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VCU Workers Form All-Inclusive Union

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Today’s announcement that the VCU Union is now open to faculty and staff members of all classifications has implications beyond higher education. The fight to improve the working conditions of Richmond’s largest employer could have ripple effects that impact all Virginians.

This afternoon VCU workers, including tenure line faculty, adjunct faculty, and staff, announced the formation of a VCU union. The union, a chapter of United Campus Workers (UCW), will be an expansion of a UCW-affiliated organizing effort among adjunct instructors in the School of the Arts. 

The implications of this new organizing effort extend beyond VCU, and beyond higher education in general.

Virginia has long been considered one of the most hostile states for labor, ranking dead last among the 50 states in a 2019 analysis of worker’s rights by anti-poverty group Oxfam.

In 2019, just 4 percent of Virginia wage and salary workers were part of unions, compared to a national rate over 10 percent. Only South Carolina and North Carolina ranked lower. According to a 2020 report, Virginia, South Carolina, and North Carolina are also the only three states to prohibit “collective bargaining by public sector employees including firefighters, police and teachers,” a ban that will be eased in Virginia on May 1, 2021 for local public employees, but will remain in effect for state employees, such as faculty and staff at VCU and other state universities. Notably, the new law does not bestow collective bargaining agreements to localities; it only allows localities to consider and revise the bans if they see fit.

However, the activities banned by these laws represent just a slice of union activity, and the means by which unions can accumulate leverage in labor negotiations are diverse. Via the First Amendment, it is unconstitutional for a state to prohibit unionization, even at public institutions; only the act of collective bargaining between the union and the state entity is banned.

In 2011, the Economic Policy Institute found that workers in “right to work” states like Virginia earn, on average, 15 percent less in wages. The number becomes 3.1 percent when adjusted for socioeconomic factors like cost of living, but it should be noted that cost of living is often lower in locations with lower “quality of life,” including access to quality education, healthcare, green spaces, transportation, and other factors (therefore, adjusting these numbers for cost of living has implications for equity). Moreover, workers in “right to work” states are also less likely to receive health benefits from employers, and are dramatically less likely to be protected by a union contract.

A January 2021 UCW victory in Tennessee presents an example of the power unions can wield, even in “right to work” states. Though Tennessee does not currently prohibit collective bargaining between unions and government entities, Tennessee has had “right to work” laws on the books since 1947 (Tennessee state law weakens unions by allowing workers who are protected by union negotiations to forgo paying union dues). 

Despite this considerable obstacle, in January of this year the University of Memphis chapter of UCW secured $15/hour minimum wage for all campus workers, the result of a union campaign waged since 2017, according to a UCW press release.

By contrast, at the time of this writing VCU is running multiple ads on ‘vcujobs.com’ for hourly positions that pay $10/hour or less. This is including a position in the box office that pays just $9.50/hour, is eligible for 29 hours per week, and in which the new hire would be ineligible to ever receive health benefits, according to the point of contact listed in the ad, who was reached by phone by RVA Mag. A separate VCU Jobs listing seeking a housekeeper lists $10/hour as the expected salary. 

In 2021, VCU pledged to raise their standard base pay to $1,200/credit hour taught for adjuncts, though in the current academic year, base pay is $1,100/credit, and VCU has paid faculty wages as low as $816 per credit, according to Kristen Reed, an associate professor and member of the VCU union’s steering committee. In a press release on April 12, the union noted “’VCU Arts Adjuncts Organizing for Fair Pay’ was successful three years ago in winning pay increases.” However, “the increases they won still leave most VCU adjuncts below [Virginia’s] poverty line.”

A 12-credit load is considered full-time for adjuncts at VCU, and would gross $28,800 for two semesters of work. According to an online paycheck tabulator, after deductions a single person earning this salary should expect a net paycheck of $946 twice a month. According to a Richmond Times Dispatch report, rents in Richmond rose more than 30 percent over a six-year period from 2012 to 2018. According to multiple apartment rental websites, in April 2021 the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Richmond was approximately $1,200 per month. 

Therefore, VCU adjunct instructors — many of whom have PhDs or other terminal degrees in their fields — can expect to spend over 63 percent of their take home teaching pay on renting a one-bedroom apartment in Richmond, with just $700 left over per month for all other expenses including child care, groceries, student loans, car payments, heating, electricity, hot water, retirement savings, health care, leisure, and unforeseen expenses. 

