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Black Legacy Commemorated With Proposed Richmond Planet Newspaper License Plate

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A former Black community newspaper will be commemorated in a special license plate if Virginia House lawmakers give the bill its final stamp of approval.

Sen. Joseph D. Morrissey, D-Richmond, introduced Senate Bill 753, which will authorize the issuance of a special license plate celebrating The Richmond Planet newspaper. Lawmakers in the Senate passed the bill unanimously. The House Transportation committee unanimously approved the measure Thursday, and it will now be considered by the entire House. 

The Planet was founded in 1882 by 13 formerly enslaved men, most who were Virginia public school teachers, according to the Library of Congress. A Black flexed bicep with shock waves emanating from the arm served as the masthead design. The same symbol and the title of the newspaper will be incorporated into the license plate.

Edwin Archer Randolph, the first Black man to graduate from Yale Law School, served as The Planet’s first editor, according to the Library of Congress. Two years later, John Mitchell Jr. assumed power and led The Planet for the next 45 years. Mitchell was considered the “fighting editor” for his fight against injustice through his work.

The front page of The Richmond Planet when editor John Mitchell Jr. died. Photo from the Library of Virginia.

Reginald L. Carter launched the effort to have the special plate. He was in search of a license plate for his personal vehicle, but Carter said he was uninterested with the available options. He came across the idea of creating a new plate in celebration of Black excellence. Carter described the process as “tedious but not impossible.”

Carter said he also worked on other projects in his hometown of Tappahannock. He worked to remove a Confederate statue, which the town council later voted to contextualize, and memorialize a lynched man from Essex County with a highway marker.

Mitchell’s family supports the idea.

“His great, great nephew, who’s also named John Mitchell, is on the board for The Richmond Planet Foundation,” Carter said. “They’re in full support of the plate, so I couldn’t have asked for a better family or representative to develop a plate after.” 

The Planet covered local, national and worldwide news. It fought for all things Black — equal rights, education, voting and segregation, according to Black Virginia, a project by University of Richmond students which highlighted the newspaper’s importance. The paper also offered advice and positive news. 

The Planet was bought in 1938 by The Baltimore Afro-American, according to the Library of Virginia.

Journalist Hazel Trice Edney previously worked for the Richmond Afro-American and Richmond Free Press newspapers. Edney said she conducted an independent study at Harvard University to compare the “fighting editor” styles of Mitchell and Raymond Boone, who established the Richmond Free Press in 1992. Boone was known as a “crusader of justice” and had a strong voice in the Black community.

“To have him on a license plate established in the former capital of the Confederacy and around the commonwealth of Virginia says that we do understand the fight that John Mitchell undertook,” Edney said.

The distribution and approval of the use of the new license plate is based on the ability to acquire and submit at least 450 prepaid applications, according to the bill impact statement. Carter set up an email where application and preorder inquiries were sent.

Dream for a Purpose, a marketing agency, designed the plate. 

The JXN Project, an organization to preserve and explain the pivotal role of the Jackson Ward neighborhood as one of the nation’s first historically registered Black urban neighborhoods, supports Carter’s endeavor. 

“We felt a responsibility to help Reggie and his campaign become the first license plate of its kind,” Sesha Moon, executive director and director of research of The JXN Project, stated in an email. 

Carter worked tirelessly to collect signatures traveling throughout the state, according to Moon. He recruited Morrissey to introduce the legislation. 

Sen. Joe Morrissey

Mitchell’s great, great nephew, Carter and Morrissey spoke in support of the bill during the Senate hearing. Morrisey reported earlier in the month that Carter had 497 prepaid orders for the plate.

The estimated cost is expected to be just over $16,000 and will require 218 staff hours, according to the bill impact statement. Revenue from the cost of the plates — $10 for a standard plate and $20 for personalized — and future sales will cover the cost of implementation.

The plate can stay in production if 200 plates are issued within five years for the Department of Motor Vehicles to continue the issuance of plates, according to Virginia’s Legislative Information System.

