public education. At that point for 5 years they shut the schools down." Hamlin also remembers there were those who helped, white and black, to make sure black students could get a decent education.[10] "I may have been away, ladies and gentleman, but I was on the spot," said Wilson, recalling uncomfortable queries from foreign officials about schools shuttered in Prince Edward County from 1959 until 1964 in defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1954 banning segregated public education.[5] Prince Edward County's separate and very unequal school system, was one of the cases that made up the landmark Brown versus Board of Education Supreme Court decision that banned segregated public schools.[10]
The memorial spotlights the Prince Edward County students whose walkout led to a lawsuit that was part of the challenge that triggered the banning of segregated public schools in 1954.[3]
Beside the new memorial, another site that pays homage to Johns and her fellow students is the former Moton school in Prince Edward County, which was converted into a museum in 1996.[9]
The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ordered the schools reopened, but only after many black students had fallen behind academically. At Capitol Square, Johns emerges from a stone slab as a bobby-socked schoolgirl, her hand raised brazenly in the air beneath words etched into the monument: "It seemed like reaching for the moon." [7] In anticipation of the memorial's dedication Monday, Bells of Friends, a youth bell choir that will perform at the ceremony, rehearsed in Gilpin Court yesterday. Collis said she hopes the statue's design -- sculptor Stanley Bleifeld focuses on the students of the ramshackle Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville -- has special resonance for their successors: contemporary schoolchildren and those from generations to come. "It should give them a sense that we all can influence the world," said Collis, wife of former Gov. Mark R. Warner, the Democratic nominee this year for U.S. Senate.[3]
The event will be held outdoors rain or shine. The memorial is a four-sided granite block featuring 18 life-sized figures that depict the past -- among them, students who walked out of Farmville's Moton High School in 1951 to protest conditions at their segregated school -- and the future -- a desegregated society.[11] The memorial honors Babara Johns and her fellow classmates at Robert Russa Moton High School. They staged a walkout in 1951in protest of conditions at their segregated school in Farmville.[12]
On April 23, 1951, Watson was one of the dozen or so students who joined a Barbara Johns-led strike to protest the conditions at Robert Russa Moton High School, an all-black school in Farmville. Johns' likeness, and those of Hill, Robinson and Griffin, a Farmville minister involved in the struggle, are depicted on three of the monument's four panels.[9] The larger panels depict Johns leading students on strike, and a diverse group of people walking together that "expresses people moving on, people involved in civil rights today," said the monument's sculptor, Stanley Bleifeld, who is based in Weston, Conn. Johns, who died in 1991, didn't talk much about her role in the school strike, according to family members. "She just had a strong sense of justice," said Johns' adult daughter, Terry Harrison of Toms River, N.J. "She said to me: 'I did what I thought I had to do,' " said Harrison, 46.[9]
Millions of eyes will be on Richmond next week when the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial will be unveiled at the State Capitol. It honors the heroism of students, everyday people and famous civil rights attorneys.[10] Neither did Oliver W. Hill Sr., Spottswood Robinson III or the Rev. L. Francis Griffin. Each of those Virginia civil rights pioneers will be posthumously recognized Monday as part of a ceremony honoring the strides they made. On that day, the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, bearing their images in bronze, will be unveiled on the grounds of the state Capitol.[9] Last minute-preparations were made this weekend in advance of today's unveiling of the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial at the State Capitol.[12]
A state once synonymous with flinty defiance of court-ordered school integration is celebrating the latest symbol of its often-difficult embrace of equality: the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial.[3]
The sculptor who created the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial has lived in Weston, Conn., for the past 35 years. He divides his time between Connecticut and Pietrasanta, Italy.[4] The four-sided memorial surrounds a granite block. It will rest alongside statues of past Virginia leaders, some of whom owned slaves or fought on battlefields and in government halls to preserve a segregated society. "It's ironic that the civil rights monument is being placed in the middle of all those Confederate heroes," said John Watson. "It's poetic justice," said Watson, 75, a longtime news radio host in Wilmington, Del.[9] The genesis of the memorial came, proverbially, from the mouth of a child. A question from 7-year-old Eliza Warner to her mother in 2002 about the dearth of statues honoring civil rights leader in the Capitol sparked the idea, recalled Warner's wife, Lisa Collis. "It just sort of grew from there," said the former Virginia first lady, a member of the commission and the foundation that raised funds for the $2.45 million project.[9]