According to VCU Human Resources, only “salaried” faculty members are eligible for health benefits, a classification that does not include adjuncts. Furthermore, the school will only contribute to benefits premiums for employees who work 30 hours a week or more. With a budget stretched this tightly, a worker at this income level would be unlikely to accrue disposable income to create an emergency fund, save for a future down payment on a property, or pursue other long-term financial goals.

Photo via VCU CNS

To understand the full context of Virginia’s contemporary labor crisis, one must also revisit two familiar Virginian themes: Segregation and Dominion Energy. 

As sociologist Marc Dixon describes, the founder of the “right to work” movement was a segregationist named Vance Muse. Muse and his organization — “The Christian American Association,” founded in 1936 — were based in Texas, but wielded a powerful influence through the American South. As early as 1916, Muse is noted as opposing a Texan pro-labor law that protected railway workers from excessively long work days. 

Revealingly, in opposing unions, Muse deployed ugly, anti-Black rhetoric: “From now on, white women and white men will be forced into organizations with black African apes whom they will have to call ‘brother’ or lose their jobs.”

In 1961, Martin Luther King Jr laid bare the connection between anti-Blackness and anti-labor sentiments, telling the AFL-CIO “the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.”

That same year, King condemned “right to work” laws in more general terms. “In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work,'” he said. “It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone… Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer, and there are no civil rights.”

According to Dixon, though numerous unions were segregated — and the AFL’s record on race is particularly checkered — in the early 1940s, Muse saw the CIO’s opposition to Jim Crow laws as a particular threat (later these national, competing entities merged into the AFL-CIO). An expert in coded, racist public messaging, Muse’s group lobbied heavily for the successful passage of “anti-violence laws” that ultimately prohibited union strike picketing in states including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, and Texas, effectively making illegal one of the primary tactics unions deploy in making grievances public, and accruing negotiation leverage.

Emboldened by these victories, in the late 1940s numerous other conservative state legislatures and governors cracked down on organizing efforts. 

In Virginia, a battle between Virginia Electric and Power Company (predecessor to Dominion) and its workers led then-Governor William Tuck to pass a right-to-work law in 1947. Tuck made national headlines for his anti-labor resistance, and notably, was an enthusiastic participant in the Virginian strategy of “massive resistance” to the Supreme Court’s Brown vs Board of Education decision, which desegregated schools. In the US Congress, where Tuck represented Virginia from 1953-1969, the congressman fought vigorously against civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

In 1946 though, to smash efforts of energy sector labor to attain fair wages and safer working conditions, then-Governor Tuck drafted 1,600 “essential production and maintenance workers” of Virginia Electric and Power Company into an “unorganized militia,” a power play that temporarily reclassified private utility employees as members of the armed forces, whose chain of command leads to the governor. William Green, then President of the AFL, described the action as “involuntary servitude.” 

After a response from the union that he found unsatisfactory, Tuck ordered 2,500 members of the Virginia State Guard to assemble in uniform. Each member was given papers to distribute to power company employees in their districts. According to a New York Times article published that week, “One paper was a ‘notice of draft and order to report,’ addressed to the worker as ‘a member of the unorganized militia of Virginia.” 

A second sheet of paper contained the following warnings: 

If and when any union of its employees calls its members out on strike, your status as an employee of such company shall thereupon cease, and you shall immediately thereafter be on active duty as a member of the State militia, and assist in the operation of said company’s plants and facilities which will be taken over by the Commonwealth of Virginia […] You are now subject to the military law of Virginia, and for disobedience to orders you are subject to such lawful punishment as a court-martial may direct.

All male workers under the age of 55 received the above notices.

In this dramatic, legally-dubious union-busting maneuver by an anti-labor segregationist governor, one can observe the intersection of militarism, class struggle, corporate welfare and racism in Virginia. Serving as an executive agent and state enforcer for the private utility that would ultimately transform into modern day Dominion, Tuck defeated the Virginia labor movement, and cemented some of the nation’s most aggressive anti-labor policies into Virginian law.

Virginia’s contemporary position in the basement of labor rankings not only correlates with its ghastly record of human bondage, genocide, Jim Crow laws, and other systemic forms of anti-Blackness: the genealogy and impetus behind our labor laws and organizing restrictions are inextricably entwined with segregation and forced labor.

