Virginia Emancipation Proclamation and Freedom Monument Maquette

The Virginia Emancipation Proclamation and Freedom Monument will be a permanent 12-foot monument celebrating the emancipation of enslaved people and hard-won freedom from racial bondage. It will be located on Brown's Island in Richmond, which was home to free black Richmonders after the fall of Confederate Richmond and the end of the Civil War.

The estimated $800,000 monument designed by American sculptor Jay Warren -- planned by a state commission as part of Virginia's efforts to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation -- also features a female figure holding up high a document inscribed with the date of Abraham Lincoln's 1863 order that declared slaves free in the rebellion states, including Virginia. Virginia's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Memorial Commission anticipates the bronze monument to be in place in 2019, when the state will mark the 400th anniversary of the recorded appearance of the first Africans at Jamestowne.