Originally published in the Winter 2024 edition of the Virginia Defender, issue 74, printed February 21. Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes. To find other stories in the Winter 2024 issue or to download the full PDF, see this post. For other issues dating back to 2012, see the Full Issues page.

Staff Report

Five local community advocates were honored Feb. 15 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts as the museum held its sixth annual RVA Community Makers Award Program. The event “commemorates Black History Month with an art installation that brings together local artists and the community to honor individuals who positively impact the metro Richmond community.”

This year’s program, titled “Uncovering Hidden Histories,” featured the unveiling of five quilts, each with an image of an award recipient, created by Richmond artist Unicia Buster.

Those honored were:

J. Dontrese Brown, a “strategic thought leader and change agent” who led the movement to rename Richmond’s Boulevard after human rights activist and tennis great Arthur Ashe. He also “co-founded ‘Hidden in Plain Site,’ a virtual reality exploration of the Black American experience.”

Elvatrice Parker Belsches, a “public historian, archival researcher, lecturer, author and filmmaker who speaks locally and nationally on the Black experience in history.” Among other works, she is the author of “Black America Series: Richmond, Virginia” and served as an art consultant on the Steven Spielberg movie “Lincoln.”

Ana F. Edwards, a public historian who co-founded the Virginia Defenders, its quarterly newspaper The Virginia Defender and its Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project “to promote the history and memorialization of Gabriel’s Rebellion, Richmond’s first municipal African Burial Ground and the Shockoe Bottom district.”

Lauranett Lee, the “Inaugural Director of Race and Social Justice at Richmond Hill, an ecumenical retreat center” in Richmond. She is the author of “Making the American Dream Work: A Cultural History of African Americans in Hopewell, Virginia” and helped create the genealogy database “Unknown No Longer.”

Brian Palmer, a “Peabody Award-winning visual journalist” whose photographs are in the collections of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Library of Congress and others. He and his wife, Erin, “have worked to reclaim East End Cemetery, a historic African American burial ground in Henrico County, Virginia.”

The five quilts were created by Unicia Buster, a former graphic designer with the Richmond Free Press and art specialist for VCU Health who is a member of Richmond Really Sews and a founding member of the Black American Artists’ Alliance of Richmond. She “works primarily in fiber, creating art quilts and soft sculptors.”

Speaking at the event were Buster, artist and muralist Hamilton Glass, and Valerie Cassel Oliver and Paula Saylor Robinson of the VMFA.

Honored as Special Guests and demonstrating the quilt-making process were members of the Richmond-based Sisters of the Yam African American Quilters Guild.