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. Sculptor Stanley Bleifeld, foundry owner Dick Polich and a cluster of volunteers had raised the covering to rub off a few spots -- part oxidation and part soot -- and to polish the 18 statues that make up the memorial.

They were using old socks and undershirts, among other polishing cloths. "Wool works best," Bleifeld said.

The sculptor worked on what he called "little things nobody is going to see," minor spots or dull places he wanted to eliminate before the dedication tomorrow of the privately financed, $2.6 million memorial in Capitol Square.

The Allmons, who live in Richmond, walked away impressed. "When you look at the way the memorial depicts black people, the details bring out the black features more than other statues," Herbert said. "That's the first thing you see. Then you think about the history that goes with it."

The concept for the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial grew from a comment made by a friend of Bleifeld.

"One friend actually gave me the impetus for the idea," Bleifeld said. "He said, 'How can you do a historical piece when the whole idea is still going on, when the struggle for civil rights is a continuing business?'"

The 18-figure sculpture -- Bleifeld calls it "a living memorial" -- always was meant to represent a key moment in the history of the civil-rights movement in Virginia.

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.

Last week, Bleifeld spoke by phone about the memorial.

Q: Will you describe what people will see when they look at the sculpture and the key things you'd like people to train their eye to?

A: Usually, memorials are something you look at, you read the history and then you leave. My idea was that people had to walk around this, that they couldn't get the idea from any one particular view.

My idea was on one side to honor the people and to suggest the history of the original school strike.

And 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.

On the other end are the two lawyers who were instrumental in winning the case for Brown v. Board of Education.

Then the other side -- the commission calls it a future panel, and I suppose that's OK -- what it really is, is young people coming out of this thing at you with books, in a very friendly, cooperative, social manner, all going forward, the idea being that they were going forward into an education.

Q: Do all the figures represent real people?

A: No, the children are not real people, and the young people are not real people. There's a single figure on the historical side that is Barbara Johns. She was the one who called the school strike.

Let's see, how many other real figures? The minister is a real figure, Rev. Francis Griffin. Then the two lawyers, one was Oliver Hill and the other was Spottswood Robinson. Those two on the ends are portraits.

Q: How long did the entire process take?

A: Well, it took a little short of two years. I have to tell you -- it isn't bragging -- but I can't believe it myself that we got 18 life-size figures done in that time.

Normally, a sculptor takes six months to do one figure.

Q: When you look at it, how do you feel about it?

A: I don't think any artist is fully pleased with what happens. But I'm relatively pleased with the result.

I think it tells the story that civil rights has a great history. It accomplished a great deal, but it doesn't stop. It continues.

That was my message
Contact Jann Malone at (804) 649-6820 or jmalone@timesdispatch.com.

Multimedia reporter Chris Young contributed to this report.