Category: Virginia history
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Restoring Columbus
by James A. Bacon Richmond’s statue of Christopher Columbus is heading to upstate New York. It’s a sad, sad tale. At the height of the George Floyd “mostly peaceful” protests, leftist militants tore down the statue in Byrd Park, spray-painted it, set it on fire and threw it into nearby Fountain Lake. They claimed to…
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“Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death”
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Each Sunday afternoon during the summer, the Historic St. John’s Church Foundation presents a reenactment of Patrick Henry’s famous “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech. The reenactment, which has been presented for almost 50 years, takes place in the Historic St. John’s Church in Richmond, the site of the original speech.…
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Rambling: A Reminder of the Beginnings of Religious Freedom
by Dick Hall-Sizemore This is one of the most attractive church buildings I have seen. It is Mathews Baptist Church, located on Rt. 198 in Mathews County at the intersection with the road leading to Gwynn’s Island. The sign above the door says the church was organized in 1776. In the years leading up to…
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Down the Memory Hole
by James A. Bacon “How do you squeeze the essence of Wahoowa into 90 seconds?” So asks an article in UVA Today. Here’s what UVA’s video producers came up with: What’s missing from the video? There are 50 scenes, including shots of the Rotunda and the Lawn, but no mention of their designer. Apparently,…
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The Battle Over African-American History
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell by James A. Bacon The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) is working on revisions to an advanced-placement course on African-American history, and the forces of wokeness are agitating to preserve the ideological framework they wrote into the course…
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An Answer for Jon Baliles: It’s the Constitution
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Shame on Jon Baliles for not knowing why cities and counties are treated differently in the Code of Virginia regarding the issuance of general obligation debt. The answer is simple; the state constitution requires the different treatment. Article VII, section 10, of the state constitution deals with the issuing of debt by…
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Before the Bill of Rights, There was the Virginia Declaration of Rights
by Thomas M. Moncure, Jr. Reliable estimates place the number of Virginia residents born outside the United States at 12% to 15%. In 2012, for the first time since about 1650, a majority of residents were born outside of Virginia. And this native count includes first-borns who live in homes where Farsi or Hindi or…
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Education and Remembrance on the Banks of the James
by Jon Baliles The Virginia War Memorial sits solemnly upon the edge of Oregon Hill overlooking the city and the James River and honors the 12,000+ Virginia names of those who have fallen in service of our country since 1956. But in recent decades, it has become a place of education as well as of…
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UVA As a “Maze of Predatory Systems”
by James A. Bacon If you visit the latest exhibit at the University of Virginia’s Ruffin Gallery, “EscapeRoom,” it takes no more than five or ten seconds for the artists’ message to sink in — the amount of time it takes to read the signage at the entrance: The University of Virginia (UVA) is a…
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In Their Own Words: Jefferson, Whiteness, and Dicks in the Sky
Meet Marisa Williamson. The Harvard-educated assistant professor in the University of Virginia art department works in video, image-making, installation and performance art around themes of “history, race, feminism, and technology,” according to her UVA faculty page. Most recently, she co-curated the EscapeRoom exhibition at the Ruffin Gallery, which we highlight in a companion article.…
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RVA HISTORY: Schools Are for Learning
by Jon Baliles The effort to save the old Richmond Community Hospital (RCH) from Virginia Union’s wrecking ball raises an interesting debate about recognizing history, remembering history, and benefitting by learning from history. Especially when one program is established that then becomes part of a bigger effort and very especially when it is used to…
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A True Community Hospital
by Jon Baliles Virginia Union University announced recently that it would utilize several parcels it owns just north of the main campus to build a new $40 million development with up to 200 apartments (some market and some lower income) and possibly some homes and commercial space for students or the public, which would create…
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Youngkin and Confederate Heritage
by Donald Smith Does the Virginia GOP want the help and support of the Confederate heritage community? We should get a pretty good indicator this week. Three bills just passed by the General Assembly will soon land on Governor Youngkin’s desk, if they haven’t already. They will remove the tax exemptions of the United Daughters…
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The Purge Comes for Edwin Alderman
by James A. Bacon As President of the University of Virginia between 1904 and 1931, Edwin Anderson Alderman led Thomas Jefferson’s university into the 20th century. A self-proclaimed “progressive” of the Woodrow Wilson stamp, he advocated higher taxes to support public education, admitted the first women into UVA graduate programs, boosted enrollment and faculty hiring,…
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Rep. Bob Good Calls for Hearing on Naming Commission
by Donald Smith The Virginia congressman who represents Appomattox, where the Civil War started to end,* wants the House of Representatives to examine the impacts of Congress’ attempt to grapple with the legacy of that war — an attempt that could lay the groundwork for the legacies of Confederate generals and soldiers to be deemed…