“My end goal is contextualization,” Carter said. “You can’t tell American history without telling African American history, and you can’t tell Virginia’s history without telling The Richmond Planet’s history or John Mitchell’s history.”

Written by Faith Redd, Capital News Service. Top Image: Proposed license plate commemorating the Richmond Planet.

Virginia Universities Reckon With Confederate Symbols

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In the wake of last summer’s protests and the pulling down of Confederate monuments around the state, universities within the commonwealth are dealing with the remnants of the Confederacy and of systemic racism that remain on their campuses today.

Virginia universities in the former heart of the Confederacy are reckoning with their past as students, faculty and staff call for the removal of Confederate symbols.

Richmond housed the capital of the Confederacy from 1861 to 1865. Over 150 years later, remnants of the commonwealth’s Confederate history remain, including in academia.

At least 71 symbols of the Confederacy were removed from public spaces in Virginia last year, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. That includes multiple renamings of public schools. Only one symbol was removed prior to the murder of George Floyd. 

Gov. Ralph Northam sent a letter to school board chairs in the commonwealth last July, urging public officials to change names and mascots that memorialized Confederate leaders.

“When our public schools are named after individuals who advanced slavery and systemic racism, and we allow those names to remain on school property, we tacitly endorse their values as our own,” Northam stated. “This is no longer acceptable.”

Several months later, the University of Virginia in Charlottesville removed the name of Confederate soldier Henry Malcolm Withers from a law school building. 

The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg approved the renaming of Trinkle and Maury halls. Trinkle Hall was named for former Virginia Gov. Elbert Lee Trinkle who signed Jim Crow legislation, according to the college’s board. Maury Hall was named for Matthew Fontaine Maury, who resigned his post as a U.S. Navy commander to join the Confederacy and helped it acquire ships.

The Virginia Military Institute in Lexington paid over $200,000 to remove a statue of Stonewall Jackson and relocate it to the Virginia Museum of the Civil War and New Market Battlefield State Historical Park.

Freeman Hall at the University of Richmond was recently renamed Mitchell-Freeman Hall. Photo courtesy of the University of Richmond.

University of Richmond

Anthony Lawrence, an accounting major at the University of Richmond, is president of the Richmond College Student Government Association. He established a space for multicultural students in the student commons his freshman year and is currently working to remove Confederate symbols on campus.

The university has two campus buildings named for men associated with slavery and segregation. 

Ryland Hall is named for slave owner Robert Ryland, the first president of Richmond College, the University of Richmond’s predecessor. Ryland also served as a pastor to the first African Baptist church in Richmond, according to the university. He called slavery a “divine right” and routinely enslaved and loaned slaves to others during his time as president, according to university researchers.

Mitchell-Freeman Hall was first named for Douglas Southall Freeman, who graduated from the university and served on the board of trustees. The university updated the name of Mitchell-Freeman Hall on Feb. 24 to honor former Richmond Planet Editor John Mitchell Jr. who was Black. Freeman was a journalist who advocated for segregation through “the Virginia Way” which suggests the elite have a duty to guide others, according to UR researchers. 

“If they want to have the historical impact that they say they do, there can be more, much more, done than a name on a building to tell the historical story,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence suggested plaques that explain the buildings’ history to inform students without honoring Confederate leaders. The university also could require a course to teach about the history of the university and associated officials. There is currently no explanation for the building names on campus, Lawrence said.

“There’s nothing that’s really stopping them from changing the name except for their own, I guess, stubbornness,” Lawrence said.

The Black Lives Matter movement helped people examine the names and roles of campus buildings, Lawrence said.

“It can come to a head now because of the wonderful activism that we’ve seen in these past couple of years,” Lawrence said. “This past summer has really been an example of what can happen when we see change.” 

Students formed The Black Student Coalition in March to advocate for the wellbeing of Black students.

“Now it’s impossible for the administration; it’s impossible for the board of trustees to silence us because we’re so strong, and because we have this coalition, and because we have each other,” Lawrence said.

