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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.
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Vicki Lightfoot washes dishes while Maurice plays on the floor by her side early in the morning before school. Lightfoot was solely responsible for getting all four children ready for daycare and school.
A Richmond-area retiree raises four grandchildren, struggling to pay bills and navigate the tangled bureaucracy of kinship care
Relatives caring for children in Virginia are far less likely than caregivers in other states to have help from the foster care system for child care, counseling, grocery bills and other needs. About 12% of the children in Virginia’s foster care system live with relatives and receive support from the system, according to state data, far below the national rate of 33%.
A recruitment poster for the Norfolk, Virginia Police Department hangs inside a New York City subway train in July 2022. Photo by Dan Morisson // VCIJ at WHRO
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police, Virginia lawmakers took action on reports that state policing regulators failed to strip the police certifications from dozens of officers with criminal convictions ranging from embezzlement to possession of child pornography and sexual assault.
The Legislature passed a bill in October 2020 requiring police departments to complete internal investigations even if officers resign during them, and to provide any records of misconduct to new prospective employers for officers; strengthening the requirements for agencies to send reports of misconduct to state regulators; expanding the offenses for which officers can be stripped of their certifications; and requiring a state board to write a statewide standard of conduct for policing.
Three years later, barely anything has changed.
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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.
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Following an investigation by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO and ProPublica, Del. Delores McQuinn introduces bill for a commission to investigate the displacement of Black neighborhoods by Virginia’s public colleges and universities
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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.
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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.
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A Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority map from the 1960s shows how Old Dominion University (then called Old Dominion College) planned to expand into the Lamberts Point neighborhood in Norfolk, Virginia. (Old Dominion University Special Collections & University Archives)
In response to our reporting, state Delegate Delores McQuinn said a task force could shed light on the impact of college expansion in Virginia. Officials are also calling for displaced families to receive redress, from scholarships to reparations.
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Sun sets on Virginia Capitol in Richmond, Va., Nov. 3, 2023. All 140 seats in the General Assembly are on the ballot this year. Photo by Jimmy Clutier
Virginia’s high-stakes General Assembly elections on Nov. 7 are the commonwealth’s most expensive on record — and could prove to be among the costliest legislative elections in U.S. history.
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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
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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.
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Illustration by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO.
Out-of-state developers have poured a record $8.1 million into a referendum campaign to allow the construction of a resort casino in Richmond, far-and-away the highest sum for a local election in Virginia.
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“Dark money” organizations have spent more than $1.7 million on Virginia candidates. More than $1.4 Million going to Republican candidates. Photo by Jimmy Cloutier // VCIJ
Independent political groups backed largely by “dark money” organizations and wealthy donors have spent nearly $1.7 million on Virginia candidates this election cycle, raising concerns about transparency and the influence of outside money in the tightly contested battle for control of the General Assembly.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Virginia legislative candidates across Greater Richmond and Hampton Roads raised nearly $3.8 million in the last three weeks of June — mostly from big donors giving more than $10,000 to their campaigns.
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Original proposal for the Pamunkey casino on the left and the revised first phase version on the right. Renderings of the HeadWaters Resort & Casino. (Courtesy of HeadWaters Resort & Casino provided to the City of Norfolk)
A scaled-down Norfolk waterfront casino proposal is facing choppy waters from city leaders who have lost patience with the much-delayed project.
Norfolk City Council members in a recent closed session discussed options for scuttling the city’s agreement with the Pamunkey tribe, which submitted an application for a phased development with a $150 million initial investment, far shy of the upscale $500 million resort hotel, marina, entertainment space, and casino showcased to voters during a 2020 referendum.
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Dominion Energy headquarters, as seen in Richmond, Va., on June 22, 2023. (Jimmy Cloutier/OpenSecrets)
The overwhelming share of campaign funding in the low-turnout, yet expensive, primaries in Greater Richmond and the Hampton Roads came from political organizations, business interests and corporate-aligned political action committees, according to an OpenSecrets analysis of campaign finance reports. Most candidates who raised big-donor money won.
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