In 2016, 336 violent crimes were reported in Danville.

That year saw 17 homicides, 76 robberies, 211 aggravated assaults. 

The city of 40,000 had the highest homicide rate per capita in the state that year. Property crimes, too, had reached a concerning level: 1,537 cases in that year alone. 

But since then, the city has seen a drastic reduction in crime across the board. 

A primary reason, according to local leaders: heightened collaboration among the city, the community and the police.

A new policing model has been implemented. Programming has been created for at-risk youth. The city has partnered with other localities and organizations to benefit from their expertise.

“Collaboration is the new currency,” said Robert David, the city’s youth and gang violence prevention coordinator. 

“A lot of the success has to do with agencies working together. City council, law enforcement, community collaboration. And if you don’t work with the individuals living in the communities, you have no influence.”

A new policing model, and an apology

By 2018, crime in Danville hadn’t improved much. But that was part of the reason Scott Booth was attracted to the city. He wanted to work somewhere that provided a challenge, he said.  

Booth became police chief that year, after a brief stint with the federal government and almost 20 years with the Richmond Police Department before that. Since coming to Danville, he has been working with city government and community members to lower the crime rate. 

“[In 2018], Danville and the police department had no community policing model,” Booth said. “There were some things that we really needed to do. One of those was build a robust community policing model, and the other was focus on crime.”

A community policing model is a set of strategies to address conditions that lead to crime through partnership and problem-solving, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Danville has seen a 52% average annual reduction in violent crime since the policing model was implemented, according to data from the police department. From 2021 to 2022 alone, violent crime decreased by 21%. 

In 2022, the city saw the lowest number of reported burglaries since data tracking began in 1985, with 76 total. It was the fourth year in a row that a new low had been set. 

Homicides also decreased — to seven in 2022, down from 17 in 2016, a number that was “astronomical,” according to David Kennedy, a professor of criminal justice at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

“That’s a higher rate than Chicago, which is not unheard of for smaller jurisdictions,” Kennedy said. “They don’t get the attention that Chicago does, but on a per-capita basis, you can find relatively small places that have shockingly high homicide rates.” 

Not only has the crime rate itself decreased in Danville, but the case clearance rate has increased. Cleared crimes are those that have been solved, or “cleared,” by arrests. 

Of the 260 burglaries in 2016, only 38 were cleared. In 2022, 56 out of 76 burglaries were cleared. 

In fact, the Danville police department has exceeded the FBI’s national clearance averages since the policing model’s implementation in 2019. 

About 71% of homicides in Danville were cleared between 2019 and 2022, which is 17 percentage points higher than the FBI’s national clearance rate of about 54%. 

This drastic reduction in crime wasn’t achieved by simply increasing police activity, Booth said. 

“I truly believe that you can’t arrest a problem away when it comes to crime,” Booth said. “I don’t believe in over-policing neighborhoods. I don’t believe in just throwing officers out into entire neighborhoods and stopping everything that moves.”

Booth called that an “old way” of policing, saying that he believes in being more strategic. 

The police department began to home in on violent offenders, Booth said, adding that a small percentage of people usually commit the majority of violent acts in any given community. 

So the department focused on chronic violent offenders who had already been identified, as well as places in the city that were producing the highest numbers of criminal instances. 

To do this, the Danville Police Department partnered with the U.S. attorney’s office in Charlottesville in 2018 to begin implementing a program called Project Safe Neighborhoods.  

The goal was to identify violent offenders using data to create a comprehensive database of the most criminally active and violent people in Danville, said Maj. David Whitley, the department’s assistant chief of services. 

The data came from criminal investigations, charges, street gang participation, violent crime convictions and other legally sourced information, he said. 

“Each element was used in an objective scoring system to identify the most violent and active individuals committing crimes of violence,” Whitley said. 

Once these people and places were identified, the police department and city government could address “systemic and societal challenges” that lead to crime in these areas, like “poverty, lack of resources, and family structure or lack thereof,” Whitley said. 

At the same time, the department made an increased effort to build rapport and trust with the community, said Matt Bell, the police department’s public relations specialist. 

Rebuilding the relationship was critical, Booth said.

Many residents harbored resentment for and distrust of the police, feelings that sometimes went back decades, to Bloody Monday, a series of attacks and arrests by Danville police in June 1963, during a civil rights protest. 

Police attacked nonviolent protesters with clubs and fire hoses, injuring 47 and arresting 60, according to a historic marker outside the Danville courthouse.  