Six percent of Richmond students identify as Black, according to the university. This makes Lawrence a minority student leader on campus.

“It’s exhausting but the work is rewarding in a way that I don’t think I ever would have known,” Lawrence said. 

Demonstrators pulled down the Richmond Howitzers Monument at Virginia Commonwealth University (June 2020). The university was in the process of auditing Confederate symbols on its two campuses and has since begun removal and renaming of those symbols. Photo by Andrew Ringle, The Commonwealth Times.

Virginia Commonwealth University

The board of visitors at Richmond-based Virginia Commonwealth University voted in September to remove Confederate symbols from campus. The decision came after more than three years of review. 

More than a dozen dedicated spaces, memorials and plaques will be removed from both campuses, according to the university. The decision includes de-commemorating buildings with Confederate affiliation, such as the Jefferson Davis Memorial Chapel. Davis was the president of the Confederacy. 

“The committee’s analysis revealed a more complete story of the meaning behind these memorials and commemorations that we can neither ignore nor celebrate and that impede our mission to serve all,” stated VCU President Michael Rao. 

Washington & Lee

Washington & Lee University in Lexington is named for former U.S. President George Washington and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Lee was president of the college for five years and the name was changed to Washington & Lee upon his death in 1870. Lee is buried on the campus. 

Students walked out of the university in late March to support dropping Lee’s name, according to WVTF. The board of trustees began soliciting input in July 2020 on the university’s name and Confederate symbols. The board will issue a final decision on the name in June, according to a statement by Rector Mike McAlevey.

Some professors also favor changing W&L’s name, including Mohamed Kamara, an associate professor of French and Africana studies. Kamara has been teaching at W&L since 2001 and was a founding member of the Africana Studies Program.

Kamara was drawn to the university because of the physical environment and academic freedom the administration offered him. 

“I am here because I love Washington & Lee, so that same love that I had for it when I first came here, I still have it,” Kamara said.

Kamara supports the student protests because of the effectiveness of protests in American history. He said the American Revolution was a protest of sorts where American colonists resorted to violence against Great Britain. 

“Most of what has been achieved in terms of positive development have been done through protests,” Kamara said.

Demonstrators pulled down the Richmond Howitzers Monument at Virginia Commonwealth University (June 2020). Photo by Andrew Ringle, The Commonwealth Times.

Changing the name of the university would harm no one, Kamara said. It would save Black students the trauma of dealing with the institution of slavery when they come across the university’s name.

“It brings that memory that is not pleasant at all,” Kamara said.

Black people still feel the aftereffects of slavery even though it ended in the U.S. over 156 years ago, Kamara said. 

“For those of us who are members of the Black race, we will back Washington for what he did for the university and Robert E. Lee for whatever he did for the university,” Kamara said. “But at the same time, we cannot ignore that component of the history that subjugated people like us.” 

Washington and Lee were both slave owners, though Lee’s name is often the one brought up during renaming discussions, Kamara said. 

“I believe that issue is going to come up,” Kamara said. “There was a time when nobody talked about removing Lee’s name.”

Kamara is fine with removing only Lee’s name, but he believes changing the whole name is an opportunity for the university to take an extra step.

“It may make sense, as a sign of goodwill, as a sign of good faith to be ahead of our times,” Kamara said.

Written by Katharine DeRosa, Capital News Service. Top Photo: Ryland Hall at the University of Richmond is named for slave owner and former Richmond College president Robert Ryland. Photo courtesy of the University of Richmond.

Women’s Suffrage, Social Media-Style

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In their latest exhibit, The Valentine puts a new spin on the fight to gain women the right to vote by imagining it as a social media battle between famous figures of the early 20th century.

If you’ve ever wondered what Maggie L. Walker’s social media presence would look like if virtual communication had existed during the suffrage movement of the early 20th century, you’re going to love the Valentine’s new exhibition. #BallotBattle: The Social Struggle for Suffrage, opening Thursday, November 21, showcases suffrage-era public discourse in ways that are familiar and relatable to modern Americans.

