New exhibition explores race and community in Richmond
A new exhibition titled “Race in Richmond: Healing in Richmond” is on display at The Gallery in Main Street Station until June 30. The exhibit features two installations: “I See You – A Portrait Experience” and “I Hear You: A Speaking Experience.”
Richard hopes to ‘flip’ the script
African American women have made a huge impact on Olympic gymnastics, with Gabby Douglas, Jordan Chiles and Simone Biles as shining examples of their dazzling skill sets. Now it’s Frederick “Fred” Richard’s turn to try and draw more attention to the men’s competition.
Nine anti-war protesters due in court Friday for I-95 blockade
Nine protesters will go to trial Friday, June 21, at the John Marshall Courts building for blockading Interstate 95 in March as part of an anti-war protest against the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip.
Rickwood Field, 104 years old, to host MLB game honoring Black heritage
Birmingham’s Rickwood Field, now 104 years old, is back in the news.
Free community testing for COVID-19 continues
The Richmond and Henrico County health districts are offering testing at the following locations:
Gospel group releases first new music in nearly 50 years
She made a single gospel soul record in the 1970s with her brothers, when they were all teenagers. Then Annie Brown Caldwell moved on with her life. Decades later, she was running a clothing store in a tiny Mississippi town and singing on weekends with her husband and children when she got a call from a label founded by David Byrne. They wanted to add a single from her first band, the Staples Jr. Singers, to a compilation record. That 2019 call led to more — the Luaka Bop label reissued the band’s 1975 record “When Do We Get Paid,” drawing rave reviews in 2022 for its raw sound and mix of blues, funk and soul. And soon the Brown siblings, now in their 60s, found themselves on a course that would make any rising pop star jealous. In the past four years, they flew for the first time, toured Europe four times and played hipster clubs like Brooklyn’s Baby’s All Right. And, finally last year, they saw a performance by Mavis Staples, whose group The Staple Singers inspired their own early sound with genre-busting, socially conscious Stax Records hits. Also a band of siblings, they covered several of their songs. “It’s been a dream come true,” said Brown Caldwell, who was 11 when she and R.C. and Edward, who were 12 and 13, co-founded The Staples Jr. Singers in 1967. They started playing in the church where their mother was a preacher and father a deacon, and toured by van around the South. And on Friday, the Browns are releasing “Searching,” their first batch of new songs in nearly 50 years, and gearing up for a tour in July to the Roskilde festival in Denmark as well as the Netherlands, Slovakia and Germany. “It’s a blessing,” Brown Caldwell said. “It feels good. We are getting older and it seems the Lord just now is blessing our youth like it’s brand new again.” Their resurgence began with a record collector who stumbled on their first single in a Midwest thrift store and bought it for $1. Greg Belson, whose gospel collection fills three rooms in Los Angeles, was intrigued that the band’s name was so similar to The Staple Singers. He put “We Got a Race to Run” on a portable turntable he often brings with him, and was struck by their sound: “It sat completely in the wheelhouse of what I look for, which is specifically gospel with a soulful tinge, rather than what I would say more classical church-based gospel,” Belson said. Yale Evelev, the president of Luaka Bop, heard Belson’s radio show and pulled from his collection for a compilation of 1970s gospel soul songs called “The Time For Peace Is Now.” He wanted to include the Staples Jr. Singers single, but first he had to find the band. He figured out that Annie Brown was now Annie Caldwell, and called all seven listed in Mississippi. Like Belson, Evelev was attracted to a gospel sound that isn’t heard much on the radio these days. “These are soul records really,” he said. “Soul records with a message. That message imbues the performance with a certain underlying intensity and honesty.” He reached Brown Caldwell on the last call. “I never believed that this record would come up again,” Brown Caldwell said. “Forreal though. Is this for real?” She agreed to put the single out but her brothers were initially resistant, and they balked at reissuing “When Do We Get Paid.” Only a few hundred original copies of the record exist, one of which Belson bought off a Milwaukee collector for $600. “There was a lot of family drama that was happening that had existed for a long time,” Evelev said. “We kind of ended up in the middle of it, and it was a lot of back and forth and a
Talks of mandated national service, by Clarence Page
Don’t get nervous, young folks, but talk about a national service mandate has been bubbling up again in Washington.
40 acres and a Lie
40 Acres and a Lie tells the history of an often-misunderstood government program that gave formerly enslaved people land titles after the Civil War. A year and a half later, almost all the land had been taken back.
Longtime Southern Baptist leader Paul Pressler, who was accused of sexual abuse, dies at 94
Paul Pressler, a leading figure of the Southern Baptist Convention who was accused of sexually abusing boys and young men and later settled a lawsuit over the allegations, has died. He was 94.
