“I can't breathe. I can’t breathe.
You’re taking my life from me.
I can’t breathe. Will anyone fight for me?"— “I Can’t Breathe,” H.E.R., 2020
Music born of angry times of domestic disunity in American history leave indelible marks on us that speak loudly about who we are...
Makya Little was helping her fourth-grade daughter review for the Virginia Studies SOL, a standardized test on state history, when she found herself taken aback by one of the questions on the study guide.“She gets to this one question that says ‘What’s the status of the early African?’” said...
In the reckoning over Confederate statues in Virginia, memorials to more contemporary champions of racism initially escaped scrutiny.That changed last year when a freshman Republican lawmaker in the House of Delegates proposed removing a Capitol Square statue of Harry Flood Byrd Sr., who was the architect of the state’s...
Camp Pendleton, the state military reservation in Virginia Beach named for a Confederate general, likely will be renamed soon.Next month, a panel of state officials plans to recommend a new name for the Virginia National Guard training facility, which was named for William Nelson Pendleton, a Virginian who served...
By Kelley Fanto Deetz, University of California, BerkeleyAmong the many treats of the holiday season are chocolate and hot cocoa. While these traditions provide a hefty dose of sugar, there’s a bittersweet side to chocolate’s history, too.This year, at Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, a plantation museum where,...
Voters in six rural counties voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to keep courthouse monuments to the Confederacy --- imagery that more populous cities and counties have rushed to remove amid a renewed national reckoning on race.Before this year, local governments in Virginia were prohibited under state law from removing Confederate statues....
It’s no longer public policy in Virginia to hold the Confederacy in a state of perpetual veneration, a Richmond judge ruled Tuesday, telling Gov. Ralph Northam he can remove a towering statue of Robert E. Lee despite a promise more than 130 years ago to "faithfully guard ... and...
People in most places would be appalled if the chairman of the court-appointed Electoral Board — which is supposed to guarantee fair and accurate voting — tried to encourage a mayoral candidate to drop out with just weeks left in the campaign.In Portsmouth, the quaint city of just under...
A Black Lives Matter flag flies proudly in my front yard.I’ve become estranged from people I’ve known forever for insisting that monuments to Confederate figures come down and that peaceful protests over the slayings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and other unarmed Black people were not only...
In Colonial Williamsburg, experts are unearthing the foundations of First Baptist Church, among the oldest African American congregations in the country, as part of an attempt to uncover a more complete narrative of early American history, centering the Black people — enslaved and free — who contributed much to...