To commemorate the centennial of the 19th Amendment’s ratification in 2020, #BallotBattle features plausible interactions via Facebook feeds and Twitter threads between five high-profile Richmonders from the suffrage era, who represent a diverse cross section of the Virginia Capital’s political discourse from 1909 to 1920.

“In 2019, there’s so much political and social debate, and it all happens on our phones,” said Christina K. Vida, the Valentine’s Curator of General Collections. “So we wanted to use our current social media to represent how social this discussion was 100 years ago.”

“With the founding of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia in 1909 and the formation of the Virginia Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage in 1912, there was an explosion of public debate in Richmond,” said Vida. “It was happening in newspapers, in the Jefferson Hotel’s auditorium, at the Woman’s Club of Richmond, and on street corners all around the capital.”

Of the five notable Richmonders selected are women suffragists Maggie L. Walker and Lila Meade Valentine, and black suffragist John Mitchell Jr. From the opposing side of the debate are anti-suffragists Mary Mason Anderson Williams and Henry Lee Valentine, Lila Valentine’s brother-in-law. The exhibition displays Facebook profiles for each of them that look just like ours, including their relationship statuses, employment and educational histories, and even places around Richmond where they’ve checked in.

The social media interactions are modernized translations of historical documents, complete with the language of today’s online discourse such as hashtags, emojis, likes, heart-reacts, and memes. The exhibition also features an array of other documents, pamphlets, photographs, and propaganda from the suffrage era, compiled from the Valentine’s collection, the Library of Virginia, the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, and the VCU Special Collections Library.

Though the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, the Valentine’s suffrage exhibition contains decades’ worth of history on the fight for women’s rights. There’s a selection of historical documentation about the Equal Rights Amendment, including one of Elizabeth Shoemaker Parman’s ERA ratification brochures that circulated in the 1970s, and a 1973 photograph of Adèle Clark controversially lobbying against the passage of the ERA with Delegate Eva Mae Scott.

“We wanted to drive home the fact that the ratification of the 19th Amendment wasn’t a foregone conclusion,” said Vida. “There was still a lot of work to do then, and there still is now. We’ll continue that work from 2020 and on.”

The ERA was first introduced to Congress in 1923, and is designed to guarantee equal rights for all Americans by eradicating sex-based legal disparities in areas such as employment, property, and divorce. While the ERA was ratified by Congress in 1972, technically the congressional deadline for the ERA expired in 1982 when only 35 states had passed it in their legislatures. Since three-quarters of the individual states must ratify an amendment before it is added to the Constitution, three states were still needed for ratification in 1982. But after the 27th Amendment was ratified in 1992 after being introduced to Congress a record-setting 202 years earlier, validity of ratification deadlines has come under scrutiny.

Virginia is now in the national spotlight because the long fight for the ERA could soon be over. In the recent 2019 elections, Democrats won control of both houses of the Virginia legislature, and many of the newly elected have voiced their intent to vote on the ERA. Nevada ratified the ERA in 2017 and Illinois followed in 2018, so if the ERA passes in the Virginia legislature in 2020, it will be the 38th and final state needed to add the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Thus, there is an unforeseen quality of timeliness to the Valentine’s #BallotBattle exhibition, in addition to its intended concurrence with the 19th Amendment’s centennial year. “We might have to change some of the exhibition’s taglines depending on what happens in the General Assembly,” said Vida, with a palpable tone of excitement.

#BallotBattle will close on September 7, 2020. The Valentine is open from 10 am to 5 pm, Tuesday through Sunday. For more details, visit their website.

Photos by Noelle Abrahams

Artist’s Map of Richmond’s Streetcar System Reminds Us What Might Have Been

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Artist Jake Berman has been creating maps of bygone streetcar systems around the US. Now he’s turned his focus onto the first electric streetcar system ever, which opened right here in Richmond in 1888.

