Meet chair of CancerLINC’s Bags & Bourbon Benefit B1
Richmond Free Press © 2019 Paradigm Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
VOL. 28 NO. 12
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
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A Confederate battle flag flies over gravesites at the wellmaintained Confederate section of Oakwood Cemetery in Richmond. For decades, the state has provided taxpayer money to maintain Confederate graves at the city-owned cemetery.
Markers to honor late city native Dorothy I. Height on March 24 By Jeremy M. Lazarus
historic African-American cemeteries were starved for funds, the vital history they contained literally consumed by nature. Unfortunately, this is not ancient history. For more than 100 years, the Commonwealth of Virginia and other former slave states have been subsidizing not only Confederate cemeteries, but many of the hundreds of Confederate monuments and “heritage” sites that mark public space across the South. Please turn to A5
Please turn to A4
Still funding Confederacy Years of taxpayer money has kept Confederate cemeteries in pristine condition. Can there be true equity for historic African-American burial grounds?
On most Saturdays since 2013, volunteers have met at East End Cemetery in Henrico County to hack away at the vines and weeds that have choked gravesites there for decades. By now, they’ve hauled out tons of brush and more than 1,500 tires dumped illegally at this historic African-American burial ground that was founded in 1897. Similar cleanup efforts have taken place at the cemetery’s bigger and better known Richmond neighbor, Evergreen Cemetery, where turn of the century black luminaries such as banker Maggie Lena Walker, journalist John Mitchell Jr., and physician Dr. Sarah Garland Boyd Jones were laid to rest. One enters a different world by crossing Stony Run Parkway and into Oakwood Cemetery’s Confederate section. The grass is neatly trimmed. Headstones are clean and, for the most part, upright. There are no pockets of garbage. There’s a plaque at the gate to the Confederate area informing visitors that a 1930 act of the Virginia General Assembly set up a perpetual care fund for the Confederate section of this city-owned cemetery. The fund, a lump sum of $30,000, doesn’t sound so generous until one realizes that it was the equivalent of $440,000 today. Records show that since 1902, the Commonwealth of Virginia has paid more than $9 million, in today’s dollars, to associations and neo-Confederate organizations to maintain Confederate graves and cemeteries. In effect, Jim Crow has left his mark on each of these burial grounds. Its racist policies and practices allowed white officeholders to funnel tax dollars paid by local citizens, black, white and all races, to support Oakwood’s Confederate section and other white burial grounds, while East End, Evergreen and other
MARCH 21-23, 2019
Dorothy Irene Height left segregated Richmond at age 5 and went on to earn national recognition as a civil rights and women’s rights activist who devoted her life to uplifting people. O n S u n d a y, March 24, which would have been her 107th birthday, Ms. Height’s hometown will recognize the “godmother of the Civil Rights Movement,” with the unveiling of historical markers by the state and the sorority that Ms. Height once led. The markers will stand together in front of the Richmond Public Library’s Hull Street Branch, 1400 Hull St., it has been anSandra Sellars/Richmond Free Press nounced. Ms. Height The unveiling will follow a dedication ceremony at 3 p.m. that will be held at nearby First Baptist Church of South Richmond, 1501 Decatur St., around the corner and a block away from the library. The state marker will recall Ms. Height’s work for racial and gender equality, while a Delta Sigma Theta Sorority marker will remember her leadership as the sorority’s 10th national president from 1947 to 1956, a news release states.
Photo by Brian Palmer
By Brian Palmer
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Fr ee
Game on for ping-pong B2
No answers yet on why new Richmond schools costs to be higher than many other locales By Jeremy M. Lazarus
Richmond is preparing to spend $140 million to build three new schools financed by an increase in the city’s meals tax — $30 million more than the school system first projected and far in excess of what most school divisions are paying for new buildings. According to published figures provided to Richmond City Council this week, the city has awarded contracts that spell out the zooming costs for the new buildings that will replace George Mason Elementary in the East End and E.S.H. Greene Elementary and Elkhardt-Thompson Middle School, both in South Side. The data show that the city expects to spend $36.2 million to build and furnish George Mason for 750 students; $41.8 million to construct and furnish the new Greene Elementary for 1,000 students; and $61.9 million to build and furnish the new Elkhardt-Thompson Middle for 1,500 students. In late 2017, then-interim Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Thomas E. Kranz projected the total cost for the three buildings at $110 million: $25 million for Mason, $35 million for Greene and $50
million for the new middle school. Mr. Kranz’s projections appear to be more in line with the building price tags for other school divisions, according to cost data for the current 2018-19 school year published the Virginia Department of Education website. Officials with the city and Richmond
Public Schools have not yet responded to a request for comment on the spike in building costs that will use up almost all of the $150 million that City Hall plans to borrow for these schools, relying on the $9 million to $10 million a year from the 1.5 Please turn to A4
Fewer, higher paid school liaisons would replace RPS’ 17 attendance officers under Kamras plan Despite concern and warnings that his plan could result in more Jason Kamras is rejecting students skipping school, Mr. initial criticism of his plan to Kamras said he wants Richmond try a new approach to ensure Public Schools to do more to Richmond students attend school resolve the family issues that daily. lead more than 4,000 students Already endorsed by the a year — one in six of those Richmond School Board, the enrolled — to miss 10 or more Mr. Kamras superintendent’s proposal is to days of school. dismantle the centralized attendance operaIn an interview with the Free Press tion that currently employs 17 people and Tuesday, he said, “We need to be more replace that with a much smaller group of Please turn to A4 school-based attendance liaisons. By Jeremy M. Lazarus
Virginia teams at ‘The Big Dance’ Sandra Sellars/Richmond Free Press
Young Superman Jaxson Snowden, aka Young Superman, checks out other superheroes with the help of the greatest superhero of all, his dad, T.J. Snowden, at the Chesterfield Comic Con last Saturday at the Chesterfield County Public Library’s Meadowdale Branch. Please see more photos, B2.
The NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament — “The Big Dance” — begins this week with 68 schools ready to kick up their heels. Five Virginia universities will be in the tournament. Here are the first round matchups for the state’s entries: • University of Virginia vs. Gardner-Webb University, 3:10 p.m. Friday, March 22, in Columbia, S.C.; South Region • Virginia Tech vs. St. Louis University, 9:57 p.m. Friday, March 22, in San Jose, Calif.; East Region • Virginia Commonwealth University vs. University of Central Florida, 9:40 p.m. Friday, March
22, in Columbia, S.C.; East Region • Old Dominion University vs. Purdue University, 9:50 p.m. Thursday, March 21, in Hartford, Conn.; South Region • Liberty University vs. Mississippi State University, 7:27 p.m. Friday, March 22, in San Jose, Calif.; East Region Sites for the four regional Sweet 16 games March 28 through 31: East Region – Washington, D.C.; South Region – Louisville, Ky.; Midwest Region – Kansas City, Mo.; West Region – Anaheim, Calif. Final Four games: April 6 and 8 in Minneapolis, Minn.