‘We’re still going’

Community members gathered at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center on October 30 to hear the latest on the Swords Into Plowshares project, which seeks to melt down Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue and repurpose its bronze into a new public artwork. In December, the Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation and the Ratcliffe Foundation filed […]

Black in business

A plethora of products and services will be exhibited in 40 booths at this year’s Black Business Expo, the annual event that celebrates local Black-owned businesses. In addition to vendors, the day-long affair will feature DJ sets, live music, panel discussions, and a competition with cash prizes totaling $1,500 for the two best business pitches.  The […]

Returning to service

Charlottesville resident Dhanya Babu moved to the city from India when she was 8 years old. Unable to speak English well, she enrolled in the ESOL program at Albemarle County Public Schools—and came full circle last year when she returned to work for the school division. Now, she is headed to West Africa to teach […]

Opening up

It seems that student-athletes have always been placed in a separate sphere from the rest of the UVA community. To non-student-athletes, they are the basketball players, the football players, the NCAA champions—defined by their wins and losses. A project brought to the University of Virginia by three members of the women’s soccer team—Rebecca Jarrett, Lacey […]

Riding green

In a virtual meeting last week, the Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee discussed how Charlottesville and Albemarle County are working to drastically slash their carbon emissions, particularly in the context of transportation. Susan Elliott, Charlottesville’s climate protection program manager, explained that 95 percent of the city’s emissions come from the community. Residential, commercial, […]

Farewell

In the nearly 60 years that he has lived in Charlottesville, University of Virginia history professor George Gilliam has had a long career spanning multiple areas of public service and politics. Now, he is retiring after giving his final lecture last week.  From 1972 to 1976, Gilliam served on the Charlottesville City Council, helping to […]

Healing together

For the first time since the death of their son Otto, Cindy and Fred Warmbier returned to the University of Virginia last week, as the fifth anniversary of his passing nears. While touring North Korea, the then-third-year UVA commerce student was accused of attempting to steal a political banner, and sentenced to 15 years in […]

Art for good

For almost a decade, Charlottesville resident Valerie Goodman has created Ukrainian eggs for fun—but when Russia invaded Ukraine, she saw the eggs as a way to raise money and awareness. Since March, Goodman has hosted egg-decorating parties for up to a dozen people. At the events, the minimum donation is $25 per egg, but Goodman […]

Not enough

A student-led campaign to pressure the University of Virginia to fully withdraw its investments in the fossil fuel industry has gained momentum in recent years with petitions and public protests. Last month, the University of Virginia Investment Management Company finally addressed some of these concerns by publishing a framework that lays out principles the school […]

Unfair advantage

After reading a book in graduate school that discussed how enslaved women sold goods in South Carolina and Barbados, Justene Hill Edwards became fascinated by the economy of the enslaved. In the American South, slaves engaged in their own economic enterprises, buying and selling goods and earning wages for their work. What started off as […]