This week’s announcement of a comprehensive union for VCU employees represents a dramatic step forward in the history of Virginia labor. VCU is the largest employer in the city of Richmond, and one of the top five largest institutions of higher learning in Virginia by population. 

Moreover, a new law set to go into effect on May 1, 2021 will allow localities to determine whether non-state public employees will be allowed to collectively bargain. For example, if a Virginia locality passes new ordinances permitting them to do so, teachers and police officers employed by the locality could be allowed to negotiate via a union. However, the transference of discretion to local governments in deciding the legality of union negotiation is reminiscent of the General Assembly’s passage of a Civilian Review Board bill last year, which critics say gives localities too much power to convene (or not convene) police review boards with limited tools. Similarly, in a state as business-friendly as Virginia, there is reason for skepticism about whether the new labor law will create substantive change for workers. 

Furthermore, state employees, including all employees of state universities such as VCU, are not covered under the new bill, and will still be prohibited from both picketing and collective bargaining through a union.

Nonetheless, the new collective bargaining law, viewed alongside other signs of progress — including organizing efforts at multiple Virginia universities — may provide a glimmer of hope. With a Democrat-controlled General Assembly and Governorship, the recent passage of marijuana legalization in Virginia, and a 2021 election in full swing for numerous state-level positions, the Virginia labor movement may have a unique opportunity to expand and apply pressure to politicians. 

How lawmakers and their counterparts in VCU administration respond to this moment may provide a litmus test for how far toward progressive, equitable reforms Old Dominion is willing to swing.  

Top Photo: VCU Monroe Park campus; photo by Noah Fleischman.

“I Have a Dream” – August 28, 1963

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On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr delivered one of the most powerful, impactful, and gripping speeches in American history. The speech, given at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, brought around 250,000 people to Washington D.C. and in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln called for an end to racial discrimination and for the US to live up to its highest promise and ideals (something it has still failed to achieve).

Which is why 55 years later, amongst the tribalism, white nationalism, and xenophobia of 2018, King’s speech is still so essential. Not just for the sweeping oratory, prose, and poetry that most people in the US and throughout the world are familiar with, but also for what the Reverend(s) William Barber and Liz Theoharis of the Poor People’s Campaign recently said in an interview with The Guardian, “Like Dr. King, we must refuse to believe that the great vaults of the nation are bankrupt. Reigniting the movement of poor people that Dr. King and others called for in 1968 is the best way to honor his legacy. We are doing what he said –grassroots leaders in states across the country are building a moral movement to reclaim our nation’s lost soul.”

On the 55th anniversary of King’s “I have a Dream” speech, take a moment to read his address (below) and reflect on what 2018 has come to mean, not only for ourselves, but for our cities, communities, and country.

“I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free; one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination; one hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity; one hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

So we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was the promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note in so far as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy; now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice; now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood; now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content, will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the worn threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy, which has engulfed the Negro community, must not lead us to a distrust of all white people. For many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of Civil Rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality; we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities; we cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one; we can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”; we cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro in Mississippi cannot vote, and the Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No! no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations.  Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi. Go back to Alabama. Go back to South Carolina. Go back to Georgia. Go back to Louisiana. Go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.  Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I HAVE A DREAM TODAY!

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama — with its vicious racists, with its Governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification — one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I HAVE A DREAM TODAY!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be plain and the crooked places will be made straight, “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.  With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brother-hood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.  And this will be the day. This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire; let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York; let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania; let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado; let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that. Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia; let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee; let freedom ring from every hill and mole hill of Mississippi. “From every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”

Activism Through Stickers, Sequins, and Old Shoes

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From pennies to stickers to donated clothing, Richmond artist and activist Noah Scalin uses the most unexpected materials to highlight important figures in today’s political world.

“I want to shine a light on activists, historical figures, women, people of color,” Scalin said. “The people that we should be paying attention to.”

Noah Scalin

Scalin has created portraits of people he believes deserve recognition – including Ruby Bridges, Maggie Walker, and Martin Luther King. Some of his most popular pieces are made from stickers, where he uses colors and shapes strategically to create faces and scenes.

“These stickers, for me, are my stand-in for American culture,” he said. “Here’s this noise, here [are] these messages, here’s this constant barrage: what signal can we find in this noise and what should we be focusing on?”

