Your Custom Text Here
A car drives past an automatic license plate reader on Route 29 in Charlottesville on June 27, 2025. Photos by Christopher Tyree//VCIJ
Hundreds of Flock Safety cameras capturing images of motorists across Virginia weren’t supposed to be used for immigration enforcement. But they were.
Read more
Meeting of the Commission to Study the History of the Uprooting of Black Communities by Public Institutions of Higher Education in the Commonwealth on Monday, December 2, 2024. The commission was spurred by reporting by VCIJ and ProPublica in 2023. Photo from Virginia House of Delegates.
A new state commission will seek documentation on campus expansions from dozens of Virginia public colleges and universities.
Read more
Urban geographer Johnny Finn points to majority Black neighborhoods whose inhabitants' health are negatively impacted by living near interstates and major roads. Photo by Elizabeth McGowan // VCIJ at WHRO
On a Norfolk map, St. Paul’s Boulevard appears as a north-south arterial. But local urban geographer Johnny Finn views that same six-lane strip near Interstate 264 as a stark line of disparity.
Life expectancy is 85 years for people living downtown and in adjacent upscale, whiter west side neighborhoods, according to Finn’s research. It drops by more than two decades — to 61.5 — in poor majority-Black census tracts to the east dominated by three public housing complexes.
“This is the cumulative impact of a century of racist housing policies and practices,” said Finn, an associate professor at Christopher Newport University. He called the finding “one of the most shocking juxtapositions” in his study of southeastern Virginia, because it amounted to taking “literal years off of life.”
Read more
Civil rights activist and local historian, Gary Flowers, points out how the construction of I-95 in the 1950’s demolished and separated the vibrant and bustling Black neighborhood of Jackson Ward in Richmond, VA, to travel magazine editors Leroy Adams and Marie Adams, at right, during a tour on Friday, July 12th. Photo by Christopher Tyree // VCIJ at WHRO
The historic Black neighborhood of Jackson Ward was intentionally split by highway development in the 1950s. Generations later, could a plan to reconnect the north and south sides renew a community?
Read moreFederal and state records show that Dollar Tree has a higher percentage of safety inspections that flag violations than retailers of similar size.
OSHA has issued $22.7 million in penalties to Dollar Tree from federal inspections between 2017 and April 2024.
Read more
Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, for decades expanded into and disrupted a neighboring, predominantly Black community, sometimes acquiring property by eminent domain. Virginia lawmakers on May 13 approved a two-year study commission to probe the uprooting of Black communities by the state’s public colleges and universities. Photo by Christopher Tyree. // VCIJ at WHRO
Spurred by a VCIJ at WHRO and ProPublica investigation, the recently approved Virginia budget includes nearly $60,000 over the next two years for a commission to study the disruption public college and university expansions have had on Black communities.
Read more
Zenobia Wilson stands outside of her apartment in Norfolk, Virginia. Her life has been disrupted by plans to reconnect her old, isolated community with the city. Photo by Christopher Tyree. // VCIJ
A $1.6 million federal grant could unscramble the I-264 ramps in downtown Norfolk. But would it reopen an isolated, Black community?
Read more
Since 2020, changes to the disciplinary process for law enforcement officers have driven up decertifications of wayward cops and prison guards. But a new law may shield investigators’ records and hearings from the public
Read more
Christopher Newport University’s campus displaced a Black neighborhood in Newport News, Virginia. Photo by Christopher Tyree/VCIJ at WHRO
The groundbreaking commission, which was proposed in response to our “Uprooted” series, would consider compensation for dislodged property owners and their descendants. Whether Gov. Glenn Youngkin will sign the bill is unclear.
Read more
Christopher Newport University's campus stands on the site of a once-thriving Black community. Photo by Christopher Tyree // VCIJ
Spurred by our “Uprooted” series, a task force created by the city of Newport News and Christopher Newport University will reexamine decades of city and university records shedding light on a Black neighborhood’s destruction.
Read more
A portrait of Trible and his wife hangs in the library named after them. Photo by Christopher Tyree // VCIJ at WHRO
Black enrollment at Virginia’s Christopher Newport University fell by more than half under longtime president Paul Trible, a former Republican senator who wanted to “offer a private school experience.” By 2021, only 2.4% of full-time professors were Black.
Read more
From Left: Sharon Endrick, President of the Campostella Civic League, and Kim Sudderth, a community activist, at the edge of the Elizabeth River under the Berkley Bridge with the skyline of the City of Norfolk Friday afternoon, December 15, 2023. Residents of the Southside neighborhoods were furious to learn their communities, with predominantly Black populations, would not get the same floodwall protections as downtown Norfolk. Photo by Bill Tiernan // VCIJ at WHRO
Norfolk, where the land is sinking and seas are rising faster than anywhere else on the Atlantic coast, is the first city in the U.S. to move forward with a coastal storm risk management plan under a 2015 Army Corps of Engineers strategy.