Believe it or not, there used to be a way to get around Richmond that didn’t involve struggling to find an opportunity to turn left off of Broad or dealing with drivers who don’t want to share the road with bicycles. Jake Berman, an artist from New York, drew a map of Richmond’s old streetcar system, showing how Richmonders at the turn of the 20th century made their way around town. 

Richmond was home to the first practical electric streetcar system on the planet. Designed and introduced by Frank Sprague in 1888, the streetcar system boasted 82 miles of track at its peak, providing transportation throughout the city and into the suburbs. Sprague’s streetcar system proved to be so successful in Richmond that it became the model for countless other streetcar systems throughout the world. 

Berman, who has made a project out of mapping the country’s old transit systems, was inspired while sitting in traffic. “I was living in LA at the time and I was stuck in a traffic jam,” Berman said. “I was frustrated and started thinking, why can’t I take a train to work?” 

Richmond Trolley cars on Broad St. downtown, 1923. Printed by Louis Kaufmann & Sons, Baltimore, MD [Public domain], via Wikimedia

After going down a rabbit-hole of research, Berman discovered that, like Richmond, Los Angeles was once home to a successful electric rail system. Interested in this mode of transportation that no longer exists in many places around America, Berman started working on a collection of sleek maps that depict historic transit lines in several cities. 

When designing his maps, Berman researches fonts and commercial ads that were used at the time the streetcars were being used. This gives viewers the feeling that they are viewing a transit map straight out of the early 20th century.

”What I’m trying to capture is a certain snapshot of a city at a particular time,” Berman said. “There are lots of streets on my Richmond map that don’t exist anymore, because they’ve been demolished or re-routed. There are landmarks that would have been very recognizable to someone a long time ago, but nowadays that’s just not the case.”

Sites such as Virginia State Penitentiary, the Locomotive Works, and the Virginia State Agricultural Grounds figure prominently on the map. While these sites are often overlooked today, Berman’s map helps to shine light on a history that is usually forgotten.

Images of the 1903 streetcar strike, taken from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Images obtained via Library of Congress’s Chronicling America archive, by Church Hill People’s News

But there’s more to the history of Richmond’s streetcars than old routes and landmarks; the streetcar system played a big part in the history of civil rights in Richmond. Virginia’s General Assembly passed legislation in 1904 that allowed segregated seating on streetcars. The Richmond Planet, a local black-owned newspaper edited by civil rights hero John Mitchell Jr., called for a boycott of the streetcars. 

The Richmond Planet estimated that upwards of 80% of Richmond’s black population participated in the boycott. The Virginia Passenger and Power Company, which operated the streetcars, declared bankruptcy within the first three months of the boycott. 

Although stricter segregation laws were passed in the years after 1904, the boycott is remembered as an important and crucial aspect of Richmond’s struggle for civil rights. 

Richmond’s streetcars came to a halt in 1949. The streetcars were dramatically burned, signaling the end of rapid transit in Richmond until the introduction of the GRTC Pulse bus route in 2018. Richmond was not the only city to say goodbye to streetcars after World War II; in fact, many cities throughout the US also shut down their streetcar systems in the late 1940s. 

Remnants of rail infrastructure on Stockton St. Photo by James Shelton32 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia

It seems that these days we are doomed to a world devoid of light rail systems. Berman doesn’t anticipate this changing anytime soon. “I think that for now the United States is going to be a place mostly for driving,” he said, noting that most Americans live in the suburbs today. “Most of the suburbs that were built after WWII are just unnavigable unless you have a car.”

“Things could be different. Transportation infrastructure wasn’t handed down on Mt. Sinai,” Berman said. “If people are lamenting the fact that they’re stuck in traffic, or if they have to go five miles to find the nearest grocery store, then people should think about why that is. It doesn’t have to be like this.” 

Regardless of how you get around, Berman’s maps provide a beautiful visual aid for imagining a future in which everyone has more options for navigating throughout the city. Check out a full-size version of Berman’s map on Reddit here.

Top Image by Jake Berman