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the U.S. Department of Justice and national media outlets condemned the actions of the police and court system in Danville. 

“That was a community trauma,” Booth said. “I’ve worked in larger cities, and I never could remember one incident really having a hold on a city like Bloody Monday did in Danville.”

While researching the event, Booth said he found that it was “a real deterrent” to rebuilding a relationship between the community and the police department. It was the reason many residents thought crime would never improve, he said. 

This is textbook, said Kennedy. 

“Homicide and gun violence are an American problem, and almost the overwhelming preponderance of that violence is felt by and occurs in historically damaged communities of color,” he said. 

And a good relationship between a community and its police department is absolutely critical in remedying this, Kennedy said.

If the relationship is solid, then “when people are contemplating violence, they should understand that their own community rejects it, that they don’t want it to happen,” he said. “Then it’s not just the police saying it shouldn’t happen, but the community itself saying it shouldn’t happen. That’s way more powerful.”

And if there is a crime, the good relationship between the community and law enforcement can address that. 

“There’s a community expectation that there will be accountability if violence occurs,” Kennedy said. 

A step toward this good relationship is acknowledgement of any historical division, he said; other police outreach efforts will seem superficial without it. 

“If you have historical division between the community and the police that goes back to police violence against community members in the civil rights struggle, and everybody knows it, and nobody’s ever acknowledged it or done anything about it, then sending police officers to talk to kids in schools or having community meetings or having barbecues or having basketball leagues or something like that, not only is that a shallow perspective, it’s insulting,” Kennedy said.

“Because it is the authority saying to the community, ‘We’re going to pretend that this never happened and we expect you to like us and work with us anyway.’”

In 2019, the Danville Police Department offered a public apology for police actions during the summer of 1963. 

“I think for the community, it did speak that we’re willing to take steps in the right direction,” Booth said. 

City programming for at-risk youth

Another effort to decrease crime was increased collaboration between the police department and the city government.

Local officials and law enforcement had a common goal of reducing crime, so working together was in everyone’s best interest, said David, the city’s youth and gang violence prevention coordinator. 

David has been doing this kind of work for the better part of four decades, he said, starting when he volunteered at an alternative school in California. In 2017, when Danville was in the throes of high crime, the city created his position. 

He runs a program called Project Imagine, which is targeted toward at-risk and gang-affiliated youth. 

When the program first started in 2018, it involved a nine-week work readiness program to provide paid work experience and mentoring. Now, it’s more focused on life skills and support. 

It takes a holistic approach, he said, and helps not only the youth but their families.

There’s a big focus on increasing stability in the lives of the young people they work with, David said, because lack of stability is often the impetus for an individual’s involvement with crime. 

“If you’re 16 years old and you have a child, and that child is hungry, and you live with a parent and don’t have your basic needs, it’s hard to go to school,” he said. “But if we can create a level of stability in a youth’s life, they can move forward. That seemingly has nothing to do with gang violence or crime, but it does.” 

Project Imagine works with local organizations and businesses to create job opportunities. But it also can help with problems at home, like getting a new refrigerator or fixing a broken air conditioner. 

“We work with every aspect of the family, the girlfriends, the baby mamas, everybody,” David said. 

Since it began, Project Imagine has graduated about 100 people.

An outreach worker continues to mentor each graduate for at least a year. And again, collaboration and partnership with the police department plays a role. 

Sometimes instead of charging a young person, David said, police will refer them to Project Imagine. 

He got emotional talking about the graduation ceremony at the end of each Project Imagine course. 

“I cry almost every graduation, no lie,” he said. “I get teary-eyed because, like I tell them, you really didn’t have to be here. And I thank them for their time, I thank their parents for allowing them to be there. We applaud them for making that decision to change their lives.”

David said the work amplifies local voices that otherwise might go unnoticed.

“There was a population of people whose voices weren’t being heard,” he said. “All I did was turn on the mic.”

Project Imagine didn’t get formal funding until 2020. Before that, David said he tapped into community resources. There was some existing money in the city for youth jobs, he said, and he also built relationships with local business owners. 

In 2020, Project Imagine got a grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, part of the U.S. Department of Justice, and David used it to hire outreach workers. 

The police department, too, has created programming to engage youth and community members. One event series in particular, called Pass the Perspective, invites kids to get an inside look at police work. 

The new police department building, which opened last year, is a good place to hold events and community meetings, Booth said. Outreach has played an important role in bolstering trust in the police department. 

“We started engaging the community with community walks, we built programs like our youth police academy and Pass the Perspective,” Booth said. “Anything that we can do to open our doors and let the community in.”

