City Councilor Heather Hill and Mayor Nikuyah Walker’s terms expire at the end of the year, and four candidates have thus far declared their intention to win those seats. Earlier this month, social entrepreneur Carl Brown announced his bid for City Council, joining Charlottesville School Board member Jaundiego Wade, UVA project manager Brian Pinkston, and […]
It’s been over a year since 74-year-old Richard Allan hurled Charlottesville’s former slave auction marker into the James River, frustrated with the city for not creating a better tribute to the thousands of enslaved people bought and sold in Court Square. Ever since, the city has been working to replace the marker. The Historic Resources […]
Writer Sadeqa Johnson was walking the Richmond Slave Trail when she came across a shocking piece of local history. She’d heard of Robert Lumpkin, a notorious figure who ran a slave jail known as the Devil’s Half Acre, where thousands of Black people were brutally tortured and mercilessly auctioned off. But Johnson hadn’t known that […]
“For more than 25 years, redevelopment and public housing in the City of Charlottesville have been conversations and promises to residents,” said Audrey Oliver, standing on a dirt lot near Oakwood Cemetery downtown. “The promises became broken, and residents became discouraged, because the promises were never delivered.” That string of broken promises will soon be […]
As I made my way down Jefferson Park Avenue, I felt a sense of familiarity. Just two years ago, I took the bus this way almost every day, praying I would make it to my classes at the University of Virginia on time. But that familiarity faded to sadness once I arrived at my destination: […]
Nationwide, Black and white people use marijuana at similar rates. In Virginia, Black people make up about 20 percent of the population—but 52 percent of citations for marijuana possession in the last year were given to Black people, says Chelsea Higgs Wise, executive director of Marijuana Justice, a Richmond-based group fighting for the enactment of […]
For nearly a year, Isabella Gibbons has peered over Charlottesville. Inscribed into the rough-hewn granite of the University of Virginia’s Memorial to Enslaved Laborers, her eyes not only draw attention to the cruel realities of slavery—but ask what we are going to do to rectify them. As UVA continues to atone for its racist history, […]
In the best of times, it’s difficult to balance the big-ticket projects in Charlottesville’s Capital Improvement Plan, the city’s five-year budget schedule for large infrastructure projects. That’s only become more challenging during the pandemic, when municipal coffers have taken a hit. Last week the Planning Commission debated the merits of a variety of upcoming projects, […]
For decades, activists around the state and country have been fighting to abolish the death penalty in Virginia. In 2019, the issue rose to the forefront when Democrats won control of the Virginia General Assembly. On Friday, the House of Delegates voted 57-41 to end the death penalty, with three Republicans joining all the Dems […]
City Hall’s recent struggles have been well-documented. A series of high-profile positions have gone unfilled for extended stretches, and councilors have publicly clashed. Those challenges have prevented the city from carrying out one of its main duties: fully supporting its boards and commissions. Charlottesville’s Human Rights Commission and Office of Human Rights, a volunteer board […]