Richmond

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• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  3/1/2023
  

  Descendants of Slaveholder Donor Denounce Law School Name Change

  T.C. Williams donated a considerable sum to the University of Richmond's law school. He also relied on slave labor in his tobacco and manufacturing businesses. The university's new policy requires them to remove his name from a building. Descendants call this hypocritical and ungrateful and demanded an inflation-adjusted refund with interest of $3.4 billion.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/2/2023
  

  When White Contractors Wouldn't Remove Confederate Statues, a Black One Did

  Devon Henry didn't seek the job of removing a dozen Confederate memorials in Richmond, but local white-owned vendors refused the contracts. He has received death threats and wears a bulletproof vest at job sites. 

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• SOURCE: NextCity
  5/23/2022
  

  Virginia's Governor Took Away the Most Important Piece of Protest Art in the Country. What Should He Have Done?

  Outgoing governor Ralph Northam removed the graffiti-covered pedestal of the former Robert E. Lee monument, which has become a site of community gathering and a public forum to express alternative visions of history. Cities should try to encourage such openness (if not spray-painting). 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/5/2021
  

  Virginia to Dismantle Lee Statue Plinth

  Outgoing Governor Ralph Northam will execute the removal of the pedestal and the transfer of the surrounding traffic circle to the City of Richmond before Glenn Youngkin succeeds him in office. 

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• SOURCE: The Progressive
  7/7/2020
  

  The Story Behind the Lee Statue in Richmond, Virginia

  by Peter Rachleff

  Now the time has come for the story of the Workingmen’s Reform Party, the building of Richmond’s City Hall, and the solidarity-based politics of the Black and white members of the Knights of Labor, to come out into the light.

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• SOURCE: Vox
  6/24/2020
  

  Monument Avenue is Richmond’s Racist Row. Will Tearing it Down Redeem a City?

  Historians Kevin Levin, Karen Cox, Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders, and Michael Dickinson weigh-in on the history behind the Virginia street with five Confederate monuments.

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• SOURCE: UNC Press Blog
  6/9/2020
  

  Rumors of War in Richmond

  by Thomas J. Brown

  Kehinde Wiley's statue Rumors of War certainly draws meaning from its location, but it is also the capstone of a series on which the artist has been engaged since an early stage of his meteoric career, long before Confederate monuments stirred wide controversy.

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• SOURCE: AP
  12/11/19
  

  Monumental statue of black man defies Confederate monuments

  A massive bronze sculpture of a young black man with dreadlocks astride a muscular horse was permanently installed Tuesday in Virginia’s capital city, not far from one of the country’s most prominent displays of Confederate monuments. 

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• SOURCE: Virginia Mercury
  12/6/19
  

  ‘We’re telling history now’: New Lost Cause exhibit opens at Richmond museum

  Includes a qutoe from Melvin Patrick Ely, a College of William & Mary history professor.

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• SOURCE: NY Times
  6/21/19
  

  Richmond Is at a Crossroads. Will Arthur Ashe Boulevard Point the Way?

  Last Saturday, the city renamed a major thoroughfare after Ashe. It will slice across Monument Avenue, known for its outsized statues of Confederate generals.

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  5/14/19
  

  What to Do With Richmond’s Confederate Statues

  Richmond’s Monument Avenue is lined with Confederate statues, but an exhibition filled with proposals to replace them struggles to find a road forward.

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• 3/17/19
  

  Richmond’s Robert E. Lee Statue: A Southern Unionist’s Viewpoint

  by Elizabeth Varon

  Elizabeth Van Lew was a Southerner who supported the Union. She--and other Southern Unionists--deepen our understanding of the Civil War and its legacies. 

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• SOURCE: The Economist
  7-11-17
  

  Can Richmond avoid public rows over its Confederate statues?

  The mayor of what was the capital of the Confederacy wants to preserve its statues, but ensure the full history is told.

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• SOURCE: The Boston Globe
  7-4-15
  

  Richmond split over Confederate history

  In the capital of the Confederacy, calls are rising to properly memorialize the slave trade

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11-12-13
  

  Baseball and slavery collide in Richmond

  A new AA stadium will be located across the street from one of the central slave trading sites in the country.

• SOURCE: AP
  8-7-13
  

  Va. NAACP head criticizes group’s plan to fly Confederate flag along I-95 outside Richmond

  RICHMOND, Va. — A heritage group’s plan to fly a large Confederate flag along Interstate 95 outside Richmond is drawing criticism from the head of the NAACP’s Virginia chapter.The Virginia Flaggers plans to fly the 10-by-15-foot flag on a 50-foot pole just south of Richmond. It’s tentatively scheduled to go up Sept. 28 and will be visible from the northbound lanes of the interstate, although organizers haven’t said exactly where it will be located.Virginia NAACP Executive Director King Salim Khalfani told the Richmond Times-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/14iwLLJ ) that the flag would make Richmond look like a “backwater, trailer park, hick town.”...

• SOURCE: AP
  7-5-13
  

  Virginia Museum of Fine Arts plans to rehab pre-Civil War house, turn it into visitor center

  RICHMOND, Va. — The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is planning to turn a pre-Civil War house on its Richmond property into a regional visitor center.Officials plan to complete the work to rehabilitate the historic three-story, 9,000-square-foot Robinson House by the summer of 2015. The building currently serves as a storage facility.Once complete, the circa-1850 building will include a visitor center on the first floor as well as a gallery interpreting the site’s history going back to the days of American Indians....