The dedication celebration of the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial takes place in Richmond today and tomorrow.[4] Registration is now closed for Sunday's panel discussion in connection with Monday's dedication of the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial. "Due to your enthusiasm over this event, the 'From Struggle to Triumph to Tomorrow' Symposium at the Library of Virginia on July 20 is now at its maximum attendance," the memorial's foundation announced on its Web site.[11] Herbert and Roma Allmon watched yesterday as the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial got a final touch-up frmo Cathy Kuttner, who works for hte foundry where the monument was cast.[4] The concept for the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial grew from a comment made by a friend of Bleifeld.[4]
Fergus, You forgot to mention that the people you were talking about were SOUTHERN Democrats, who are now represented by the republican party. They left after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Apparently, racism is one of the American values the republicans believe in, and they welcomed Southern racists with open arms. The South's legacy of racism and it's current problems with race relations are illustrated on these boards every time blacks attempt to honor the heroes of their past. This is no place to promote the southern apologist view of history, which is studied and promoted only within the states most embarrassed by their ugly past. Why do you find it so hard to honor people who put their lives on the line to fight the virulent strain of racism bred in the South? You can't make the South's past any prettier by claiming that racism exists outside the South.[9] Strom Thurmond left the Democratic party in 1948 and formed the Dixiecrat party when Truman placed strong civil rights language in the Democratic platform. He had a change of heart about civil rights in 1964 and joined the Republican party. Strom became the first southern senator to hire a black in his senatorial office. No matter what part of the USA the democrats hailed from, all the problems we have with racism in this United States can be laid at the feet of the Democratic Party.[9]
Fergus, You forgot to mention that the people you were talking about were SOUTHERN Democrats, who are now represented by the republican party. They left after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.[9]
To stall desegregation efforts, state and local lawmakers used a variety of tactics. That movement came to be known as Massive Resistance; a bronze statue of the lawmaker often associated with it, former Gov. and U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd Sr., is located not far from the site of the civil rights monument.[9] Civil rights pioneer the Rev. L. Francis Griffin and lawyers Spottswood Robinson III and Oliver W. Hill, who led the legal fight, also are honored on the monument.[7]
Submitted by alexb on Sat, 07/19/2008 at 11:47 am. It's okay to condemn and despise white Southern history, heritage and culture, but it's nearing a criminal offense to even question the constant barrage of "honoring" events for various civil rights activists? As much as some blacks hate the very idea of whites having any pride in themselves, thank God that some few whites have the backbone to speak up regarding this demonization of their culture. It was a terrible time.[9]
Funding for the $2.4 million project came largely from the Collis-Warner Foundation, a nonprofit charity former first lady Lisa Collis established with former Gov. Mark R. Warner. Collis said she came up with the idea after noticing the lack of diversity on the grounds--dominated by figures some black leaders disparage as supporters of segregation. It was April 23, 1951, when Johns encouraged other students to leave classes in protest. "We tricked the principal (into going) downtown and told him some students were down there acting unruly," Samuel Williams, then an upperclassman at the school, told The Associated Press when the monument's design was unveiled in May 2007.[7] Bob Hamlin was at the elementary school when black middle and high school students walked out to protest the racist and unequal treatment.[10]
More than a dozen panelists --among them, educators, judges, lawyers, business people and one of the participants of the 1951 protest --said public education has changed for the better, but now faces other problems. They agreed, for example, that with the death of separate-but-equal, there's more taxpayer money, particularly, for troubled schools. Some of the panelists worried that too much is expected from teachers, who spend their days with students raised in single-parent homes and facing violence in the streets and classrooms.[1]
