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These new equipment lockers are among $1.75 million in improvements to Richmond Fire Station 10 at Hermitage Road and West Leigh Street. The view was …
Published on April 9, 2015
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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
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When Freedom Came, Part 3
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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Flying Squirrels start season with fireworks at The Diamond
Play Ball!
“And the rocket’s red glare; the bombs bursting in air ...” Those are lyrics in “The Star Spangled Banner,” played before every Richmond Flying Squirrels game. The words also describe the postgame fireworks planned at The Diamond this season. The Flying Squirrels’ home opener Thursday, April 9, against the Bowie Baysox will conclude with “dueling fireworks,” pyrotechnics launched from two locations.
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Rev. Graham ignores racism
Easter was last Sunday, but the Rev. Franklin Graham is still wiping egg off his face. In an unintentionally insensitive Facebook post on March 12, the hugely influential white evangelist ignored the existence of racial bias by law enforcement in the United States by suggesting the easy solution to police shootings is to teach our children to obey authority.
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The game
We congratulate and offer wishes for much success to Coach Shaka Smart and his family, who have relocated to Austin, Texas, where he just became the new basketball coach for the University of Texas Longhorns. In the six years Coach Smart led the Virginia Commonwealth University Rams, he showed his players, the Richmond community and the entire nation that discipline and hard work, coupled with genuine caring, can bring great rewards.
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Smart trades Rams horns for Texas Longhorns
When Shaka Smart was hired as Virginia Commonwealth University’s basketball coach in 2009, he was a little known, much traveled assistant, with a name that puzzled people. Since then, his name and fame — and that of his signature game style, “Havoc” — spread. Last week, Smart traded his Rams horns for the Texas Longhorns. He leaves Richmond as one of the hottest commodities in the sport, practically a household name among hoops enthusiasts.
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‘Havoc’ to continue under Will Wade
Among Shaka Smart’s first duties upon becoming Virginia Commonwealth University’s basketball coach in 2009 was to hire Will Wade as an assistant. Smart referred to Wade as “my first hire.” After Smart’s resignation for the head coaching job at the University of Texas last week, among the first moves the VCU administration made was to hire Wade as head coach for the Rams.
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Dean of nation’s black preachers dies
Dr. Gardner C. Taylor, widely considered the dean of the nation’s black preachers and “the poet laureate of American Protestantism,” died Sunday, April 5, 2015, after a ministerial career that spanned more than six decades. He was 96. “Dr. Taylor was a theological giant who will be greatly missed,” the Rev. Carroll Baltimore, past president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, said of the minister who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000.
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Huge growth in Islam projected
Islam is projected to grow more than twice as fast as any other major religion over the next half century, with Muslims expected to outnumber Christians by 2070, according to projections released last week by the Pew Research Center. While Christianity will remain a dominant global religion, it will lose majority religious status in countries such as the United Kingdom, France and Australia.
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Richmond celebrates 150 years of emancipation
In the midst of the city that once served as a merciless marketplace for hundreds of thousands of enslaved black people, a diverse audience of thousands gathered Saturday at the State Capitol to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the liberation of Richmond from the slave-holding Confederacy. The ceremony was marked by re-enactors in period dress and uniforms, uplifting music and speeches looking toward the future.
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Personality: Christian P. Dundas
Spotlight on volunteer coordinator of Hoops for Health
Christian P. Dundas says he came up with the idea for a 3-on-3 youth basketball tournament at the Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club in Church Hill three years ago when he was playing recreational basketball. It was about the same time the NCAA Tournament, known as “March Madness,” was underway. “It dawned on me … why not our own version of March Madness at the club?” Mr. Dundas recalls thinking. He suggested the tournament for sixth- through eighth-graders at the club at 3701 R St., where he serves on the advisory council. Mr. Dundas says Dick Guthrie, also a member of the advisory council, suggested adding a community health festival to the tournament. Hugh Jones, the club’s executive director, rubber-stamped the idea and asked Mr. Dundas to organize the first event. The rest is history.
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State may force city to replace voting machines
Richmond, Henrico County and 27 other localities might be forced to immediately buy new voting machines for use in upcoming elections. The reason: The state Board of Elections is considering banning the wireless touch-screen machines the city and the other localities successfully have used for 10 years.
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Petersburg jail closure to cost taxpayers $
Instead of saving money, the closure of the Petersburg Jail will cost city taxpayers at least $1.2 million extra each year, a Free Press analysis has determined. Figures from Petersburg’s government confirm the newspaper’s finding that closing the jail is more expensive than keeping it open, belying claims from Mayor W. Howard Myers and three other council members who supported the jail’s shutdown. That extra cost is embedded in the proposed budget that Petersburg City Manager William E. Johnson III presented recently to the seven-member Petersburg City Council. His proposed budget also provides no raises for city employees and no increase in city contributions to the public schools.
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VUU police chief: Report the ‘bad apples’
As news spread across the nation of white South Carolina police officer Michael T. Slager killing unarmed African-American Walter L. Scott in cold blood, Virginia Union University Police Chief Carlton Edwards was leading a public safety forum Tuesday between Richmond area law enforcement officials and about 40 students on the VUU campus.
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Michigan woman now world’s oldest at 115
Detroit Free Press The front door flew open as a reporter approached a brick ranch house in suburban Detroit, Mich., and a voice called out, “C’mon in — I’ve got Time magazine on the phone.” The speaker stood last week over Jeralean Talley, a placid figure dressed in a pale pink nightgown. Mrs. Talley, a bright-eyed elderly woman in spectacles who, despite her profound hearing loss, was fully aware, relatives said, that she’d just been declared by gerontology experts to be the oldest person in the world.
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Police brutality : ‘I will not tolerate it’
Chief talks tough on expectations of officer conduct
Richmond Police Chief Alfred Durham minced no words about how he won’t tolerate brutality and excessive use of force by officers under his command. “I’m going to tell it like it is. If there is riffraff in my department and you’re wearing a gun and a badge, you’re gone,” he told an audience of about 50 people at a public forum Tuesday night at Richmond’s Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. “I will not tolerate it.” At this second “Peeps and Police Community Conversations” attended by mostly elderly and middle-aged adults, Chief Durham said that “several officers were disciplined” recently after they mishandled a situation inside a resident’s home. He did not elaborate.
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Danville’s Claiborne among NCAA ‘pioneers’
In 1966, Duke University advanced to the NCAA basketball Final Four with an all-white roster. Waiting anxiously in the wings, however, was Claudius B. Claiborne, the Blue Devils’ first black athlete. From segregated John Langston High School in Danville, the 6-foot-3 Claiborne played on Duke’s freshman team in 1966, then moved to varsity for the 1966-67 season and became a three-year letterman under Coach Vic Bubas.
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Personality: Kimberley L. Martin
Spotlight on founder of nonprofit helping students buy textbooks
Kimberley L. Martin recalls how difficult it was for her to pay for textbooks when she attended college more than two decades ago. “I got student loans. And after I had finished paying for my room, board and tuition, I couldn’t always cover the cost of my textbooks,” says Mrs. Martin. “I had to scramble to figure out how to pay for them.” Mrs. Martin earned a bachelor’s degree in business information systems from Virginia State University in 1990 and a master’s degree in human resources from Central Michigan University in 1998.
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The U.S. flag flies once again over the city of Richmond on April 3, 1865, proclaiming Union victory over Confederate forces in the city and …
Published on April 2, 2015