Scalin has also created pieces from sequins, black pepper, buttons, and donated shoes.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Recycled Shoes

Scalin’s work focuses on incorporating positive political imagery in a society with ever increasing contentious, defeatist politics. After the 2016 presidential election, Scalin said he wanted to create images that inspire and give people something to look towards. Since President Trump took office in 2016, hate crimes have risen across the nation. With a president whose campaign was rooted in xenophobia and racism–calling Mexicans rapists and proclaiming “Islam hates us” –Scalin’s artwork fights against an administration which has implemented a Muslim ban and condoned the separation of immigrant families at the border.

“We can show the people we dislike and the people that are trying to tear people apart, but they’re narcissists and it won’t affect them. I’d rather not show their faces, speak their names or even talk about them,” Scalin said. “I want to diminish them by saying you’re irrelevant. We know what’s important and that’s why we’re going to win.”

One of Scalin’s current works-in-progress features Ieshia Evans, who became an icon of the Black Lives Matter movement after her arrest by police officers was captured in a momentous photograph called “Taking a Stand in Baton Rouge.”

Photo: The Washington Post

Seeing a strong, powerful activist in Evans, Scalin said he had wanted to create artwork based on this photograph for some time.

“I want [my artwork] to spend more time looking at something else,” he said. “That something else should be the people who are marginalized, the people who have amazing things to say but have been ignored, the people who have been crushed by the system we have developed. The least I can do with my work is say, ‘look over here instead.’”

The least I can do with my work is say, ‘look over here instead.’

One of Scalin’s most recent installations was a mural for the 2018 Green Gate Festival – where he painted a portrait of Sister Rosetta Tharpe. A queer, black singer/songwriter of the mid-20th century, Tharpe had been hailed the “godmother of rock & roll,” yet receives little acknowledgement today for being a driving force in the birth of rock & roll. Tharpe lived in Richmond for ten years, but Scalin said most of the city’s residents have no idea who she is. He used his mural for the festival as a chance to highlight her story.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe Mural

“We are overwhelmed with pictures of white men, and we don’t need anymore,” Scalin said. “So even though I have white skin and happen to be a cis-gendered male, I know that I have privilege and I try to use that privilege as much as I can to point the light somewhere else.”

Growing up the son of two artists, Scalin said he always knew he was meant to be an artist, too. As an author, activist, and dedicated member of his performance arts band, League of Space Pirates, Scalin has juggled it all. But it wasn’t until his “Skull-a-Day” project in 2007, in which he made a different skull-themed art piece every day for an entire year, that art really became his focus.

Skull-a-Day

After “Skull-a-Day,” Scalin found the creative energy to start making portraits out of very unconventional materials–everything from CDs to feathers–to make permanent pieces and temporary installations, depending on the materials. Scalin wants his artwork to be as accessible as the items he uses to make them.

“When you use everyday materials (in art), there’s a way in because of familiarity. That gives you a chance to reach people,” Scalin said. “But I use familiar materials in an unfamiliar way. So if you can take the familiar world and change it, then people have to think differently about everything in their world, potentially.”

Scalin said in addition to highlighting positive imagery, he uses unconventional materials to get people to see the world through a different lens.

Portrait of Jakartan Child

“It’s a way to get people to stop thinking about the thing they consume as fixed,” Scalin said. “I want people to see that the world is malleable, that they’re able to change things. And once they do, that means they’re no longer just consumers, now they’re participants. That’s a really big, important shift. We are trained and encouraged to be passive but we have to teach people how to be active.”

Scalin’s unconventional materials have crossed borders as well, as some of his pieces have ended up in Bali and Indonesia. Despite never traveling there, Scalin collaborated with an organization called Micro Galleries, which transforms unused spaces around the world into pop-up, street art installations. The installations and free and accessible to the community, and typically get set up in areas that don’t have much access to artwork otherwise.

Through collaborating with Micro Galleries, Scalin received a few pictures of neighborhood children who interacted with the pop-up galleries frequently, and decided to make their portraits. With the help of Micro Galleries organizers, hi-res photographs of the finished portraits were posted up in the children’s hometowns of Denpasar, Bali and Jakarta, Indonesia.

Portrait of Bali Child

Through his work with Micro Galleries, Scalin saw families and children interact with his artwork from thousands of miles away. His interwoven activism and artistry transcends physical borders, creating cross-cultural connections.

