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Personality: Tina Slaughter
Spotlight on president of the LPGA Amateur Golf Association Richmond Chapter
From a young age, Tina Slaughter has been an avid golfer.
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Karen Clark Sheard, Grammy Award winner, to speak at local church
Grammy Award-winning singer, musician and songwriter Karen Clark Sheard is scheduled to speak at Cedar Street Baptist Church of God in the East End at 7 p.m. Friday, May 1, the church has announced. She is one of three women scheduled to lead weekly Women’s Month services at the church at 2301 Cedar St. that is led by Dr. Anthony M. Chandler Sr.
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Severely injured man waits 78 minutes for ambulance
J. Maurice Hopkins found out the hard way that the Richmond Ambulance Authority and the emergency dispatch system does not always respond quickly.
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Go 'Red4Ed:' Teachers lobby for education $
The State Capitol echoed with the chants “Fund Our Future!” and “Red4Ed!” as educators, students and their supporters gathered in the thousands Monday afternoon to press for increased state funding for teachers and public schools in Virginia.
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Area AKAs celebrate VP Harris’ inauguration
Members of six area Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority chapters put on their pearls and Chuck Taylor sneakers Wednesday evening and celebrated the inauguration of their sorority sister, Vice President Kamala Harris, with a Zoom event on Wednesday, Jan. 20, from 6:08 to 7:08 p.m., homage to the sorority’s founding in 1908 at Howard University. The newly inaugurated vice president is a Howard University alumna.
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Hip-hop artist Ciara and her boyfriend, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson of Richmond, made their red carpet debut at the BET Awards, wearing coordinated ensembles. …
Published on July 3, 2015
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Personality: Ayana Obika
Spotlight on co-host of Le Diner en Blanc-Richmond
The city’s diversity and elegance will shine again with the third annual Le Diner en Blanc-Richmond, a chic, pop- up dinner where diners wear all white, bring their own white tables, chairs, tablecloths and dishes — no plastic or paper allowed — and nosh on picnic fare they bring or pre-purchase and then pack up and go home, taking everything, including all leftovers and trash, with them. Ayana Obika, along with Christine Wansleben and Enjoli Moon, set Le Diner en Blanc- Richmond in motion in the River City two years ago.
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Personality: Emilie G. Webb
Spotlight on nonprofit Assisting Families of Inmates Silent Auction chair
Every week, dozens of individuals and families with incarcerated loved ones benefit from Emilie Webb’s decision to pursue a career in nursing instead of art.
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School Board approves plan for $54M in COVID-19 relief
The Richmond School Board voted 8-1 Monday night to approve a plan for $54 million in federal money to handle a variety of costs stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Personality: Rhonda Keyes Pleasants
Spotlight on chair of Family Representative Council of East Marshall Street Well Project
Rhonda Keyes Pleasants entered the funeral industry in 1996 and became a fully licensed funeral director and embalmer in December 2000.
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Rovenia Vaughan, former president of Virginia NAACP
Rovenia Vaughan was a trailblazing member of the Virginia State Conference of the NAACP. In 1999, she was the first woman to be elected president of the state’s largest civil rights organization. The state branch was started in the 1930s. “Once the ballots were counted, I felt the delegates had spoken and my past service to the organization was the reason I was elected,” she said when featured as the Free Press Personality in the Nov. 11-13, 1999, edition.
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Dance-Morrissey race opens with rift over death penalty
Petersburg Sen. Rosalyn R. Dance is promising to propose a moratorium on executions of death row prisoners if she is re-elected.
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Local chef-caterer turns empty church kitchen into a busy business
On weekdays, the kitchen at Faith Community Baptist Church in Richmond’s East End is a beehive of activity six hours a day.
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National Night Out to bring together police, community spirit
The rise in crime in Richmond has Marilyn Olds frustrated. “While you are locked up in your house, criminals are taking over our streets,” said the president of the Creighton Court Tenant Council. “The criminals need to see that we are united and we are not going to give up.”
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Claudelia S. Barnes, 81, former med tech, teacher
Claudelia S. Barnes was born and raised in Richmond at a time when Jim Crow laws oppressed African-Americans and the Ku Klux Klan fomented a reign of terror. “The Ku Klux Klan burned a cross in her parents’ front yard when she was a teenager,” recalled Mrs. Barnes’ daughter, Dawn C. Cobb.
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Sheriff sanctioned over loss of videotape in jail inmate’s death
Richmond Sheriff C.T. Woody Jr. describes the 500 video cameras that record inside the Richmond Justice Center “as a sort of a truth serum,” a way to show “what really happened” when inmates complain or there is a disagreement about events. Those words have come back to haunt him as he seeks to defend himself and the jail against a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit stemming from the death of Erin Jenkins, 29, just five days after the new jail opened in 2014.
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Officer acquitted in shooting
Henrico Police Officer Joel D. Greenway did nothing wrong when he shot up a car he was trying to stop from leaving a gas station’s parking lot on Nine Mile Road, gravely wounding a female passenger in unleashing seven bullets at the unarmed occupants.
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Conducting the future: Burrs holds the baton at UR, Petersburg
Naima Burrs grew up surrounded by music. The Richmond native’s mother is renowned soprano Lisa Edwards-Burrs. Her father, Stacy L. Burrs, is a former CEO of the Black History Museum and Cultural Center, a former director of Venture Richmond and a jazz aficionado.
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James McGee and his sister, Jazlyn, check out Christopher the Clown, who towered over the crowd as he entertained them.
Published on April 9, 2015

