New sculpture memorializes Richmond schools' integration

• Cooper Johnson was also the first Black student at Thomas Jefferson High School.

Details: Located on the corners of Libbie and Patterson Avenue where the once all-white Westhampton School stood, "Strides" is a steel sculpture made up of two plus signs facing each other as a symbol of integration.

• The goal, per a release, is for viewers to walk through the sculpture and sense the pressure Cooper Johnson felt on the first day of school.
• Matt Lively and Tim Harper were the local artists behind the piece.

Flashback: Cooper Johnson attending Westhampton was a result of her mother, Elizabeth, being a plaintiff in a three-year-long federal lawsuit filed by legendary civil rights attorney Oliver W. Hill Sr. in 1958.

• Two years earlier, Virginia adopted a policy of Massive Resistance in 1956 to block desegregation.
• By 1964, a decade after the Brown decision, only 5% of Black students statewide were attending integrated schools, according to the Virginia Museum of History and Culture.