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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.
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Next steps
Gov. Northam moves to reopen Virginia on May 15
Movie theaters, barber shops and hair salons, restaurants and a host of other businesses deemed non-essential could begin to reopen Friday, May 15.
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Virginia playing central role in high-stakes Nov. 6 election
Call it a high-stakes referendum on Donald Trump’s presidency and the Republican agenda that includes proposals to slash spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and anti-poverty programs to pay for tax cuts, appoint conservative judges to roll back voting rights and affirmative action, eliminate environmental protections and end abortions.
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Final stanza
Larry Bland, director of The Volunteer Choir, is calling it quits as group reaches 50th anniversary
A local gospel music group that has been generating sounds of joy and inspiration for 50 years could soon be no more. Larry Bland & The Volunteer Choir is scheduled to make three appearances this year to mark its golden anniversary milestone, and then Mr. Bland said he will retire as the group’s director and chief organizer.
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Personality: Theo Suber Jones
Spotlight on president of Delver Woman’s Club
The Delver Woman’s Club takes voting seriously. So seriously, in fact, that all members and prospects must be registered voters. “Voting is your civic duty,” says Theo Suber Jones, the new president of the organization whose motto is “Lifting As We Climb.” “Participating in the voting process gives you the opportunity to have some say in who your elected officials are. It is your constitutional right to participate in the process,” Mrs. Jones says.
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Broken promises end legacy at 17th Street Farmers’ Market
They have been fixtures at the 17th Street Farmers’ Market in Shockoe Bottom for decades, just like their parents and grandparents before them. Now, sisters Evelyn Luceal Allen, 84, and Rosa L. Fleming, 80, have closed their stand beside the market from which they daily sold greens, tomatoes, watermelons, potatoes and other produce grown on their land in Hanover County.
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Hard hats replace bishops’ miters at Notre Dame’s first Mass since fire
Everyone, it seems, has an idea for how to rebuild Notre Dame.
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Personality: Dr. Hollee Freeman
Spotlight on co-founder and co-curator of City Bees RVA
Dr. Hollee Freeman is helping to keep a vital community of workers buzzing — all 90,000 of them.
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All those times Buick LaCrosse made a cameo in film and you kind of gasped
Sponsored by Buick
The internet is amazing – granted – but when we set out to research the Buick LaCrosse in film or TV, we didn’t anticipate finding a populated find-your-car-in-media database. Or did we?
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Free Press election endorsements
As Virginians prepare to go to the polls next Tuesday, Nov. 4, the Richmond Free Press strongly urges voters with election endorsements.
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Climate crisis increasingly a refugee crisis, faith resettlement groups say
For Monique Verdin, the apocalypse came in 2005.
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Former city worker and union advocate: ‘I had no one to go to bat for me’
Andrew Thomas hoped to build a career in the Richmond Department of Public Utilities. Instead, the 49-year-old Jamaica native has quit the department after seven years.
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‘It feels like a nightmare’
UVA shooting deaths create wave of grief
The three University of Virginia football players killed in an on-campus shooting on Sunday were remembered by their head coach as “incredible young men with huge aspirations and extremely bright futures.”
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Afghanistan: To go, to stay; either way, many are likely to pay
President Biden has announced that all U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by Aug. 31.
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Pulitzer-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones chooses Howard University after tenure tug-of-war with UNC
Acclaimed journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who won a Pulitzer Prize last year for her groundbreaking work on the legacy of slavery in the “1619 Project” that she spearheaded for the New York Times Magazine, announced Tuesday that she will not join the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill following an extended tenure fight marked by allegations of racism and conservative backlash about her work.
