Last Sunday's Commentary section devoted considerable space to the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial. Today the commonwealth recognizes a just cause. Tomorrow it officially unveils and dedicates sublime statuary on the Capitol grounds.

Virginia and Richmond boast numerous monuments. Capitol Square honors its favorite sons. Many of those commemorated in marble and bronze owned their fellow human beings as though they were property, bought and sold as commodities. Others fought to keep children of God in slavery. More recent paragons erected and maintained a system of second-class citizenship. Much of this was done by those who preached liberty -- liberty for them, that is, but not liberty for all. For many decades self-evident truths were evident primarily in their enforced denial.

Yet . . .

. . . From Virginians emanated many of the words and ideals that eventually loosened the shackles and undid the chains. Individuals such as Oliver Hill demanded that the nation as a whole and Virginia as a state practice what was preached by the Founders and successive generations of patriots. Take the Declaration of Independence seriously, they said; live the Beatitudes. The schoolchildren in Prince Edward who refused to accept the lie of separate but equal fired a shot for justice as surely as the Minutemen who fired at Lexington and Concord. The young people who claimed the right to do something as mundane as to eat a sandwich at a lunch counter asserted a principle as profound as "we hold these truths." Battles raged in courtrooms, on demonstration lines, and in human hearts. Courage transformed; progress occurred; good work remains undone.

There were giants in the earth in those days. Virginia honors them now. It is time for giants again.