Giants’ Willie Mays, ‘Say Hey Kid,’ dies at 93
Willie Mays, the electrifying “Say Hey Kid” whose singular combination of talent, drive and exuberance made him one of baseball’s greatest and most beloved players, has died. He was 93.
Bishop Barber readies for D.C. march
At St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on June 9, Bishop William Barber II, co-chair of The Poor People’s Campaign, rallied the congregation during a sermon as part of his national preaching tour.
Personality: Cheryl Lewis Burke
Spotlight on honorary chair of 13th Annual Jazz Inside Out
With education as the family business for three generations, Cheryl Lewis Burke’s career path may have been etched from an early age. Both her parents and all of her aunts were educators, but it was her experience growing up in a segregated Powhatan County that shaped her calling to the field of education.
Richmond opens cooling stations to beat extreme heat
As summer temperatures start to spike this week, the City of Richmond is taking steps to help residents stay cool and safe by opening cooling stations in neighborhoods throughout the area.
Military Retirees to host Veterans Awareness Walk
The Military Retirees Club of Richmond is calling on vet- erans, service members and military families to participate in their first “Bridge Over Troubled Waters Walk” on Saturday, June 29, at Belle Isle. The event aims to bring more attention to suicide prevention and the opioid crisis affecting the military community. Partici- pants will gather at 7 a.m. in the Dominion Energy parking lot adjacent to the foot of the Belle Isle Pedestrian Bridge to register for the 5K walk, which begins at 7:30 a.m. The route will take walkers around Brown’s Island, allow for a photo opportunity at the Tredegar Iron Works, cross over the Belle Isle Pedestrian Bridge, and conclude back at the Dominion parking lot. Refreshments and entertainment will be provided after the walk. The “Bridge Over Troubled Waters Walk” is being held to show support for veterans, active service members, and their families affected by mental health issues and substance abuse. For additional information, please contact the Military Retirees Club of Richmond at (804) 400-9473.
Honoring outstanding volunteers and service groups
The Commonwealth of Virginia is calling on residents to nominate exceptional volunteers, organizations and businesses for the 2024 Governor’s Volunteerism & Community Service Awards. These annual honors celebrate the contributions of Virginians who dedicate their time and energy to causes that create positive change across the state.
Brewing business in Scott’s Addition
Next month, Scott’s Addition will officially be home to Brainstorm Brewhouse, a majority Black-owned brewery.
Genealogist Michelle Evans-Oliver selected for fellowship
Preservation Virginia announced the 2024 class of its African American Fellowship Program recently, recognizing five community preservationists for their dedication to historic preservation and research. Among this year’s fellows is Michelle Evans-Oliver, a renowned local genealogist.
Henrico County transitions to .gov domain to bolster cybersecurity
As part of an effort to enhance cybersecurity for r users of its online services, Henrico County general government is moving the domain for its website and email to “.gov.”
The big payback
Over the next few weeks, we will be devoting a portion of our pages to a three-part story called “40 Acres and a Lie.” This project is the result of work by the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Investigative Reporting Workshop. The story examines a gov- ernment program that most African Americans are aware of, a broken promise that people who were enslaved in the South would receive 40 acres of land and a mule. If you think you know this story, you’ll be surprised what the reporters (Alexia Fernández Campbell, April Simpson and Pratheek Rebala) found in their research of land records and documents from the Freedmen’s Bureau, a govern- ment agency that assisted free black people in the South, founded in 1860s. While the details about the government program were long buried and forgotten, the idea of it lived on in Black popular culture, among poets, writers and storytellers. That fact may have been key to helping bring this story into the light. One of the writers of the project says when she ran across the phrase “40 Acres and a Mule” in her research for another project, it struck a chord – only because she remembered it from a song by Nas called “You Owe Me” and from Kanye West’s “All Fall Down.” Yes, we miss old Kanye too. If the writer had been of a certain age, perhaps she would have recalled the name of film director Spike Lee’s production company, “40 Acres and a Mule,” or Gil Scott- Heron’s song about waiting for reparation, “The Train From Washington.” When others forgot, the griots remembered. In the aftermath of the Juneteenth holiday, this is a timely report that reveals new details about the challenges African Americans faced after the news of emancipation. By unearthing the truth about this broken promise, and others, we gain a deeper un- derstanding of the systemic barriers and injustices that still need to be addressed today.
Protecting the elders
There’s a lot you can learn about a place by looking at how they treat their vulnerable populations, such as senior citizens. Here in Virginia, we’ve got some work to do on that issue. We’re glad our attorney general recognized this and decided to do something about it.
