Virginia Civil Rights Memorial

The Memorial

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The Virginia Civil Rights Commission

In 2005, the Governor and the Virginia General Assembly established a memorial commission to select a monument for Capitol Square in honor of the struggle for full civil rights for Virginia's African American citizens.

The Virginia Civil Rights Memorial Commission, comprised of elected and civic leaders, has met over the last several months to select a subject for the memorial, a site and an artist. The memorial will honor the student protest at the Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. Their organized walkout in 1951, and subsequent lawsuit, became one of the cases joined with and argued before the Supreme Court as Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. The memorial will pay tribute to these Moton students, their parents who supported them at great personal risk, and the civil rights lawyers who represented them. All remind us all that, five decades ago, their courage and determination helped to bring state-sanctioned segregation to an end. The memorial will also acknowledge that they were successful as part of a decades-long collective non-violent movement in which the actions of countless individuals across Virginia and the country brought about sweeping legal and societal change.

Members of the Civil Rights Memorial Commission

 


Virginia Civil Rights Memorial
P.O. Box 9171
Richmond, Virginia 23227
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