The police department also began to put community members on its interview panels for police hires and promotions, as well as on a review board for use-of-force cases, Booth said. 

Targeting gangs by empowering communities

Between 2016 and 2018, the majority of Danville’s 484 aggravated assaults and 41 homicides had direct ties to street gangs, Whitley said.

“In almost every community, gang participation is an issue due to systemic and societal challenges such as poverty, lack of resources and family structure, or lack thereof,” he said. “Danville has these challenges.”

Around 2017, Danville began implementing a comprehensive gang model, a program with some of the same strategies and goals as Project Safe Neighborhoods. 

Once criminally active individuals and places are identified through Project Safe Neighborhoods methods, a community can use its comprehensive gang model to reduce or prevent youth gang violence. 

It takes a multifaceted approach to address these issues, Whitley said. 

“Criminal street gang activity still exists, but we have become much better at addressing the issues before violence occurs and stemming further violence after an incident has occurred,” he said.

The model that Danville employed was developed by social researcher Irving Spergel and tested by the DOJ’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which now houses the National Gang Center. 

The model has several components, said Sean Baldwin, a senior research associate at the Institute for Intergovernmental Research, which contracts with the National Gang Center.

It focuses on empowering communities that are plagued by violence and providing opportunities for their youth. It seeks to move youth away from gang violence — and to provide close supervision of at-risk kids.

And it requires organizational change, he said.

“We’ve found, with this model being developed over decades, that a lot of times it’s not enough to have a great program,” he said. “You’ve got to have a program that’s accessible and that is delivered with equity so that the people that need it most can get it.”

Collaboration and a sustained effort

In 2020 and 2021, 100% of homicides were cleared by the Danville Police Department. And between 2018 and 2022, seven previous cold cases were solved. 

Between 2016 and 2018, before Danville implemented its new policing model, the city saw 41 homicides, with an average of about 13 per year. From 2019 to 2022, after the model was launched, there were 20 homicides, or an average of about six per year. 

Baldwin has worked with both Booth and David in Danville’s implementation of the comprehensive gang model, and he said he thinks the city “has got a good hold on the problem.” 

Danville has taken a long-term approach to many initiatives, specifically economic development and revitalization. And a long-term strategy is a game-changer when it comes to crime, too, Baldwin said. 

“These types of strategies fail when they’re not sustained over time,” he said. “A community might have some early success until other priorities come up.” 

Plus, many of the problems that Danville has been working to solve are intertwined. When there’s success in one area, it can help bring about success in another. 

Education and poverty influence a city’s crime rate, for example, Baldwin said.

“Some of the risk factors for youth joining gangs include poverty, kids growing up in neighborhoods that have high rates of violence, and academic performance. Even how a child is doing in school can affect that,” he said. “So, anything that a community can do to improve economic and educational conditions for their residents … can reduce or eliminate those risk factors.” 

Baldwin said he’s been to Danville several times, and he was a police chief in a community that had similar economic hardships. 

“It is impressive, the sort of holistic approach that Danville seems to be taking to address not only the violence, but those things that may be leading, either directly or indirectly, to the risk factors,” he said. 

One overarching thing that Danville has done well is focus on collaboration, Baldwin said. The communities that see the most success with crime reduction are those that focus on partnerships, he said. 

“Regardless of how perfect or imperfect a model may be in implementation, we find that the most success comes from those partnerships,” he said. “It would be difficult for me to point out another community where the relationship between the police chief and the director of intervention and prevention is so strong.”

In 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the deaths of other Black Americans at police hands, Booth and David collaborated to write a book expressing their two distinct perspectives with a central message. 

“Bigger than Black and Blue: Candid conversations about race, equity, and community collaboration” was released in December 2020 and can be found on Amazon. 

Both Booth and David have been recognized for their efforts to reduce crime. 

In February, David was named among the Top 100 Influencers in Local Government by a nonprofit called Engaging Local Government Leaders. And in April 2022, Booth received the Excellence in Virginia Award for Innovation in Government from Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs.  

But both say there’s still work to be done to further decrease crime. 

“Everything that we’ve done, we’re going to keep doing,” Booth said. “We don’t let up on anything.”

The change since 2018 is something that Booth said he’s very proud of. And Baldwin said that Danville can be a model to other communities that are also looking to lower crime. 

“This really is an incredible story of success for Danville,” Baldwin said. 

The post How Danville has drastically reduced its crime rate since 2016  appeared first on Cardinal News.

