Opinion: Virginia’s very bad Black History Month
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam greets members of the Richmond 34 for a breakfast at the Governors Mansion in Richmond on Feb. 22. The Richmond 34 were a group of African Americans who defied segregation laws in the 1960s By D.J. Jordan February 28 at 4:26 PM D.J. Jordan lives in Woodbridge and is the former chairman of the Virginia State Board of Social Services.
Also this month, Attorney General Mark R. Herring admitted to wearing blackface in 1980 as a 19-year-old college student imitating a well-known rapper instead. Richmond’s Shockoe Bottom neighborhood was the site of one of the largest slave trades in the country. Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Dred Scott was born into slavery in Virginia but legally fought and succeeded in gaining his freedom and the freedom of his family. Virginia was the home of Booker T. Washington, Robert Russa Moton and Ella Fitzgerald. In Farmville, a student strike led to the lawsuit of Brown v. The Board of Education case in 1954, an important milestone for the Civil Rights movement.
Virginia is now home of some of the nation’s most prestigious Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Virginia is home to two of the 10 economically best regions to live in the nation for African Americans: Richmond and the Northern Virginia/Washington, D.C. region, according to Forbes. First, we should resist the urge to use race as a political weapon to score partisan points. Name-calling creates division, anger and bitterness, and nowhere is this truer than in politics. Ed Gillespie was the victim of this partisan weaponry in the 2017 gubernatorial election, and it bitterly divided our state.
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