
Monument honoring abolition of slavery unveiled in Richmond two weeks after Robert E. Lee statue was removed
CNN
A monument honoring the abolition of slavery was dedicated on Wednesday in Richmond, Virginia, just two miles from where a hulking statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee once prominently stood.
People in the audience wore plastic ponchos or sat under large golf umbrellas for protection from the rain, which ended a few minutes before dignitaries unveiled the Emancipation and Freedom Monument.
The monument, featuring two 12-foot-tall statues of a man and a woman holding an infant after they were freed from slavery, honors the contributions of Black Virginians in the "centuries-long fight for emancipation and freedom," according to the Virginia Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Commission, which commissioned it.

More than two decades ago, on January 24, 2004, I landed in Baghdad as a legal adviser, assigned an office in what was then known as the Green Zone. It was raining and cold, and my duffle bag was thrown into a puddle off the C-130 aircraft that had just done a corkscrew dive to reach the runway without risk of ground fire. Young American soldiers greeted me as we piled into a vehicle, sped out of the airport complex and then along a road called the “Highway of Death” due to car bombs and snipers.