What’s in a name?

For residents of Friendship Court, a stigma. 

“I’m tired of them calling this ‘the hood,’” said Friendship Court resident Jace Wright. He has lived in Friendship Court, a Section-8 housing community in downtown Charlottesville, all his life — 17 years.

But come summer, Wright will call Friendship Court by another name: Kindlewood.

“We’re trying to make the neighborhood better for the future, a place that gives people hope,” said Wright. He knows a name alone can’t make that happen, but the community is also in the midst of being redeveloped for the first time since it was built on Garrett Street in 1978. Back then, it was called Garrett Square.

Over the next couple of years, all 150 families currently living at Friendship Court will move into an entirely new unit of their choice. With the new development, there will also be enough space for 300 additional families to join them.

The redevelopment is being paid for largely with taxpayer money. Some came from the city of Charlottesville, and the rest came from state and federal grants, and some private money. The overall cost is fluctuating because of changing construction costs, said PHA spokesperson Wes Myhre. Phase one, which is nearing completion, will cost about $45 million. That includes two rows of stacked townhomes and one apartment building —106 homes total — as well as front-end expenses like setting up a leasing office and soil remediation. Move-in for these homes will start this summer.

Phases two and three will see the construction of more townhomes and apartment buildings, as well as a community center and other amenities. PHA estimates those phases will also cost roughly $45 million each, but that number could change. The project should be done and residents all moved in by 2027.

What’s unique about this project is that all of the decisions — including the new name — were made by the residents themselves. Sunshine Mathon, executive director of Piedmont Housing Alliance, the local housing nonprofit that manages and co-owns the community with the National Housing Trust, said he hasn’t heard of anything like it anywhere else.

Wright has hope that calling the new homes by a new name will begin to dissolve the stigma around living in the community he calls home. That at the very least his peers, or grown-ups, won’t wince when they hear his Garrett Street address.

Some Charlottesville community members associate Friendship Court with violence, Wright said. Charlottesville has experienced a rise in gun violence this year and many of the incidents are occurring in low-income and public housing neighborhoods, including Friendship Court.

That’s at the front of 17-year-old Wright’s mind. As he talked about it in the Friendship Court community center in March, he leaned forward in his chair, holding his head in his hands. It’s no secret that those incidents, and not the laughter of kids riding scooters and playing tag outside, or the families having dinner together, is what people think about when they think about the area, he said. As he spoke, a young girl took a piano lesson a few feet away, a huge grin spreading across her face as she played.

The stigma surrounding the name Friendship Court also came up in a Charlottesville School Board meeting last December. As City Schools works to rename many of its schools, it asked students what they wanted their new school names to be. Clark Elementary School students voted to rename their school “Friendship,” but school board member Jennifer McKeever cautioned against it.

“I want a name that can represent a big, positive image. I don’t think Friendship alone does that for an academic environment,” said McKeever. “I would think there are additional connotations in our community. I don’t want that to be the image that Clark has to fight against.”

Like so many areas in Charlottesville, Friendship Court is fraught with history. Garrett Street is named for Alexander Garrett, who enslaved people on his Oak Hill plantation in that area. Over time, a majority Black, majority working-class neighborhood with a few white families grew there. But in the early 1970s, the city declared it blighted and bulldozed most of it, just as it had done to Vinegar Hill a few years before.

In 1978, the Garrett Square community was built with what the federal government called project-based Section-8 assistance (hence “the projects”) from the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Residents were low-income, but their economic status wasn’t the only thing separating them from the rest of the city: all of the homes’ front doors were built facing inward, at one another rather than outward into the larger community. A seven-foot black metal fence erected around it in 1996 only furthered that physical isolation.

“That fence makes the community think we’re a bunch of criminals down here,” Mary Carey, a past president of the Friendship Court Tenant Association, said in the “Reimagining Friendship Court” series published by Charlottesville Tomorrow in 2019, during the redevelopment planning phase. “These are good people, hard-working people.”

Myrtle Houchens raised her two children in Garrett Square while working as a teacher. She loved it. “It was community. It was a community where individual families looked out for one another. They supported one another. It was loving and caring. I was happy to raise my children there,” Houchens said while sitting in the neighborhood’s community center in March. As she spoke of those fond memories, the new buildings in various phases of construction were visible through the window behind her.

That was her experience in the community, but outside of it, “if you even mentioned it as your place of residency, no one wanted to be associated with you,” said Houchens. “Delivery services and all of that were limited. It put a sense of devalue on people’s humanity.”

