Virginia

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• SOURCE: Scalawag
  6/14/2022
  

  Teaching Black History in Virginia Just Got Tougher

  Glenn Youngkin's attack on "divisive" history lessons clearly put the wishes of conservative whites at the center of the debate about curriculum. Now, a planned change to increase Black history in Virginia schools is on hold and Black students and families ask why their concerns are unheard. 

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• 5/29/2022
  

  We Need a National Emancipation Monument at Point Comfort – Where American Slavery Began, and Began to End

  by Steven T. Corneliussen

  While parts of the site are honored as the Fort Monroe National Monument, Point Comfort should be made a national monument to emancipation. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/23/2022
  

  Facing the Truth in the Land of Lee

  by Laura Brodie

  The controversy over removing Robert E. Lee's portrait from diplomas at Washington and Lee University points to an uncomfortable truth: Lee's historical depiction as handsome has been a visual symbol of the Lost Cause that has contributed to acceptance of the pro-Confederate mythology. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/15/2022
  

  A Neighborly Civil War in Virginia over Street Names

  Leaders of a group of suburban Virginia homeowners who want to change the Confederate-related street names in their community have been accused of being puppets of George Soros and threatened. 

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• SOURCE: Oxford American
  3/22/2022
  

  Questing for the Past

  by Katherine Churchill

  A nameplate in an 1864 edition of Gawain and the Green Knight led the author to discover the connections between a mythic medieval past and the Lost Cause ideology of Jim Crow Virginia. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/11/2022
  

  All 133 School Superintendents in Virginia Urge Governor to Scrap Tip Line

  “Division superintendents disagree with your assumption that discriminatory and divisive concepts have become widespread in Virginia school divisions,” states the letter from Howard Kiser, executive director of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/1/2022
  

  Glenn Youngkin's No-Guilt History of Virginia for Fragile White People

  With help from historian and Virginian Ty Seidule, Post columnist Dana Milbank asks who is served by recently proposed state laws restricting the teaching of controversial historical topics. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/24/2022
  

  The Toxic Goal Behind GOP Laws Restricting Teaching about Racism

  “We shouldn't shy away from this more complicated, more accurate picture,” historian Kevin Kruse told me. “Democracy is an ongoing project, and we should all be wrestling with whether our actions live up to our ideals.”

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/14/2022
  

  A Bill Proposed a New Way to Teach History. It Got the History Wrong.

  “The gross mistake in this bill is indicative of the need to have scholars and teachers, not legislators/politicians, shaping what students at every level learn in the classroom,” Caroline Janney, a professor of Civil War history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, said in an email.

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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: HuffPost
  11/30/2021
  

  Black Voices Excluded from Critical Race Theory Debates in Virginia

  “The parents who are outraged right now and spreading this misinformation about teaching critical race theory ... why were they not concerned about [slavery] being taught as if it was a game?”

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/26/2021
  

  Virginia's Universities are Part of a Long Racial Reckoning

  Virginia was at the center of the American slave trade, the Confederacy, and Jim Crow. It's not surprising that its colleges and universities are the site of intense debate about the legacies of racism. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/12/2021
  

  As A White Student in a Mostly Black School After Brown, I Learned Not to Fear History

  by Woody Holton

  "My three and a half years as a racial minority convinced me that one of the biggest beneficiaries of school desegregation was me."

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/6/2021
  

  3 Black Soldiers Executed by the Confederacy to be Honored by Virginia

  A Confederate private's diary casually described the execution of three members of the U.S. Colored Troops near Culpeper, Virginia. Today the work of Howard Lambert and his Freedom Foundation will honor the anonymous soldiers. 

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• SOURCE: Richmond Times-Dispatch
  10/26/2021
  

  Generations after Keeping Black Students out of School, Will Virginia Exclude Black History?

  Richmond-based opinion columnist Michael Williams connects the battles to preserve segregation to today's controversies over how racism is taught in Virginia schools, and argues politicians have cynically exploited both. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  10/10/2021
  

  Virginia Community Colleges to Drop John Tyler's Name

  “We enroll lots of people whose ancestors were enslaved, were marginalized, were clearly taken advantage of,” said Glenn DuBois, the system’s chancellor. “And what do you say to those students when they’re looking at some of these names?”

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• SOURCE: CNN
  9/5/2021
  

  This Prominent Virginian did Free His Slaves after Championing Liberty

  Robert Carter III's manumission of 500 of his slaves in 1791 was a rebuke to his fellows who publicly abhorred slavery but insisted it couldn't be practically abolished. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  8/31/2021
  

  The Martinsville Seven, Executed for an Alleged Rape, Pardoned by Virginia Governor 70 Years Later

  "Northam granted the pardons after a meeting with the descendants of the Martinsville Seven. He said the pardons do not address whether the men were guilty, but rather serve "as recognition from the Commonwealth" that they were tried without adequate due process."

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  6/30/2021
  

  Looking for Nat Turner

  Christopher Tomlins' new book takes seriously the apocalyptic Christianity of Nat Turner, viewing it not as a metaphor for liberation but a key part of how Turner understood freedom. 

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• SOURCE: Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
  6/6/2021
  

  Just Who Was Rebelling in Nat Turner's Rebellion?

  University of Kentucky Historian Vanessa Holden will discuss her new community-oriented history of the rebellion of the enslaved in Southampton, Virginia in an online forum on Thursday, arguing that women and children were essential in planning and executing the rebellion associated with Nat Turner.