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...
A proposal to eliminate the legal hoops Virginia cities and counties have to go through before taking down Confederate monuments failed in a state Senate committee Tuesday after several Democratic legislators said they were uncomfortable rewriting the law to make public hearings optional.The bill, which had already passed the...
Protests this summer nationwide – including here in Virginia – have correctly focused on police brutality against Black and Brown people and the quest for humane treatment. Most interactions with officers, especially for minor crimes, shouldn’t end in death.Another issue dealing with racial inequity doesn’t involve law enforcement, but...
A final report, nearly a year in the making, recommends changes to teacher training, graduation requirements and curriculum to reform how African-American history is taught in Virginia schools.The report was published Monday by the Virginia Commission on African-American History Education, which was established by Gov. Ralph Northam by executive...