The two groups at opposite ends of the political and economic hierarchy each felt betrayed by a lack of transparency from federal and city officials about the largest infrastructure project in Norfolk’s history, one that will dramatically transform the city.
Read more
Urban CEO Alfred Liggins addresses supporters at a block party organized by his company and Churchill Downs, Richmond, Va., Sept. 30, 2023. The two companies are urging voters to approve a $562 million resort casino in Virginia's state capital. Photo by Jimmy Cloutier/VCIJ
Results of the Nov. 7 referendum may shape the future of gambling resorts in the commonwealth
Read more
Illustration by Christopher Tyree // VCIJ
A provision in state law exempts college presidents’ “working papers and correspondence” from disclosure even after they step down — as we found out when we asked about one ex-president’s role in campus expansions that uprooted a Black neighborhood.
Read more
Deborah Taylor Mapp, 75, along Elkhorn Avenue near 38th St. in the Lambert's Point neighborhood in Norfolk Friday, Sept.8, 2023 as she talked about a childhood friend who lived in the house behind her in photo. Mapp said when she was a child the house was painted red and she spent many hours sitting on the porch with her friend. Photo by Bill Tiernan // VCIJ at WHRO
Schools including Old Dominion and the flagship University of Virginia have expanded by dislodging Black families, sometimes by the threat or use of eminent domain.
Read moreSixty-plus years ago, the white leaders of Newport News, Virginia, seized the core of a thriving Black community to build a college. The school has been gobbling up the remaining houses ever since.
Read more
Home from the hospital, Amoni Thompson-Jones; her husband, Casey Jones; and their newborn baby, Amara Thompson, meet with midwife Ebony Simpson in their Alexandria, Virginia, apartment. Thompson-Jones told Simpson how unhappy she was with the hospital care she received. She said she felt as if the doctors had a “birth playlist” they followed whenever a woman came in and didn’t really listen to her concerns. Even if, like Thompson-Jones, the mother ultimately gives birth in a hospital, the midwives do follow-up postpartum checks with mother and baby for up to a year after the birth.
In Virginia, Black women in recent years have been more than twice as likely as other mothers to have a death attributed to childbirth.
Photographer Karen Kasmauski followed the work of Black midwives between January and April this year in Virginia. Her series of photographs traces the relationships formed between midwives and their clients — from initial consultations and prenatal meetings to the birth and support in the months following pregnancy.
Read more
The sign outside of the Richmond Registrar's Office, Richmond, Virginia, on Aug. 1, 2023. The city electoral board voted on July 25 to limit in-person early voting to this location in northern Richmond, near the city limit. Photo by Jimmy Cloutier
The Richmond Electoral Board’s decision last week to limit early voting locations could force voters in majority Black precincts to travel more than two hours by public transit to cast their ballots ahead of election day, an analysis by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO has found.
Read more
Students on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, VA, mourn the more than 30 people killed on campus during a candle light vigil on the campus. Burruss Hall is in the background. Photo taken April 17, 2007. Photo by Christopher Tyree/file for The Virginian-Pilot.
In the wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, elected leaders vowed to prioritize campus safety.
Then-Gov. Tim Kaine appointed a blue-ribbon panel and within a year signed more than 30 mental health, school security and gun purchase bills aimed at preventing future mass shootings. Several appeals for stricter gun policies, however, were voted down.
More than 15 years later, in the aftermath of another school shooting — this time at the University of Virginia, where three students were shot and killed in November — state lawmakers considered a range of gun policy proposals: a ban on new assault-style weapons, new punishments for those who fail to secure their guns, an expansion of the state’s “red flag” law and restrictions on possessing firearms in school buildings.
But just one major safety measure survived: a $300 tax credit for firearms owners to purchase gun safes. A second bill requiring public universities to more quickly and comprehensively respond to a potential threat passed the House and Senate but still awaits Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s signature.
Read moreIn 2019, prospects for Ridley Place and its immediate surroundings seemed more promising after the area was selected for $30 million in redevelopment funds under the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI), a program funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The initiative, which has grown to more than 40 programs nationwide, aims to rebuild communities by revitalizing public housing and assisted living.
The city planned to relocate more than 600 residents from Ridley Place, tear down the complex and replace it with mixed-income housing and offer residents the opportunity to come back when construction was completed. But a key part of the HUD program was supposed to address what happens to residents during the interim period while new housing is built, a phased process that in some cases could take up to seven years or more. Funding and local resources were set aside to help residents like Echanerry obtain services from organizations around the community to ease their transition, including transportation, childcare, food, health care, legal counseling, workforce preparation and job placement.
Correspondence between the city and HUD, however, revealed that although the grant was awarded to Newport News in May 2019, Ridley Place residents continued to struggle, even though the development program was supposed to provide support for them.
Read more