Established in 2005 as The Richmond Defender, The Virginia Defender is a free community newspaper, published quarterly for the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality. Print distribution is currently 12,000 and statewide. The online publication launched in Summer 2020.
Richmond’s Trail of Enslaved Africans runs between the former slave-trading district of Shockoe Bottom just north of the James River and Manchester Docks at Ancarrow’s Landing on the river’s southern bank.
In Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom, at the corner of 16th and East Broad streets, there is a small, untidy, white brick building once occupied by a sandwich shop called The Daily Grind.
Team Henry Enterprises, a Norfolk-based, Black-owned construction firm, has been selected by the Shockoe Institute Foundation to turn the ground floor of the Main Street Station into a welcome and interpretive center. Also, New Orleans-based musician Leyla McCalla has been hired as the founding artistic director of the Shockoe Institute.
Isn’t the ground floor in the floodplain? And won’t we lose the best views? If these questions wrack your brain, you are not alone, but there are reasons.
By late summer, a refined design concept for the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground Memorial will be advertised for public review. The whole packet, including cost estimates, will be submitted to the City of Richmond’s authentiCITY Studio, concluding the current contract with the Baskervill design firm.
$33 million has been committed from the city of Richmond and the state of Virginia for the launch of the Shockoe Project, the working title for the 10-acre memorial park to be constructed on the site of what once was the epicenter of the U.S. domestic slave trade.
A northern Virginia-based company contracted by the federal government to run the immigrant detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is coming under intense scrutiny for its alleged abuse at other immigrant centers.
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