“It’s so cool because here I am, over there. So even though I can’t go [to Denpasar or Jakarta], I can still be a part of that [community], in a way,” Scalin said. “It becomes this amazing connection and collaboration across borders using these materials.”

 

Photos provided by Noah Scalin.

Elegba Folklore Society’s voting-rights focused exhibit offers unique look at 50+ years of civil rights

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Showcasing photographs of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, “Foot Soldiers: Voting Rights. Civil Rights. Human Rights” is a call for action against inequality and violence.

The exhibition is on display, with free admittance, in the Elegba Folklore Society‘s main building on Broad Street until December 31.

Theodore Holmes, the photographer who created “Foot Soldiers,” wanted to commemorate and give a voice to the activists at the march. “I always try to stand apart from the crowd,” he said. “I try to find the proper perspective- I’m trying to tell their story.”

While curating his photos for the exhibition, a certain narrative thread emerged more strongly than others. “I wanted to have people look at the photographs of the children,” said Holmes. “That’s our future. Children should be protected, and Tamir Rice- when the police rolled up on him like they did and just- shot him. Killed a twelve year old. And that really affected me.”

The Elegba Folklore Society, as a cultural arts and education nonprofit, strives to provide educational opportunities through the arts and to re-instill cultural foundations in the African American community.

Besides its exhibitions, the Society also offers African Dance classes, cultural heritage tours following the trail of enslaved Africans in Richmond, and seasonal events, such as its Kwanza Festival.

“Foot Soldiers” is firmly in keeping with the Society’s focus on education through the arts. “Not to sound corny, but that adage, a picture is worth a thousand words, can be beneficial,” said Janine Bell, President and Artistic Director of the Elegba Folklore Society.

“The photographs play out the title of the exhibition because you see people standing as foot soldiers, carrying the banners of these messages,” said Bell. “That’s important.”

Historically, though, a control on images and control over perspective can be difficult to confront. “African Americans, before we were Americans, as Africans and slaves, we were always in opposition to those who were hired to protect White people’s property,” Bell said. “We were on the other side of the equation, from slave catchers, to, as our ancestors would say, the paddy rollers, the patrollers, to the police. And this rash, if you will, of state sponsored violence may be new to you, but it’s not new.”

The visibility and acknowledgment of violence has been critical to Civil Rights movements through the years. “The Black Panthers were started in Oakland simply because police in Oakland had a habit of telling people to raise their hands, and when they’d raise their hands, they’d shoot them in their arm pits,” Holmes said. “So nothing’s changed, everything’s really the same. Just, now, thanks to [cell phones], people can record some of these things.”

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place on August 28, 1963, when 200,000 Americans gathered for a political demonstration in Washington, D.C. The March culminated in Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and became an iconic moment in the Civil Rights Movement of the time.

For Holmes, seeing the original March on Washington was a demonstration of the power of visibility. “Having been a child, I saw the original march on television,” he said. “I was really amazed at that- that people came out to support that cause, it really gave me a good feeling just to see people like Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Charlton Heston. Those people actually came out and stood and marched.”

“I was really attracted to that, because of the fact that, as a black kid running around Richmond, I was like, ‘somebody actually cares about us.'”

The event aimed for a reincarnation with a 50th anniversary return to DC. Tens of thousands of men, women and children took returned to the Lincoln Memorial where King spoke. Taking photographs of the March in 2013 gave Holmes a chance to bring forward his perspective on the same event that he saw on TV 50 years before.

“I wanted people to look at the flow, of course,” he said reflecting on what was important to catch and display in the new exhibit. “But I wanted them to look at the children and think, yes, our children are important, we need to protect our children. I can’t emphasize that too much.”

This desire to inform people and to make the world a little bit safer meant that “Foot Soldiers” also gives people access to helpful information. At the end of the exhibition, on a small table, Holmes has included a set of pamphlets on voting laws and advice on what to do when stopped by the police.

He hopes people can unite around a principle of equality and compassion. “The struggle is ongoing, the struggle has always been ongoing,” he said. “My work is not just about black people, my work is a human struggle… All people need to come together as they did in the original March On Washington. It was all people.”

The Elegba Folklore Society will continue to showcase “Foot Soldiers: Civil Rights. Voting Rights. Human Rights,” with free admittance, until December 31.

The Society’s building will be open Tuesday through Saturday from noon to six or seven. Individuals and groups can also make an appointment to see the exhibition with a guided tour.