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No, Donald, you’re not being persecuted like the Scottsboro Boys, by Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan
The Scottsboro Boys were victims of racism; Donald Trump, conversely, has long been known for his racism
“War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength.” So wrote George Orwell in 1984, his famous dystopian novel about authoritarian- ism. The book gave us the term “Orwellian,” describing situations where facts are ignored, truth is turned on its head, and 2+2=5. Now, almost 75 years after its publication, the United States is confronting its own brush with authoritarianism, by prosecuting former President Trump for his attempt to seize power after losing the 2020 election.
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Former School Board member mounts campaign to oust principal
How much influence should parents and the community wield in deciding who should run a public school? That question is at the heart of a dispute over the leadership of Blackwell Elementary School on South Side.
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Missed opportunity
Talk about a missed opportunity to put Richmond in the spotlight. We are talking about the celebration next week of the liberation of our city from the grip of slave power and the human oppression that was taken for granted since the nation’s founding. This should be a huge event. After all, Richmond was at the epicenter of a dramatic struggle for the soul of America. For four terrible years, the question of whether a flawed democratic nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal was debated in blood and cannon fire.
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Property values up in city
For the third year in a row, rising property values in Richmond will put Richmond City Council on the spot when it comes to collecting property taxes from owners of real estate.
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MLB’s Jackie Bradley has Richmond roots
The hottest hitter in major league baseball has deep Richmond roots. Boston Red Sox centerfielder Jackie Bradley Jr., who has an epic 29-game hitting streak, was born in Richmond in 1990, and played baseball in the Metropolitan Junior Baseball League.
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Collaboration helps erase graffiti at historic cemeteries
Nearly three weeks after historical African- American and Jewish cemeteries were tagged with graffiti, volunteers and other workers have cleaned the marks — “777” — that were spraypainted on headstones and entrances to Evergreen, East End, Barton Heights and Sir Moses Montefiore cemeteries, including the gravesite of noted businesswoman Maggie L. Walker.
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Rep. Cummings remembered as ‘fierce champion’
First African-American lawmaker to lie in state at Capitol
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings was eulogized as a leader with the fiery moral conviction of an Old Testament prophet at a funeral last Friday that brought former presidents and ordinary people alike to the Baltimore church where the congressman worshipped for four decades.
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Lydia M. Jiggetts, prayer warrior and activist, dies at 70
Dr. Lydia Mercedes Jiggetts sought to help people in multiple ways. In the 1970s, she was part of a team of activists that helped force Richmond area radio and television stations to end their whites-only employment policies and open their doors to African-American talent.
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Richmond-Petersburg to become central to U.S. critical drug manufacturing and stockpile
Richmond has just become the national headquarters for a government effort to resolve a long-festering problem — American dependence on overseas supplies of life-saving medications.
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School Board member Jonathan Young springs open enrollment attendance plan on colleagues
Richmond School Board members were blindsided Monday night when board member Jonathan Young, who represents the 4th District, proposed that Richmond Public Schools allow students to choose which school they want to attend, with a lottery ultimately deciding where students would enroll.
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Acclaimed writer Paule Marshall, professor emeritus at VCU, dies at 90
Writer Paule Marshall, an exuberant and sharpened storyteller who in books such as “Daughters” and “Brown Girl, Brownstones” drew upon classic and vernacular literature and her mother’s kitchen conversations to narrate the divides between African-Americans and Caucasians, men and women, and modern and traditional cultures, died Monday, Aug. 20, 2019, in Richmond.
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When Freedom Came, Part 1
The Free Press presents a series chronicling the black experience during the liberation of Richmond in April 1865 and the end of the Civil War.
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Toni Morrison, who transformed American literature to win Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, dies at 88
Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, a pioneer and reigning giant of modern literature whose imaginative power in “Beloved,” “Song of Solomon” and other works transformed American letters by dramatizing the pursuit of freedom within the boundaries of race, has died at age 88.
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Afghan evacuees mark first U.S. Ramadan with gratitude, agony
Sitting cross-legged on the floor as his wife and six children laid plates of fruit on a red cloth in front of him, Wolayat Khan Samadzoi watched through the open balcony door for the sliver of the new moon to appear in the cloudless New Mexico sky, where the sun had set beyond a desert mountain.
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Cancel student loan debt, by Charlene Crowell
One of President Biden’s first executive actions exercised his authority granted in the Higher Education Act.
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Hot and unhoused
Councilwoman urges city to open shelter for disabled people, families and children; Efforts to ‘expand the safety net’ for homeless coming early September, says official
Staying outdoors in the summer heat “is no fun,” said Thomas Bateman, a disabled factory worker. The bedraggled 63-year-old Richmonder hasn’t been able to find an affordable place to stay in the city, and his only income, a government disability check, allows him to pay for a motel stay just one night a month.
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‘I believe I witnessed a murder”
Witnesses to George Floyd’s deadly arrest in Minneapolis tell jury of their shock, horror
Darnella Frazier said she sometimes lays awake at night “apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life.”
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Analysis: Musk and Trump face their reckoning
Elon Musk and Donald Trump share bestride-the-colossus egos, an incessant desire to be the center of attention and a platform to showcase their eccentricities and erraticism. Both the Tesla CEO and the former president have used that platform, Twitter, as a sword and a shield — a soapbox to rouse the passions (and tap the pocketbooks) of tens of millions of followers and repulse the other side.
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Despite defendants’ inability to pay court fees, many still incur costs
“Anyone charged with a crime that can result in jail or prison time is entitled to legal representation. In the familiar line from the Miranda warning, “You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you.”
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Senate race may prove crucial in chamber control
Richmond will be in the center of the high-profile political fight to replace retiring Republican state Sen. John Watkins in the General Assembly. Both major political parties are expected to go all out to capture the 10th Senate District seat that appears to be the key to control of the closely divided state Senate where Republicans now hold sway. The GOP already has selected its candidate, Glen H. Sturtevant Jr., an attorney and a member of the Richmond School Board since 2013.