When people applied for jobs and put “Garrett Street” for their address, employers didn’t call them back, said Carey.

The local housing nonprofit Piedmont Housing Alliance bought Garrett Square in 2002, did some interior and exterior renovations, and added some services like a GED program for residents. It also changed the name to Friendship Court.

Houchens doesn’t remember exactly how or why, or by whom that name was chosen. An article published in the Daily Progress in November 2003 talked about the community’s “transformation from stigma-ridden Garrett Square.” 

But some, like Houchens, still call it Garrett Square. And though the Friendship Court name was intended to “redefine” the neighborhood in the eyes of residents and the broader Charlottesville community, that didn’t happen. Much of what Houchens, Carey, and other residents experienced decades ago, still occurs, they said.

Residents felt, and still feel, looked down upon for their economic and social status, and, for Black and brown residents, their race.

All of the residents of Friendship Court are low-income — the average annual household income is $17,758 —  and their rents are subsidized by the government. Many of the families are Black, or, in more recent years, refugees from Middle Eastern countries.

So, when Piedmont Housing Alliance, which is under different leadership than when it purchased and renamed the property in 2002, decided to redevelop Friendship Court, it asked for the expertise, the needs, and the wants of the people who know best: The residents.

Residents decided everything for the redevelopment, from where the buildings would go to what carpet will go in the hallways, where the new urban farm would be, and what sort of playground equipment will go in the new park, which will be built in the last phase of the project, where the current residences are now.

Their decisions will change more than just how the community looks — they will change the community itself. Currently, 150 families reside in as many units in Friendship Court. The redevelopment will triple that: Kindlewood will have 450 total apartments and townhomes.

Another major change is that Kindlewood will be a mixed-income development. One-third of the apartments will be reserved for households whose income is 30% of the area median income (or AMI) and below (up to $31,450 for a family of four); one-third for household incomes between 30-60% AMI ($31,451 to $66,720 for a family of four); one-third for 60-80% AMI ($66,721 to $83,850 for a family of four), according to HUD.

In the Charlottesville Metropolitan Statistical Area, the AMI for a family of four is $111,200. 

However, income will not dictate which building, or on what floor or section of a building, a family will live in. Each of the apartment buildings and rows of townhomes will have a mix of homes reserved for all of the income tiers.

“That was essential, from the residents’ perspective,” said Houchens, the former teacher and former resident who loved raising her two children in the community. Houchens served on the redevelopment advisory committee and is now a paid community liaison with Piedmont Housing Alliance. Recreating a lower income neighborhood, or building, all over again would only perpetuate inequities, she said

“I wouldn’t want that barrier, like, ‘more money’ over here, and ‘less money’ there,” said Tamana Khaydari, a high school student whose family has lived in Friendship Court for about five years.

Some residents are skeptical, though. They worry about hearing things like, “well, I pay more than you do to live here” during neighborly conversations. They worry that the stigmas they face outside of their community could start coming from the apartment next door.

Still, having a true mix of incomes in each building, and therefore (hopefully) avoiding separation due to economic status, was more important to residents than getting the project done quickly, Mathon said. If the residents had prioritized speed, PHA could have built the first 150 units and had all current families in a new unit this summer, then focused on construction for the rest of the community.

Instead, current residents are moving into their new homes in phases.

And even though the “Friendship Court” sign has been painted over and a “Kindlewood” banner went up on Tuesday, getting folks to actually use the new name will also likely happen in phases.

Residents have known about the name change for a while — they helped choose it.

A renaming/rebranding committee made up of residents met with consultants before going out into the community asking for new name ideas.

They received dozens of ideas, which the committee narrowed down to two.

Each household then got a ballot to vote for either Kindlewood or Central City. An adult was to fill out the ballot on behalf of the family, seal it, then bring it to the community center. Houchens gathered and tallied the ballots, but a re-do was needed in some cases, she said, laughing: a few kids took the initiative to fill out their family’s ballot, unbeknownst to the adults.

In the end, 85% of households participated in the vote.

Kindlewood won with 61%.

The name is a combination of a few of the suggestions and selected because of the way that it evokes kin, family, friendship, a spark, a fireplace in the hearth and therefore home.

“It sounds very calming,” Khaydari, another of the high school students who served on the committee, said while talking with other committee members about the new name in March.

“Peaceful,” added Sallie King.

“My only hope is that it can live up to the name,” said Brandon Martin, a high school student and lifelong resident. “Maybe the name change is something that can change your view of this. Give it a second thought. