Virginia

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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.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/26/2021
  

  John Warner, Genteel Senator from Virginia, Dies at 94

  "A debonair Virginian, Mr. Warner was sometimes called the senator from central casting; his ramrod military posture, distinguished gray hair and occasionally overblown speaking style fit the Hollywood model."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/24/2021
  

  Virginia Becomes First Southern State to Abolish the Death Penalty

  Governor Ralph Northam explained that the state could guarantee neither racial equity nor the indisputable guilt of condemned prisoners. Virginia had executed more prisoners than any American state or colony in 413 years of the death penalty.

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• SOURCE: NPR
  3/3/2021
  

  Discovery Of Schoolhouse For Black Children Now Offers A History Lesson

  The discovery of an 18th century schoolhouse on the campus of William & Mary offers a chance for public historians to explain the complexity of Black education in colonial Virginia, which taught reading in the hopes of indoctrinating both free and enslaved children with pro-slavery ideology.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/26/2021
  

  University Finds 18th-Century Schoolhouse Where Black Children Learned to Read

  The discovery of a 260-year-old structure with such a deep connection to a little-known chapter of the history of Colonial Williamsburg, when the population was more than 50 percent Black and teaching slaves to read was legal, is especially significant, said history professor Jody Lynn Allen. 

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• SOURCE: Virginian-Pilot
  3/1/2021
  

  How a Wave of Segregationist Tributes, from Streets to Schools, Entrenched the Idea of White Supremacy

  Understanding the stakes of renaming public buildings, streets, or schools requires understanding the purposeful politics that attached the names of Confederates to public spaces a century ago, say Virginia historians Dan Margolies and Calvin Pearson.

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• 2/28/2021
  

  Is Virginia's Move to Abolish the Beginning of the End of the Death Penalty in America?

  by Rick Halperin

  Virginia's move to abolish capital punishment is long overdue, and other states and the federal government should follow suit to restore American legitimacy on global human rights. 

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• SOURCE: WTOP
  2/5/2021
  

  Virginia House votes to turn ‘Jefferson Davis Highway’ into ‘Emancipation Highway’

  The bill, which has bipartisan support, would rename any stretches of  US Route 1 still named for the Confederate president as "Emancipation Highway" but would not reflect segments of the road already renamed by local authorities.