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Hammond moving quickly to shore up VSU
Dr. Pamela V. Hammond radiates energy and optimism in her new role as interim president of Virginia State University. “Every day there is something new to celebrate” she tells anyone who will listen.
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Graduation rate in city inches up
Richmond awarded diplomas to 1,156 students in June, or 81.4 percent of the 1,421 students in the Class of 2015, new data from the Virginia Department of Education shows. The good news: That is Richmond’s best showing since the state began reporting systematic graduation results for each class in 2008.
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Stoney’s $3B proposal
Funding designed to make Richmond more liveable, despite increased gas, water bills
Record pay increases for Richmond city employees, along with hikes in spending on youth programming, affordable housing, public education and street paving.
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Consultants find Petersburg is nearly broke
For interim Petersburg City Manager Tom Tyrell, Christmas and New Year’s cannot come too soon. That’s when property owners are supposed to pay their next quarterly bill for real estate taxes — and steer fresh revenue into the depleted Petersburg coffers.
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Richmond Christian Center again facing sale
The Richmond Christian Center, still struggling to emerge from bankruptcy after nearly four years, once again is facing the loss of its property in South Side.
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Former GOP presidential hopeful, Trump ally Herman Cain dies of COVID-19
Herman Cain, a former Republican presidential candidate and former CEO of a major pizza chain who went on to become an ardent supporter of President Trump, died Thursday, July 30, 2020, in an Atlanta hospital of complications from the coronavirus. He was 74.
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A real sickness
Forget the coronavirus. Would somebody please quarantine President Trump before he makes the nation sicker?
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Attention paid to psychological changes, impact of COVID-19
As the number of cases and deaths from COVID-19 continues to rise in Virginia and across the nation, more attention is being paid to the mental and psychological impact of both the virus and the measures being taken to stop its spread.
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2nd Street Festival: A wolf in sheep’s clothing
The fact is this festival has and continues to be owned and controlled by white people during most of its existence. This, for me, is a major problem because at no point has its owners envisioned, stated or promised that, in addition to extolling the past importance of Jackson Ward, they want to or are even interested in reviving, resuscitating and restoring Jackson Ward to its former glory and past.
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No denying meaning of Confederate flag
I am baffled over the continued debate on whether the Confederate flag represents hatred or heritage. The rebel flag was flapping in the breeze when Confederate fighting men ran wagons over wounded black soldiers during the Battle of Poison Spring in Quachita County, Ark. in April 1864. And it has motivated others, such as the coward who gunned down nine black church members in Charleston, S.C., in June.
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Collins 1st GOP senator to support Judge Jackson for U.S. Supreme Court
Republican Sen. Susan Collins announced Wednesday that she would vote to seat Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on the U.S. Supreme Court, delivering President Joe Biden a bipartisan vote for his first high court nominee.
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Conflict of interest sparks tense discussion for RPS School Board
The Arthur Ashe Jr. Athletic Center arose as a topic of discussion during the Richmond School Board meeting Monday night.
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For Emmett Till’s family, national monument proclamation cements his inclusion in the American story
When President Biden signed a proclamation Tuesday establishing a national monument honoring Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, it marked the fulfillment of a promise Till’s relatives made after his death 68 years ago. The Black teenager from Chicago, whose abduction, torture and killing in Mississippi in 1955 helped propel the Civil Rights Movement, is now an American story, not just a civil rights story, said Mr. Till’s cousin the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. “It has been quite a journey for me from the darkness to the light,” Mr. Parker said during a proclamation signing ceremony at the White House attended by dozens, including other
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Geronimo Aguilar gets 40 years
Forty years. That’s how much time former Richmond Outreach Center Pastor Geronimo “Pastor G” Aguilar will serve in a Texas prison for sexually assaulting two sisters — ages 11 and 13 — while he lived in their family’s home in Fort Worth and served as a youth pastor at their church in the mid-1990s.
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Kaepernick’s action offers wider opportunity
“And where is that band who so vauntingly swore/That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion, A home and a country, should leave us no more? Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave/ From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave…”
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Broader view needed on Castro
Fidel Castro, Cuba’s leader for almost six decades, has died at 90 in Havana. USAToday’s headline on Monday read, “No Mourning in Miami,” noting the continued bitterness of those who left Cuba. The Washington Post featured testimonies condemning Mr. Castro’s authoritarian government. A revolutionary, a brutal dictator who sided with the U.S.S.R. in the Cold War, a sponsor of guerilla wars, leader of a failed economy — Mr. Castro’s death has unleashed the full indictment against him.
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Answer to church feeding program’s prayers was down the street
When leaders at Centenary United Methodist Church in Downtown were searching for a temporary site for their Friday feeding program for the homeless and working poor, little did they know the answer to their prayers was only a few yards away.
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Photo of then-Sen. Obama and Minister Farrakhan may have tanked presidential chances
It was during a mid-2005 Congressional Black Caucus meeting on Capitol Hill when award-winning journalist Askia Muhammad captured one of the most significant photos of his career.
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Crusade for Voters history detailed in new book
Kimberly A. Matthews was surprised that no one had ever written a history of the Richmond Crusade for Voters, the oldest African-American political organization in continuous operation in the state.
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Civil rights advocate and adviser to Dr. King recommended for Congressional Gold Medal
The Rev. James Lawson, a United Methodist minister known for his advocacy of nonviolence in the civil rights era and beyond, has been recommended for a Congressional Gold Medal.
