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Living a year under COVID
Around Richmond, people mark the first anniversary of life under COVID-19 and look toward what the future may bring
It has been an almost unbelievable 12 months for Monica and Clifton Murray.
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New ‘Emancipation and Freedom Monument’ unveiling draws crowds, tears
“Overwhelming!” “Excited!” “Proud!” Those were some of the comments from onlookers as they viewed the state’s new “Emancipation and Freedom Monument” that was unveiled Wednesday on Brown’s Island on the James River in Richmond’s Downtown.
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RPS opens with problems with lunches, new buildings
Richmond Public Schools reopened last week and school trash cans are overflowing with rejected prepackaged lunches that students would rather throw away than eat. And parents don’t blame them.
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Facts
In closing out 2022, the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) issued facts that which Black Americans and others may find interesting.
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Baltimore bridge collapse
Port closure sends companies scrambling to reroute cargo
The stunning collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge is diverting shipping and trucking around one of the busiest ports on America’s East Coast, creating delays and raising costs in the latest disruption to global supply chains.
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Coco Jones talks earning Grammy nods, overcoming obstacles after Disney fame, Hollywood’s pay equity
Coco Jones was so obsessed with fine tuning her skills as a singer that she tried to mimic Beyoncé’s Olympic-style training of singing while running on a treadmill.
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Yaegel T. Welch has long carried ‘Mockingbird’ role in his head
It was the power and value of performance that first inspired Yaegel T. Welch to take to the stage. Growing up, he saw the arts as a way to express himself in a world that didn’t always know how to connect or communicate with him.
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Justice Or Else
Million Man March 20th Anniversary draws throngs calling for justice, equity
Twenty years ago, 1.2 million African-American men assembled in a blanket of humanity that spread across the National Mall from the U.S. Capitol to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to attend the first Million Man March. There, they declared “their right to justice to atone for their failure as men and to accept responsibility as the family’s head.”
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Loss of a legend
Julian Bond, warrior in the struggle for equality, dies at 75
Through the relentless struggles of the Civil Rights Movement, Julian Bond always kept his sense of humor. His steady demeanor helped him persist despite the inevitable difficulties involved, his wife recalled. Mr. Bond “never took his eyes off the prize — and that was always racial equality,” his wife, Pamela Horowitz, said Sunday. “He always ... in that hard struggle kept a sense of humor, and I think that’s what allowed him to do that work for so long — his whole life really,” his wife added.
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Cornell Brooks out as head of national NAACP
“We’ll continue to move forward, we’ll continue to organize and we’ll continue to seek to recruit young people to carry on the work, ” said James E. “J.J.” Minor III president of the Richmond Branch NAACP.
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Full-court press
Navy Hill District Corp. is pulling out all stops as Feb. 24 vote by City Council on $1.5B Coliseum replacement and Downtown development nears
From robocalls to press conferences, the Navy Hill District Corp. that Dominion Energy top executive Thomas F. Farrell II heads is pulling out all the stops to generate public support for the $1.5 billion Richmond Coliseum replacement plan ahead of the scheduled vote by City Council in late February.
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Lobby Day 2020: An affront to Dr. King
There was something eerie and insulting about the thousands of gun-toting lobbyists who packed the area around Capitol Square on Monday to demand that Virginia lawmakers not step on their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
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Mayor eschews status quo, urges city to think bigger in State of City address
Stop being afraid to do something great. That’s Mayor Levar M. Stoney’s response to the opposition to the $1.5 billion Coliseum replacement plan that so far has failed to gain widespread public support.
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Second Amendment sanctuary push aims to defy new gun laws
A standing-room-only crowd of more than 400 packed the meeting room, filled the lobby and spilled into the parking lot recently in rural Buckingham County. They had one thing on their minds: Guns.
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Not here
Virginia Union University rescinds permission for outside group to use campus facility for Trump event
Virginia Union University on Tuesday pulled out of allowing a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration after learning the private group arranging the event planned to bring President Trump to the campus to be honored.
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New research reconsiders writings of enslaved Muslim scholar
He was from Senegal, wrote in Arabic and was enslaved. Or was he an Arab prince? He was a scholar who memorized vast passages of the Quran and mastered numerous Islamic texts. Or were his writings unintelligible? He was a devout Muslim. Or did he convert to Christianity? These are just some of the conflicting narratives about Omar ibn Said (or more correctly Sayyid), a black Muslim scholar captured in Senegal in 1807 and taken by boat to Charleston, S.C.
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Memorial to nation’s lynching victims opens
Elmore Bolling defied the odds against black men and built several successful businesses during the harsh era of Jim Crow segregation in the South. He had more money than a lot of white people, which his descendants believe was all it took to get him lynched in 1947.
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10 vying for School Board appointment
Candidates seeking appointment to the Richmond School Board’s 7th District seat pointed to a multitude of issues during public interviews Monday night.
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Trump scraps program protecting young undocumented immigrants
President Trump on Tuesday scrapped an Obama era program that protects from deportation immigrants brought illegally into the United States as children, delaying implementation until March and giving a gridlocked Congress six months to decide the fate of almost 800,000 young people.
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Glory, dreams and nightmares
Area teams make early exits in CIAA Tournament
Winston-Salem State University will forever cherish memories of the final CIAA Tournament in Charlotte, N.C., before the event moves in 2021 to Baltimore. Meanwhile, Virginia Union and Virginia State universities may be inclined to burn their 2020 scrapbooks.