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Personality: Harold Aquino-Guzman
Spotlight on Richmond Public Schools’ highest achieving student
Harold Aquino-Guzman has a lot to celebrate this month. The George Wythe High School senior class president is not only the valedictorian at the South Side school, he is the top achieving student in Richmond Public Schools with a GPA of 5.1392.
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Personality: Amy Black
Spotlight on founder of nonprofit Pink Ink Fund
When Amy Black began working as a tattoo artist in 2000 at Pink Ink in Richmond, she was among just a handful of women in the field.
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Confederates to hold service at Downtown church
The executive director of the Historic Richmond Foundation is defending the organization’s decision to rent the historic church it owns and maintains in Downtown to a Richmond-based national group that glorifies the Confederacy.
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VSU wins NCAA first-round playoff game
Virginia State University’s football season falls into the category, “Who would have thought?”
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Children left behind
In 2002, only about half of students in Richmond Public Schools rated as proficient in reading and math.
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Pressure grows for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from cases involving Jan. 6 insurrection probe
Suspicions are growing that the lone Black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court used his
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VCU’s Heartbeats program races for better maternal health outcomes
For the last several months, a new program at Virginia Commonwealth University has been working to prevent sometimes fatal complications such as domestic violence, racial inequality and medical bias that come with pregnancy.
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50th anniversary of historic 1970-71 Rams basketball team
What’s commonplace today in college basketball — an all-Black lineup—was head spinning a half century ago.
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Black excellence
We often hear the expression “Black excellence,” particularly when Black people, individually or collectively, achieve the seemingly impossible.
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‘No one handed out medals’
Retired Richmond fireman recalls heroic work saving elderly residents in fire 44 years ago
As the firetrucks roared up, an elderly woman was screaming for help out of a half-open window as smoke billowed around her. She would be the first person that firefighter William“Junie” Bullock would rescue that day from the ninth floor of the Boxwood Building at Imperial Plaza, a five-building complex for retirees located on Bellevue Avenue in North Side that had opened 11 years earlier.
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Roxie Raines Kornegay Allison, whose activism led to diversity on state boards and commissions, dies at 83
Roxie Raines Kornegay Allison championed Black inclusion in government and public contracting while also opening her heart and her home to children and adults who needed a helping hand.
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Good riddance
68 law enforcement officers have been decertified in Virginia since a new state law took effect last March expanding the grounds for which they can be disqualified to work.
Two years ago, the only reasons police officers could be decertified in Virginia were if they tested positive for drugs, were convicted of certain crimes or failed to complete required training.
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Bold beginnings
RPS pilots new program at 2 schools
It was bright and sunny Monday morning when Angela Swafford brought her sons, Zarkarin and Zionyah, back to school. While other Richmond students and parents are still in the middle of the summer break, Ms. Swafford was one of the first of many parents escorting their children to Fairfield Court Elementary School this week as part of a pilot program extending the school’s semester from 180 to 200 days.
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After Roe’s fall, Black churches support some or all reproductive health options
For Evangelist Lesley W. Monet, the weeks since the fall of Roe v. Wade has been a time of praise and preparation.
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It’s a deal
City and RVA Diamond Partners finalize $2.44B agreement; council vote comes next
The Diamond District – Richmond’s biggest ever development – is now at the starting gate after seven months of negotiations between the city and RVA Diamond Partners LLC (RVADP), the private developer.
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The sophisticated soul of Will Downing
Will Downing has been around long enough to be one of the few Grammy-nominated singers left in his lane. After 26 albums, (including his latest, “Pieces”) the R&B singer is fine with where his career, which began in the 1980s, has put him.
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Richmond Free Press founders receive City Hall honor and recognition
Black-owned weekly saluted for its ‘leadership, service, dedication and prominence in the community’
Jean P. Boone and the late Raymond H. Boone, founders and publishers of the Richmond Free Press newspaper, received recognition from City Council on Monday night to honor their journalistic contributions to the city.
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Hanover residents hopeful after Virginia Supreme Court’s Wegmans ruling
A recent decision by the Virginia Supreme Court means residents are being given a second chance to make their case against a Wegmans distribution center — even though construction on the 1.7 million-square-foot facility located in Ashland is nearing completion.
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Faith and fate of affirmative action
It’s a different colorblindness than the one envisioned in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to reject the race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina comes in a year of 60th anniversaries in American civil rights history.
