UVA remembers
“I welcome you to join us and share in the experience as we memorialize, as we celebrate, as we commemorate and learn lessons of the contribution of people of color who were enslaved and yet helped to build this university community,” said Mount Zion First African Baptist Church Pastor Alvin Edwards at the opening of last weekend’s virtual dedication ceremony for UVA’s Memorial to Enslaved Laborers. The memorial has been open to the public since last year, but an official dedication ceremony had been postponed due to coronavirus.
The virtual event featured remarks from UVA President Jim Ryan and former president Teresa Sullivan, a performance from local African dance group Chihamba, spoken word poetry from two current Black students, information about the memorial’s creation, and testimony about the site’s importance from a wide variety of community leaders who had been involved in the project over the last few years.
“As students, we felt the legacies of those whose names were engraved here, and those whose names we do not know,” said Ishraga Eltahir, a 2011 UVA graduate whose advocacy as a student helped create the impetus for the memorial. “As a Black student at the University of Virginia, those legacies manifested in particularly complicated ways. They were everywhere and in everything. …Memory of a complete history is what we were denied.”
Throughout the program, multiple speakers emphasized that the memorial is the beginning, not the end, of racial justice work at UVA.
“We feel this project has brought life and light to the buried and forgotten,” said Khalifa Sultan Lee, another former student whose work was instrumental in the memorial’s creation. “We pray everyone joins us in the consistent remembrance and the ongoing reparations work to come.”
Bugging out
You might have heard some buzz about a wave of cicadas swarming across the East Coast this May. Billions of winged creatures—the ominously named Brood X—will soon wake up from their 17-year slumber and emerge ready to mate, lay their eggs in trees, and then burrow back underground. If that prospect gives you the heebie-jeebies, don’t leave town this spring. Northern Virginia skies will ring with the high-pitched wail of the insects, but central Virginia’s cicadas, known as Brood II, are set to snooze until 2030.
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Quote of the week
“To tell us that a Black Army second lieutenant in uniform can have that type of treatment imposed upon him—imagine what happens when the body cameras are off.”
—NAACP Executive Director Da’Quan Marcell Love, speaking at a press conference after video surfaced of Windsor, VA, police harassing and pepper spraying a Black man at a traffic stop
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Jerry jumps in
Local media mogul Jerry Miller announced that he’s running for the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. In a rambling campaign announcement livestreamed on his I Love Cville Facebook page, Miller said he’d seek to prioritize economic growth, job creation, and support for small businesses, as well as public transportation and broadband internet expansion. If you’re itching to head to the polls and cast your ballot for Miller, you’ll have to wait a while longer—the seat won’t be open until 2023.
Suite deal?
The Omni Charlottesville Hotel is suing the City of Charlottesville, reports The Daily Progress. In 2020, the city charged the downtown hotel $440,000 in taxes. On its website, the hotel advertises “Downtown Luxury, Southern Splendor,” but in court filings the hotel’s representation insisted that the place is actually not nearly so resplendent, and that the tax figure should have been closer to $350,000. City Council voted last week to retain an outside lawyer to argue on behalf of the city.
Ralph backs the Mack
Governor Ralph Northam has endorsed his former boss, Terry McAuliffe, in the 2021 governor’s race. Northam served as McAuliffe’s lieutenant governor during The Macker’s first term, from 2013-2017. McAuliffe was among the many state political leaders who called on Northam to resign after Northam’s 2019 blackface yearbook scandal, but apparently any bad blood from that moment has passed. Northam chose to endorse McAuliffe over state legislators Jennifer Carroll Foy and Jennifer McClellan, either of whom would become the nation’s first Black woman governor should they triumph in November.