Reflecting the past
New African-American newspaper dusts off a 70-year mission
When Thomas J. Sellers founded the Reflector, a weekly newspaper for African-Americans published in Charlottesville between 1931 and 1935, he wrote that his aim was not to cover all the news but to "reflect the progress of our community and Race."
Seventy years later, a pair of local entrepreneurs have dusted off the Reflector nameplate, but with a slightly different mission statement. In March, Corey Carter and Waki Wynn jumped into the crowded Charlottesville publishing market with the first issue of the new African American Reflector.
"We thought the name would be a great tribute to Thomas Sellers," says Carter, the Reflector’s 31-year-old editor. By reviving the Reflector name, the bi-monthly paper intentionally highlights the contrast between Charlottesville’s black community in the Jim Crow ’30s and its black community today.
Back then, Charlottesville incubated one of the most progressive centers of black culture anywhere in the South. The most popular columns from old issues of the Reflector are society pages full of the comings and goings of black elites, focusing on names that are still familiar today: Coles, Bell, Tonsler, Inge and Jackson. Now, however, Carter laments the decline of the city’s black culture––sealed with the destruction of Vinegar Hill in the ’60s, Carter believes—and the current paucity of black-owned businesses and nightspots.
"Charlottesville has a hard time keeping black professionals," says Carter. "I have successful friends who say ‘I love Charlottesville, but what am I going to do here?’ They’ve gone off to D.C. or Richmond or Atlanta."
Carter and Wynn have stayed, remaining here after growing up together in Charlottesville. Carter left briefly to teach English in Baltimore public schools, dreaming of owning a newspaper before returning home. Meanwhile Wynn went through a succession of home-based businesses like Amway, Primerica and Quixtar. He also started a lawn-care business and tried selling vending machines and printing t-shirts before working for the ill-fated Internet company Value America. He started Wacky Entertainment, through which he has put on jazz and r’n’b shows around town.
It was at one of those shows that Carter and Wynn decided to start a newspaper.
"We saw the issue about the lack of entertainment venues as hand-in-hand with the issue of a newspaper," says Carter. "We need more culture."
The Reflector staff includes just Carter, Wynn and his wife, Traci, the paper’s staff writer. The free paper claims a circulation of about 6,000 and distributes in about 70 sites in Charlottesville, Albemarle and surrounding counties. Like the old Reflector, the new paper counts on an audience of liberal white readers as well as blacks.
"The boxes in Forest Lakes are always empty," says Carter. "About half our e-mails are from white readers saying ‘Thank you.’"
The content includes "From the Editor" comments on local events and calls for black activism, and "Reflections," a section that reprints articles from the old Reflector as well as writings from black scholars such as David Walker and W.E.B. DuBois. The paper has taken an aggressive stand on the achievement gap issue in City and County schools, asking: "Are the futures of black students being gambled away the minute black parents send their children to public schools? The numbers suggest yes."
Even as the upstart Reflector stumps for more local black culture, they face competition from the 50-year-old Charlottesville-Albemarle Tribune. That paper is currently wrapped up in a legal drama in which former ad rep Rosanna Harris sued publisher Agnes Cross-White for $1 million, alleging Cross-White lied about the Tribune’s circulation. Cross-White contends the lawsuit is frivolous and claims Harris forged checks and stole her car.
About the time the old Reflector made its debut, the Daily Progress published two newspapers, one with white society news and the other with black society news. In an editorial, Sellers challenged anyone offended by segregation to support the Reflector. "So, unless those protestors cooperate with this, their own weekly paper," he wrote, "I shall be forced to believe that they are only jokers."
Carter and Wynn don’t make such explicit challenges, but the subtext of the new Reflector is an appeal to the city’s older, middle-class black population to come out and rebuild a culture in Charlottesville.
"That’s a big issue," says Wynn. "If we just wanted to make money, we wouldn’t have started a newspaper."––John Borgmeyer
Queer eye
for the frat guy
Stylish advice from the family to the brothers
With the recent announcement that campus group Out on Rugby plans to form a gay fraternity at UVA, C-VILLE put in a call to local homosexual Pierce Atkins. Since every man of the gay persuasion is an arbiter of good taste, Ace’s "that way" brother gave the non-gay frat boys tips on how to live more fabulously on Rugby Road so as to welcome their prospective gay brothers. After a few cosmos at Escafé he opened right up. An edited transcript follows.
C-VILLE: So Pierce, say I’m your average frat boy. What can I do to spruce myself up a little bit?
Pierce Atkins: I think you mean "Bruce" yourself up a little bit. Just kidding. Listen, I’ve seen my fair share of frat boys. Believe me—try Googling "frat boys." Let’s start with fashion. Foxfield is the social event of the year. Make your best impression by selecting a visor, tie and flipflops to match the Coors Light in your hand. The silver, red and black make an eye-catching combo, and also work to disguise the eventual vomit stains. But pity Bud Light fans. I can’t help to coordinate that mess.
What about interior decorating? Frathouses aren’t known for their stylish ambience.
One of the first rules of interior design is to pick an essential piece and create a room around it. In frat houses, that’s almost universally the ping pong table. Use that to your advantage. Experiment in netting, paddles (good for pledging, too!) and deep, forest green as room treatments. Plus, the central location will make beer pong more easily accessible and offer a large, uncluttered surface for Domino’s delivery. Just make sure to clean off the pizza boxes when the mold colonies start to gain sentience.
