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The people’s champion
Ditch the memories of Muhammad Ali showing up uninvited at Sonny Liston’s training camp, announcing that he was going bear hunting. Put aside his boasts of being the greatest of alllll-timmmme. Scratch the images of the “Ali Shuffle” and his patented rope-a-dope.
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‘Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic’ opens Saturday at VMFA
Special to the Free Press Asked what “A New Republic” means, visual artist Kehinde Wiley replies rapid-fire. “It’s a space-clearing gesture.”
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Prince autopsy report hints at puzzling painkiller mystery
The report from the medical examiner who conducted Prince’s autopsy is tantalizing for what it doesn’t say. The single-page document released last week lists a fentanyl overdose as the cause of death, but it offers few clues to indicate whether the musician was a chronic pain patient desperately seeking relief, a longtime opioid user whose habit became an addiction or a combination of both.
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Ali was golden starting in 1960 Olympics
The 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome were held during the height of the bitter Cold War. Helping to ease world tension was 18-year-old Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., just two months after his graduation from Central High School in Louisville, Ky., where he was a bit of a class clown.
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Highland Springs junior vaulting toward championship
As a younger athlete, Chris St. Helen tried his luck at basketball, football and long-distance running, and he was average. Then he discovered the pole vault and he was average no more. From then on, it has been up, up and away.
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Ali remembered in Muslim world as a voice of change
Of all Muhammad Ali’s travels in the Muslim world, his 1964 trip to Egypt was perhaps the most symbolic, a visit remembered mostly by an iconic photo of the boxing great happily shaking hands with a smiling Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Egypt’s nationalist and popular president.
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President Carter pushes for interracial Baptist cooperation
Pastors Frederick Haynes and George Mason both lead Baptist churches in Dallas, but they had never met until the not-guilty verdict in the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin brought them together in 2013.
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Dr. Jones drops out
Dr. Derik E. Jones is not going to seek four more years on the Richmond School Board — opening the door to other candidates.
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Clinton primary wins assure Dem nomination
Eight years after conceding the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination to then-rival Barack Obama, the first African-American to be the standard-bearer for a major political party, Hillary Clinton is poised to make history of her own. Tuesday night, the former U.S. senator and secretary of state took her place as the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee after claiming victory over persistent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
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Verizon strike ends
Nearly 40,000 striking Verizon employees in Virginia and eight other states returned to work June 1 after reaching a tentative contract agreement.
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Farewell to the champ
Muhammad Ali fought for justice, equality and title
More than 62 years ago, an anonymous bicycle thief in Louisville, Ky., unknowingly set in motion the amazing career of a boxing legend and remarkable world figure who would live up to his self-billing as “The Greatest.”
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Washington Nats manager Dusty Baker recalls his ‘heckuva good time’ in Richmond
It has been 45 years since he last swung a bat at the former Parker Field, but Dusty Baker remembers Richmond. Graciously, Baker, the current Washington Nationals manager, granted an interview to the Free Press on May 28, prior to the Nats’ home game with St. Louis.
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City budget deficit pegged at $4.1M
The City of Richmond is facing a $4.1 million deficit and likely will have to dip into savings to avoid being in the red when the books close June 30 on the current 2015-16 fiscal year. That’s according to Lenora Reid, the city’s chief financial officer.
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Cruising // Under the watchful eye of her father, Tommy Davis, young Luci cruises on her bicycle along the 500 block of South Davis Avenue …
Published on June 3, 2016
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GOP ‘needs to cease their tireless efforts to deny and restrict folks’ from voting
I must take umbrage with the Republican majority of the General Assembly and its leadership. Once again, this partisan body of legislators has shown that it is more concerned with wasting taxpayers’ dollars in a frivolous lawsuit against Gov. Terry McAuliffe over restoration of voting rights for more than 200,000 individuals rather than providing for the medical care of 400,000 families in the Commonwealth.
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Death penalty too good for Roof
Dylann Roof, the unrepentant racist who killed nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., is — no question — a monster. He prayed with people before reciting racist cants and annihilating people. After his heinous acts, it was discovered that he was a rabid racist who had wrapped himself in the Confederate flag. Does he deserve the death penalty? No.
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Recommit to rid nuclear weapons
On May 27, President Obama became the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima, Japan, where, at the end of World War II, the United States became the first and only country to drop an atomic bomb. The president used the occasion to revive attention on the need to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
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Donations allow Armstrong High to ‘play ball’
The enthusiastic words “Play ball!” were heard on Armstrong High School’s campus this spring for the first time in many baseball seasons.
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MLK Middle not living up to his name
Richmond School Board member Shonda Harris-Muhammed is calling on her colleagues and Superintendent Dana T. Bedden to stem a tide of alleged violence and assaults at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in the East End. In a recent Free Press interview, Ms. Harris-Muhammed, who represents the 6th District where the school is located, said more than 10 teachers and staff members from the school contact her regularly about their fears for their safety and that of others.
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City goes dim on solar streetlights
Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones has boasted many times during the last seven years about the solar streetlights that were installed in a West End neighborhood with taxpayers’ dollars.
