If you know Charlottesville resident Jamelle Bouie, you probably know him for his writing—first for The Daily Beast and Slate, now as an opinion columnist for The New York Times—or his political commentary on news shows like “Face the Nation,” or maybe for his wide-ranging and well-informed takes on Twitter. You may even see him pop up on Nextdoor, arguing about local zoning.
But Bouie is also a photographer, and his first-ever show is now on view at the Jefferson School: an exploration of a handful of all-black towns in Oklahoma that were established after Emancipation. He likes “old stuff,” he tells us, and “trying to imagine what something would have looked like when it was loved,” and the quiet, boarded-up buildings he photographed fit the bill. The show is also, though, about hope: about the thousands of former slaves who fled the oppressive racism of the South in an attempt to build their own future. “The quality and quantity of that aspiration, it cannot be missed,” says the show’s curator, Andrea Douglas.
There are a lot of new starts in these pages, from a longtime customer taking over Milli Coffee, to local performers attempting to “reclaim” stories of trauma through art.
And one goodbye: Samantha Baars files her last story as a staff reporter, about the rising costs of print newspapers, as The Daily Progress raises its rates. Sam joined the
staff as a 21-year-old straight out of James Madison University and honed her reporting skills here over the years, including as a vital part of our coverage of the August 2017 Unite the Right rally and its aftermath. Her tenure included three press awards and one (quashed) subpoena from Jason Kessler, and her keen eye and sly humor enlivened our pages. She will be missed.