Speaking of food, is there life beyond boxed macaroni and cheese and Ramen noodles?
In general, stick to the essentials. But when trying to impress that special lady in your life, splurge a little on Chef Boy-R-Dee. Rumor has it he was trained at the Culinary Institute of America. In any event, this works out doubly well for you. You’ll have a swoon-worthy Beefaroni dinner that the anorexic sorority girls won’t touch, meaning more for you. When it comes to wine, try to avoid the screw-off top. Nothing says "I want your sex" like a cork popping from a bottle.
Once they’ve wooed their paramour, any culture hints on making it a night to remember?
There is more to music than the Dave Matthews Band. While he has some decent ballads, jam bands are not meant for jammin’ between the sheets. I’m not saying you need to work in some of the first ladies—Cher, Bette, Madonna, Celine. That’s a bit much for the Greek scene. But try to inject some estrogen into the mix. Think Moby.
Assuming the night goes well, and well into morning, how does the successful frat boy keep fresh before class the next day?
Showers are your friend—while she’s taking one, you can quietly sneak out without that awkward post-coital conversation. To avoid knocking your friends dead in the lecture hall, always remember to bring a bottle of Brut cologne, a quick change of ballcap and those nifty breath strips. If you’re really good you can go for weeks without anyone knowing you’re a complete and total scumbag under those clothes.
Sounds pretty simple. Any other words of wisdom?
Well, to be honest, I think the boys are doing just fine. I mean, the world needs more big houses full of hunky men willingly living together. Sure they’re rough around the edges, but I like ‘em rough. Now, who’s up for beer pong?
The barber of C’ville
Ken Staples turns heads, cutting hair fromLong to short
For 11-year-old Carter Clarke, getting a haircut means a chance to spot celebrities. Clarke, a regular patron of Staples Barber Shop, has seen former NBC 29 weatherman Robert Van Winkle sitting in one of the shop’s ancient, green barber’s chairs. But he has yet to see Staples’ best-known customer, football star turned commentator, turned actor, turned appliance spokesman Howie Long, who according to owner Ken Staples has given much publicity to the 80-year-old business. "We need an agent around here to keep up with all this stuff," he jokes to a fellow barber during an interview.
For Staples, 71, business has been booming as of late. He and his six fellow barbers pull in about 150 customers a day during peak season, closing only on Sunday. At $13 a pop (not to mention tips—"To me that’s a personal thing between the customer and the barber," Staples says), that amounts to more than $600,000 annually for the 1950s throwback establishment, wedged in between Greenberry’s and Quiznos in the Barracks Road Shopping Center.
Part of the reason is Long’s distinctive flat top hairdo, which has made Staples the topic of conversation on national television programs like "The Tonight Show."
"These talk shows on TV, once they get through the ‘hellos,’ go straight to his hair," Staples says. He’s received his share of requests from other customers for a Howie Long haircut, he adds, though it doesn’t work for everybody. "It’s rare that a person’s head gives you the material for perfect flat top the way Howie’s does," he says.
While Staples’ national exposure is a recent development, the barber shop has been in the local limelight a lot longer. For some customers, going to Staples represents the ultimate in good-old-boy networking. Sen. George Allen "was a customer long before he went into politics," says Staples. Former UVA Rector Hovey Dabney has been going to Staples for 50 years.
"The atmosphere hasn’t changed," says Dabney. "It’s still the same. That’s why I look forward to going."
Dabney’s picture hangs twice among the likes of Long and Allen, on the store’s wood-paneled wall of fame, identifying him as Ken Staples’ first customer in the Barracks Road location. Going into Staples and seeing the pictures brings back to Dabney a lot of pleasant memories of an earlier Charlottesville. "That’s where you go to see all your friends and get all the news."
Staples’ father Albert came to Charlottesville in 1921. He opened his original barber shop in 1923 in a pink stucco building on E. Main Street, where Ken Staples began working in 1956 at the age of 24. It was two years later when the shop struck a deal to become one of the first businesses in the developing Barracks Road Shopping Center. For a while, both locations were in business, with the younger Staples running the Barracks Road shop and his father remaining Downtown. "Then the long hair came and killed it for everybody," Staples recalls.
When business slowed down, Albert Staples moved to Barracks Road where he, Ken and a third barber weathered the stormy ’60s and ’70s relying on their core of customers. Ken Staples "would come to my house and cut my hair…when I was sick," Dabney says. "One day my daughter was there and he taught her how to cut hair." The seasoned Albert had his own loyal following and would cut hair by appointment until he retired in 1994, dying in 1996 at the age of 98. Five or six years ago business really picked up, Dabney says, much of it due to an influx of UVA students, who, whether through the shop’s publicity, its location, or a new, retrograde standard of fashion, have become regular customers for now.
Staples estimates that 25 percent of his customers are new to the shop. But, he adds, this number will diminish as the school year passes and first-timers become familiar faces. "That’s part of the trade is when a barber waits on a person, he remembers that person."
In a city where transients and transplants influence many aspects of everyday life, Staples provides his customers with a sense of community. He plans no changes for the future. It’s the old-fashioned tradition, he says, that continues to draw people to Staples seeking a return to the days of one-on-one customer service and an escape from the atmosphere of chrome-laden chain salons. "There’s a billion of them out there that cut hair, but there are very few barbers."—Ben Sellers