The State Capitol will soon have three vacancies.
Not in the General Assembly; we’ve already had a series of special elections, mostly to fill seats of legislators who have moved onto positions in the Spanberger administration. Instead, those vacancies will be in the form of empty pedestals out on the grounds of Capitol Square.
A bill is moving through the legislature to remove three Confederate-related statues: Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Hunter McGuire and William “Extra Billy” Smith. If some of those names aren’t familiar to you, check out my recent column where I delved into the history of McGuire and Smith. (I assume Jackson needs no elaboration.)
While legislative procedure lies ahead, those statues are as good as gone. The Senate approved the bill 21-19 on a party-line vote. The House has a much larger Democratic majority that will waste no time passing this bill onto Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who will surely sign it.
That raises the question of what will replace them. Maybe nothing. We could just plant some nice dogwoods and move on. As a fan of statues, and history, I’d like to start a conversation about some possible replacements.
While three statues are headed for the exit, we really just need two replacements. A little-noticed provision in the budget that Gov. Glenn Youngkin proposed in December would set aside $750,000 for a statue to former Gov. Douglas Wilder, the first Black governor elected in the United States. (The word “elected” is key there; Louisiana briefly had two Black acting governors during Reconstruction, but neither was elected; they were lieutenant governors who ascended to fill vacancies.)
If we assume that the money for the Wilder statue stays in the budget, then we just have two vacancies. Who should be considered?
In recent years, Virginia has added a civil rights memorial and a women’s monument on Capitol Square; both feature multiple figures, including some who otherwise might get mentioned here for an individual statue, so I went looking for other people.
One way to look at this is to take a narrow view and try to find replacements that fill the same categories. McGuire was a doctor; can we find someone else from the medical field who wasn’t such a virulent racist that he pined for slavery long after it was abolished? Jackson and Smith were military figures; Smith was also a governor, so that gives us more options. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but here goes:
Henrietta Lacks
She wasn’t a doctor; she was a patient, but oh, how she has contributed to the medical field — albeit unwillingly. Lacks was born in Roanoke, grew up in Halifax County, then moved to Baltimore as an adult. That’s where she was diagnosed with cancer. Those cancer cells were harvested from her body without her permission; those cells are still reproducing today and have been used in research around the world. “I cannot think of any other single cell line or lab reagent that’s been used to this extent and has resulted in so many advances,” the chief scientist at the World Health Organization said in 2021. Today there are statues to Lacks in Roanoke, South Boston and even Great Britain. Should she not be represented at the State Capitol as well?
Linwood Holton
If we’re looking for a former governor (besides Wilder), who better than Holton? Born in Big Stone Gap, but living in Roanoke at the time of his election in 1969, Holton was the first Republican elected governor in Virginia since Reconstruction. That’s not why he should be considered, though. He should be considered because he used his inaugural address — and his administration — to declare that “the era of defiance is over.” He was a civil rights governor. Roanoke already has a Holton Plaza downtown; what it lacks, though, is a statue. Roanoke could immortalize Holton in bronze even if he’s not on the Capitol grounds.
Fred Cherry
If we’re looking for a military figure to replace either Jackson or Smith, we have many options to choose from. Let’s start with Cherry, a Suffolk native whose story mirrors that of John McCain. Both were pilots shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese. When the North Vietnamese wanted to release him for propaganda purposes, McCain famously refused. Cherry was the highest-ranking Black officer captured during the war. The North Vietnamese wanted Cherry to make propaganda videos to denounce racism in the United States; he refused. To punish him for his refusal, Cherry spent 702 days in solitary confinement and was tortured for 93 days in a row, often beaten three times a day. He wound up spending eight years in captivity. If you’re looking for an example of courage, here it is. Cherry Elementary School in Suffolk is named in his honor. There’s currently an effort underway to erect a historical marker to Cherry on the grounds of Virginia Union University, his alma mater. Why not an actual statue at the State Capitol?
Billy Flora
If we want to look back to Virginia’s role in America’s founding, we can find plenty of military figures worthy of mention. Not all of those were generals, though. Billy Flora was a mere private, but he was also the hero of the first significant battle in Virginia: the Battle of Great Bridge in December 1775 in modern-day Chesapeake. He single-handedly held the bridge amid a hail of British musket fire, before finally making his way back to the Virginia lines. The battle pales to more famous ones now, but at the time the victory of Virginia militiamen over British regulars was a huge confidence boost to the Patriot cause and eventually led to the departure of the royal governor, the unpopular Lord Dunmore. Put another way, Flora’s brave stand at Great Bridge ultimately enabled the collapse of royal authority in Virginia.
Flora was noteworthy in another way: He was a free Black man. He was a business owner — he operated a livery stable in Portsmouth — yet his wife was enslaved. Flora gives us insight into the complexity of our founding. He’s featured in the mobile museums of the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission, and was the subject of a story as part of our Cardinal 250 story about Virginia’s role in independence.
Most statues depict political or military figures. If we want to move beyond those fields, the whole world opens up with possibilities. The star of Booker T. Washington has fallen over time but in his day he was the nation’s foremost civil rights leader — he was born in Franklin County and studied at what is now Hampton University.
The arts tend to get scant attention in the world of statuary, although Capitol Square does have a statue to Edgar Allen Poe. Other Virginians who could merit attention are early creators of traditional music forms — Maybelle Carter from Scott County, Ralph Stanley from Dickenson County. Link Wray wasn’t born in Virginia, but he grew up in Portsmouth and invented the power chord, the basis of modern rock music — he first hit those notes publicly at a gig in Fredericksburg in 1958, notes that influenced a generation of future rock stars. He was also of Native American heritage.
Is this a comprehensive list? No way. Have I failed to mention some people who might be worthy? I’m sure I have. That’s where you come in. Who do you think is worthy of being honored with a statue on Capitol Square? Let us know here. I’ll compile the responses into a future column.
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