First African-American to lead board A5
‘Souls Grown Deep’ exhibition of new acquisitions B2
Richmond Free Press © 2018 Paradigm Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
VOL. 27 NO. 28
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
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July 12-14, 2018
A battle supreme Dems, civil rights groups and others gearing up for confirmation fight over U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh Free Press staff, wire report
Regina H. Boone/Richmond Free Press
Celebrating a new American Arielle Lawson Drackey, 6, waits with family members for her father, Late Lawson Drackey of Fredericksburg, as he takes the oath of citizenship during a July 4 naturalization ceremony at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. Please see more photos, Page A3.
To President Trump, he’s “a judge’s judge” and “a brilliant legal mind” who deserves swift confirmation. But to Vanita Gupta, president and chief executive officer of the umbrella Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, new Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh is “a direct threat to our rights and unfit to serve on our nation’s highest court with his record of putting the rich ahead of the rest of us.” To Sherilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the 53-year-old D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals judge would “jeopardize the progress in civil rights law that has been made in the past 78 years by seeking to roll back fair housing laws, affirmative action and a woman’s right to choose.” And national NAACP President Derrick Johnson declared that the nation’s oldest civil rights group views Judge Kavanaugh as an enemy of “civil rights, workers’ rights, consumer rights and women’s rights.” Recalling the NAACP’s opposition to Judge Kavanaugh’s appointment to the appeals court, Mr. Johnson stated that “with a Justice Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, we could see reversals of hard won gains in equal opportunity in education, employment and housing. “We could see further exclusion of communities of color from participation in our democracy. We could see racism continue to flourish within the criminal justice system. We could see the elimination of effective tools for proving discrimination.” All of that makes clear the kind of opposition that Judge Kavanaugh will face as he seeks U.S. Senate confirmation in the coming weeks, with much of the leadership of the African-
Sacred Ground project wins $75,000 national grant for slavery memorial park By Jeremy M. Lazarus
A group supporting development of a memorial park in Shockoe Bottom to recall the crucial role this area of Richmond played in the slave trade has won a $75,000 grant from a national trust to support its work. “We plan to use the money for a two-part study on the economic impact and benefit of developing a park,” said Ana Edwards, chair of the Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project, who helped spearhead the park proposal. One part of the study would examine the tourism benefit of such a park, Ms. Edwards said, while the second part “would seek out nontraditional models of such projects that are sustainable” to offer ideas for Richmond to replicate. Preservation Virginia, a Richmond-based history preser-
Ana Edwards, chair of the Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project, leads a tour in July 2016 of the African Burial Ground and Lumpkin’s Jail site in Shockoe Bottom. Her audience is composed of young people taking part in a summer leadership program sponsored by the Maggie Walker National Historic Site.
vation group, joined the Sacred Ground Reclamation Project, The Valentine museum and the Center for Design at the University of Massachusetts to secure the grant, she said. Mayor Levar M. Stoney and members of Richmond
Jones to revive effort for city control over Confederate statues By Jeremy M. Lazarus
Richmond City Councilman Michael J. Jones is going to try again to get City Council support for removing state control of the Confederate statues that litter Richmond’s landscape. Now that Mayor Levar M. Stoney’s Monument Avenue Commission has called for Mr. Jones removal of one of the statues on Monument Avenue, the 9th District councilman said Monday that he sees it as an opportunity to introduce a new resolution to overcome the state blockade. “In my view, local governments should have authority over the statues within their boundaries,” Mr. Jones said. “It shouldn’t be up to the state to decide what we can or cannot do with them.” He said he hopes to introduce the resolution at the next meetPlease turn to A4
City Council have indicated support for creation of a park that would recognize sites in Shockoe Bottom that were central to the slave trade, but have yet to take any steps to advance it. Meanwhile, the city has millions of dollars squirreled away to pay for developing a museum-style project at the Shockoe Bottom site dubbed the “Devil’s Half-Acre,” where enslaved people were imprisoned and sold. That development at the site of Lumpkin’s Jail, which became the initial home of Virginia Union University in 1865, also has yet to advance, though the city has paid for consultants to work on the development. Shockoe Bottom joins 15 other African-American heritage sites that shared in $1.1 million in grants that the National Trust for Historic Preservation issued last week. Other winners include the Huntington, N.Y., home of jazz musician John Coltrane and the Pittsburgh, Pa., home of playwright August Wilson, as well as the Birmingham, Ala., Baptist church that was the base Please turn to A4
Evan Vucci/Associated Press
Brett M. Kavanaugh, 53, promises to be an independent justice who would keep “an open mind in every case” in accepting President Trump’s nomination to be a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, he was introduced Monday night at the White House as the president’s choice to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, 81.
American and Latino communities seeking to prevent him from being seated on the court. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky must muster a bare majority of senators to send Judge Kavanaugh to the high court to fill the seat that his mentor and former boss, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, is leaving. Judge Kavanaugh started his legal career working as a law clerk for Justice Kennedy, long considered the swing vote on the nine-member court. There are rumors the 81-year-old agreed to retire after receiving assurances his protégé would replace him. While the civil rights community is rallying against Judge Kavanaugh, Sen. McConnell and other Republican supporters are hailing him as a “superb pick” who could help entrench conservative, corporate-supported control of the law for years to come. While some Democrats promised to fight to block the nominee, it will be an uphill climb as Republicans control the Senate by a 51-49 margin, though that margin is slimmer with GOP Sen. John McCain absent in Arizona battling brain cancer. Judge Kavanaugh, who would follow Justice Neil Gorsuch as a Trump pick on the court, is a well-known figure in Washington and has been involved in some of the biggest controversies of the past two decades. He helped investigate former Democratic President Bill Clinton in the 1990s working for independent counsel Ken-
Sandra Sellars/Richmond Free Press
Please turn to A4
Clement Britt
Michael Beckley, 17, mows the lawn while Xavier Edmonds, 16, whacks weeds last Saturday at a vacant home on Garber Street in Fulton before seeking customers for paying jobs through the 4-H Lawn Maintenance Program started by Wyatt Kingston.
New Fulton program helps youths develop skills for jobs, money By Jeremy M. Lazarus
As a full-time city recreation specialist, Wyatt Kingston sees plenty of Richmond youths who need and want to make money to help their families. So in his spare time, he has volunteered to do something about it. The 67-year-old Richmond native has created a small lawn maintenance program for youths ages 12 to 18 from the Rainbow
City public housing community in Fulton who are eager to work and need a helping hand to get started. He has enrolled eight young people who have spent the past two weeks learning how to properly use mowers and weed whackers, as well as getting information on life skills in Mr. Kingston’s 4-H Lawn Maintenance program. Please turn to A4