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...
MacKenzie Scott, author and ex-wife of Amazon honcho Jeff Bezos, has elevated her profile in a humongous way. You can bet historically black colleges and universities are grateful for her attention. As well as the stroke of Scott’s pen on checks worth at least tens of millions of dollars. Scott announced...
When Confederate monuments go down, they go down fast.The rebel flag, on the other hand, has been pulled apart, thread by thread, for years. And now it’s unraveling fast.The best-known Confederate symbol, the flag is disappearing from public places -- think NASCAR -- and could even be endangered in...
Spring Cambric knows what she will be thankful for this Thanksgiving: the home she is buying with help from Richmond Metropolitan Habitat for Humanity. The single mother of four plans to move into her two-story, iron-gray house in Northside Richmond this fall."I love it because it will be ours —...
On Monday, Gov. Northam sent a letter to school board leaders statewide, asking them to rename schools that still bear the names of Confederates, of which there are 14. The next day, a statue of Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart was plucked from its pedestal on Richmond’s Monument Avenue, leaving Lee as...
If there’s anything more intertwined with the complicated and mysterious soul of Mississippi than the Confederate flag, it is college sports. When the two found themselves in conflict last month, the flag lost and sports made Mississippi a better place.The rebel army’s battle banner had occupied the upper left...
By Dean KnightConfederate Naval Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury was lionized as the "Pathfinder of the Seas" for his work in oceanography along Richmond's Monument Avenue for decades until his statue came down Thursday.But less well known is that at the conclusion of the American Civil War, Maury was one...
It was always about Lee.The most beloved of Confederates, Gen. Robert E. Lee, got the first and tallest statue on Richmond's Monument Avenue, one of the most sacred places for rebel aficionados in the country.With Mayor Levar Stoney following through on his pledge to quickly remove monuments under city...
The statue came down quietly, in the early hours of a Tuesday morning in June. The scene was decidedly anticlimactic. There were no cheering crowds. No charges of disorderly conduct or arrests. Instead, police and passersby simply stood and watched as a crew lifted down from its pedestal the bronze...