A lawsuit challenging conditions in the Southside school was folded into a Kansas case, Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court ushered in integrated classrooms by reversing an 1896 decision affirming segregation.[5] The resulting lawsuit was bundled with others, forming the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case that would ultimately end school segregation.[6] 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.[7]
The Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in that matter ultimately resulted in the end of school segregation.[2]
After the resulting 1954 Supreme Court decision forced schools to integrate, some Virginia localities responded by chaining schoolhouse doors in an effort later dubbed "massive resistance."[7]
As a soldier and a diplomat, Samuel V. Wilson has tried to explain in three languages -- Russian, German and French -- just what happened to the public schools in his home county in rural Virginia. [5]
The memorial features 18 figures which were modeled out of clay in Italy. "I think especially for an African American to walk onto this Capitol and realize this is a Capitol for everybody. To understand that Virginia, which apologized for slavery, and now has this monument on the Capitol lawn right next to the mansion, right next to the Capitol building is an enormous step for this state, for the commonwealth, and I'm very proud of that," said Seipel.[8] Only in the past two decades have accounts of the state's past begun to concentrate on the contributions of blacks, women and Native Americans. "It's not nullifying any particular generation or individual," said Collis, adding that the struggle in Prince Edward more than half a century ago and embodied in the memorial is not an isolated event but a "problem of the human race."[3] Prince Edward County officials recently issued a statement of regret for the closing of schools and planned to illuminate a perpetual light symbolizing reconciliation at a courthouse ceremony Monday.[7]
My idea was on one side to honor the people and to suggest the history of the original school strike. Then, on the end, there is a figure of a minister who was very helpful to the children, who gave them a lot of courage while they went on the strike. [4] There's a single figure on the historical side that is Barbara Johns. She was the one who called the school strike.[4]
Associated Press Writer July 19, 2008 RICHMOND, Va. - For generations their bronze ranks 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. [7] Monday's unveiling and dedication of the monument, scheduled for 10:30 a.m. at Capitol Square in Richmond, remains open.[11] Momentum for a memorial came in 2005 when Gov. Mark Warner and the General Assembly approved a commission to aid in creating the monument on Capitol Square.[9]
Of the more than 100,000 people who visited the restored-and-expanded state Capitol during the past year, nearly 32,000 were students in kindergarten through 12th grade, said Mark Greenough, Capitol historian and guided-tour supervisor. [3]
A sold-out symposium on the civil-rights struggle that has reshaped the state's politics, economy and culture will be tomorrow at the Library of Virginia. Such monuments, as public expressions of reconciliation, are increasingly commonplace across the once-racially riven South, going up in the former battlegrounds of Columbia, S.C.; Little Rock, Ark.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Memphis, Tenn. One is planned for Raleigh, N.C.[3] Visitors line up to enter a civil rights symposium at the Library of Virginia on Sun., July 20, 2008.[5] Civil Rights experts also say the memorial is important because Richmond played a role in allowing the development of slavery in the New World.[12]
Andrew Heidelberg, a banker who was among the first blacks to attend a previously all-white Norfolk high school, agreed. These teachers, he said, provided, particularly for black males, "a certain amount of nurturing and discipline." Heidelberg added, "That part is gone." [5]
SOURCES
1. Civil rights symposium focused on public education - News - inRich.com
2. Civil Rights Memorial to be unveiled today in Richmond | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com
3. Statue a first for Virginia - politics - inRich.com
4. A key moment in the struggle - News - inRich.com
5. Panelists look back at segregation in Va. - News - inRich.com
6. Va. to unveil memorial to civil rights pioneers -- dailypress.com
7. Virginia memorial to honor civil rights pioneers -- dailypress.com
8. WDBJ7 Roanoke News and Weather NRV Lynchburg Danville | Civil Rights Memorial to be unveiled today
9. Early activists for civil rights to be honored with memorial | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com
10. CBS 6 - WTVR, Richmond Va - Looking Ahead To VA Civil Rights Memorial
11. Registration full for Virginia Civil Rights panel - News - inRich.com
12. WRIC Richmond News and Weather - Civil Rights Memorial Unveiled Today
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