VSU’s Blair on fast track to Olympics
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Richmond Free Press
VOL. 27 NO. 20
© 2018 Paradigm Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
www.richmondfreepress.com
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That time Rihanna dressed like the Pope
MAY 17-19, 2018
Cool in the hot seat Christy Coleman, co-chair of the Monument Avenue Commission, is no stranger to controversy or leadership, even on issues of slavery and the Civil War By Johnnie L. Roberts
Mr. Kamras
100 days New schools chief still energetic, optimistic By Ronald E. Carrington
Richmond Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras has spent the last 100 days engaging with school community while trying to calm the storms from previous administrations. Since his arrival Feb. 1, the 44-year-old former Washington public schools administrator and 2005 National Teacher of the Year has spent two to three hours at each of Richmond’s 44 public schools, talking with students, teachers, staff and principals. He has read books to students and taught a couple of math classes. It is part of his plan for engagement, equity and excellence, core values he espoused in his 100-day plan. “I have probably spent 80 percent of my time connecting with people — at schools, in the community, in homes and at different events all across the city,” Mr. Kamras said in a recent Free Press interview. He wants RPS teachers and staff to follow his example by going out in the community and making home visits. “I hope that they see that engagement is not just a word for me,” Mr. Kamras said. “I hope folks are seeing and feeling that they know that I am trying very, very hard to be fully engaged with the community. It is not just me, but the entire Please turn to A4
The Clarks, who were slaves rooted in Tennessee, outlasted brutal bondage, fled the wrath of white supremacy shortly after Emancipation and became founding settlers of Eatonville, Fla., one of the country’s earliest self-governing black municipalities. The Clarks’ experience, like that of many enslaved individuals, shows “their incredible resilience, resolve and a certain dignity” in the face of unspeakable inhumanity, says Christy Coleman, chief executive officer of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, one of the most authoritative museums on the nation’s ugliest chapter. Had the Clarks been able to look into the future as Ms. Coleman is able to see the past, they likely would have considered Ms. Coleman, a Clark descendant, to be incredible, too. Ensconced in the cradle of the former Confederacy, Ms. Coleman, 54, presides over a Downtown cultural institution and the Monument Avenue Commission civic panel seeking to advance a broadened and inclusive meaning of the war and its aftermath. Quietly marking her 10-year anniversary at the museum, the public historian has been asserting the perspective of, among others, slaves and their immediate descendants into or alongside whitewashed narratives of the Confederacy, Civil War, Emancipation and Reconstruction. As a result, the history of that anguished era is gaining new dimensions that now increasingly incorporate the arc of not only the Clarks’ experience but of every slave. Aside from her duties at the museum, Ms. Coleman also presides in the shadow of an imminent and momentous decision on the fate of Richmond’s monuments to the Confederacy. Please turn to A4
Christopher Smith
Christy Coleman and her colleagues on the Monument Avenue Commission expect to send recommendations about the future of the Confederate statues to Mayor Levar M. Stoney by the end of May.
Historic city credit union seeks new growth By Jeremy M. Lazarus
James Haskins/Richmond Free Press
Randy N. Cooper, president and chief executive officer of Richmond Heritage Federal Credit Union, proudly shows off to his wife, Shirley G. Cooper, a wall display at the credit union’s Commerce Road branch celebrating its founders. Mrs. Cooper is president and chief executive officer of the Credit Union of Richmond.
$3.4B: By Jeremy M. Lazarus
Courtney Jones
Yes! A Virginia Union University student expresses pure elation as his name is called to receive his degree at Saturday’s commencement. Please see coverage of area commencements, B2 and B3.
Richmond high school students will be able to take unlimited free rides on GRTC buses beginning July 1. Organized activities for city youths also will be beefed up starting in July, with city recreation centers operating longer hours and after-school programs at elementary and middle schools being upgraded. More streets are to be paved and more sidewalks are to be fixed, while residents who conserve water will pay slightly smaller monthly bills. However, on July 1, vehicle owners also will starting paying an extra $7 a year to register their cars and trucks in the city, and diners at restaurant will pay an extra 1.5 percent in tax to help finance construction of up to four new schools. In addition, the cost of parking at street meters will be going up at least 25 cents an hour, and those who fail to feed the meter will see the cost of the fine rise by $5. Those are among the highlights of the new two-year, $3.4 billion spending plan that Richmond City Council passed Monday
Amid the recovery from the Great Depression, 10 African-American Richmond educators organized a new credit union for teachers in the city that would provide the personal touch and financial services then largely unavailable to them at most banks in segregated Richmond. But since 1936, the financial environment has vastly changed. Now the Richmond Heritage Federal Credit Union, among the last black-organized and operated financial institutions in the area, is struggling to recapture vitality as it prepares to mark its 82nd year at its annual membership meeting 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 23, at Links Apartments Manchester, 901 McDonough St. in South Side. The choice of the apartment complex as the meeting location is no accident, said Randy N. Cooper, the energetic and outgoing president and chief executive officer that RHFCU is counting on to generate new growth. Mr. Cooper wants people who live in the complex to see and ask about the event. It is part of his strategy of reaching out to newcomers to South Side who are filling the apartment buildings that have sprung up in the Manchester area in recent years, a pool of younger people for whom the credit union could be a neighborhood bank. His goal is to attract them to do their saving, checking and borrowing online and at the credit union’s office at Bainbridge Street and Commerce Road. After all, despite the surge in new apartments and homes, RHFCU is among the few financial institutions still operating in this fast-growing section of the city. Mr. Cooper, who took over the leadership post from Angela Outing Please turn to A4
City Council approves 2018-2020 spending plan
without controversy and debate. Of that total, about $1.4 billion is earmarked for general fund operations, essentially city government operations, in the 2018-2019 fiscal year that begins July 1 and the 2019-2020 fiscal year that will begin July 1, 2019. About $720 million is to be spent on general fund operations in the first year of the biennium, or about $3,228 per Richmond resident, a 4 percent increase from current spending. The rest of the funding is split among the capital program that Mayor Stoney pays for improvements to city infrastructure such as buildings, parks and roadways, public utilities, federal and state grants, internal programs like the radio shop and fleet operations and other elements of the government. Mayor Levar M. Stoney was upbeat about the passage of the plan, particularly after the council approved a spending blueprint that virtually kept intact the proposal he provided
in March. “This is a values-based, fiscally responsible plan that invests in and improves upon our targeted priorities, including core services, public safety, poverty mitigation and education,” he said in a statement issued after the 9-0 vote. “I am particularly proud of the roughly $40 million we have dedicated in this spending plan toward meeting the needs of our children,” he continued. He also praised the council for delivering a plan that “sets us on a sound fiscal path for continued growth.” During discussions, several council members, including Kristen N. Larson, 4th District, and Ellen F. Robertson, 6th District, said the budget falls short of seriously addressing infrastructure needs, such as obsolete school buildings, potholed streets and broken sidewalks. “We’re going to have to do better,” Ms. Larson said. City employees are among the big winners in the spending plan. Effective July 1, they will be eligible for a new benefit — four weeks of paid leave Please turn to A4