Righteousness, as embodied by the new Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, lags more than a half-century in its pursuit of justice.

You could argue that righteousness runs nearly four centuries in arrears in Virginia. But few seemed in a mood to debate distance or debt during the glorious unveiling of the memorial yesterday at Capitol Square.

Or as civil-rights veteran Edward Peeples said, "It's a down payment on the truth, don't you think?"

To paraphrase the script on the memorial, the notion of a monument to civil rights at this onetime citadel of segregation seemed as outlandish as reaching for the moon.

July 21, 2008, should go down as the most significant day in the history of our state Capitol since L. Douglas Wilder was sworn in as governor on Jan. 13, 1990.

"This is a wonderful day to be a Virginian," Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said. He sounded not unlike Richmonder Lewis F. Powell Jr., a retired associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who upon administering the oath of office to Wilder said, "It's a great day for Virginia!"

Among the figures in the memorial is Oliver W. Hill Sr. holding a rumpled legal brief aloft as he stands shoulder to shoulder with law partner Spottswood W. Robinson III. They took on the case of the Prince Edward County students who protested the shabby condition of their school.

Oliver W. Hill Jr. stood a few feet from the likeness of his father as he called the monument "a memorial to the past, but also a call to action."

He said his father also would have liked the idea that children can have a significant impact on the world.

He also mused that his father, a man with a puckish sense of humor, would have had a good laugh at being memorialized due east of a statue of the late U.S. Sen. Harry Flood Byrd Sr., D-Va., the main proponent of Massive Resistance to school desegregation.

Will this proximity of segregationists and those they sought to keep oppressed confuse visitors puzzling over heroes and villains?

Renee Hill, like her husband, a professor at Virginia State University, said the juxtaposition represents not confusion, but progress and movement.

"Now where's the Native American statue?" she asked.

The unveiling of the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial was free of the protests that marred the dedication of monuments to Arthur Ashe and Abraham Lincoln in Richmond.

Nor has it been plagued by criticism over its artistic merits, as has been the case with the Ashe monument, which was deemed too lacking in heroic stature, or the as-yet-erected memorial honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in our nation's capital. Critics say King, arms folded, too closely resembles a totalitarian ruler.

Even Maya Lin's moving Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala., is not without its critics who ask, "Where are the people?" Water runs over the names of those who lost their lives in the movement.

The sculptor who created the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, Stanley Bleifeld, said, "I did not want to make a statue. I wanted to make a living memorial." And, indeed, the memorial crackles with the energy of youthful defiance.

Latifa Sage, a medical student at the University of Michigan, admired the memorial's contemporary side. "I like the fact that they seem like they're in motion . . . the hair is moving, the people are actually doing something," she said.

"That guy, it looks like he has hope on his face," Sage said of a young man with his arm around another fellow. "And he's bringing someone else along."

Righteousness has been etched in bronze for the ages in a state where hope is gaining ground on ignorance. Bring someone else along. Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.