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...
David Randolph grew up impoverished in Charlotte County just a mile from the plantation where his great grandparents were enslaved. Today he and his son work together as doctors — both radiation oncologists — at Johnston-Willis Medical Center in Chesterfield.And that’s where he was when he got a call...
By Alan Dow, M.D., M.S.H.A.Recently, I joined a couple hundred health care practitioners, faculty, and students from VCU who gathered as part of White Coats for Black Lives. This event was one of many nationwide during which health care practitioners advocated for addressing the impact of systemic racism on...
There’s never been a moment like this for significant change in the way our nation deals with fundamental inequities in its treatment of people of color – certainly not in my more than six decades on this planet.The righteous wrath unleashed by the fresh police killings of Breonna Taylor,...
By Rich Meagher
As protests continue in Richmond, and throughout the nation, I often hear the same concern from people across the political spectrum: Why can’t protesters remain “peaceful?” This question makes a certain amount of sense in light of the history of recent, celebrated rights movements. For example, the principle...
My late father, a D.C. police officer from the 1940s to the mid-’60s, despised the Washington Redskins.He’d fume repeatedly about how the team was the last in the NFL to hire a Black player – Bobby Mitchell – because of its segregationist founder and owner George Preston Marshall.If I...
