Trails, battlefields and statues mark the Commonwealth’s storied past.
Photo by Ted Eytan
New U.S. Civil Rights Trail
Neatly tucked away near Governor Street in the northeast corner of Richmond’s Capitol Square, the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial is on the way to becoming a more popular tourist destination. The 8-foot-high, 5-foot-wide bronze and granite memorial, dedicated in 2008, is one of just two Virginia locations on the new U.S. Civil Rights Trail, a collection of more than 100 historic landmarks across the country where activists challenged segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. The Richmond memorial depicts 16-year old Barbara Rose Johns and her fellow students at Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, the site of the first non-violent student walkout that triggered the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. The second site is Farmville’s Robert Russa Moton Museum. CivilRightsTrail.com
Battle Cry
Legend has it that the cries of dying men could be heard from a mile away June 9, 1862, when Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s army drove federal troops out of the Shenandoah Valley in what became known as the Battle of Port Republic. More than 155 years later, a nonprofit group is fighting its own battle to save the 107 acres of wooded ridgeline in Rockingham County from residential development. The Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation wants to raise $100,000 to buy the $1.5 million site; the rest would be paid through grants. The group has raised more than $50,000 so far. If the effort is successful, work will begin on a trail system to allow self-guided tours of the battlefield. To donate, visit ShenandoahAtWar.org
Adèle Clark
Photo courtesy of Virginia Women’s Monument Commission
Four Heroines, One Monument
They were trailblazers during their time, and now they are the first to be commemorated as part of the Virginia Women’s Monument in Richmond. The bronze statues of Pamunkey leader Cockacoeske, Jamestown settler Anne Burras Laydon, African-American educator Virginia E. Randolph and Adèle Clark, a passionate advocate for the women’s suffrage movement, are the first of the 12 sculptures planned to be fully funded. Each statue costs $200,000, paid from private donations, and they are being created by StudioEIS, a design studio based in Brooklyn, New York. “These women played important roles in the early years of the Old Dominion’s recorded history and in the 20th century, when our state and country were undergoing seismic social changes,” said Susan Clark Schaar, clerk of the State Senate and a member of the Virginia Women’s Monument Commission, in a statement. Construction on the monument’s plaza in Capitol Square began in June. WomensMonumentCom.Virginia.gov
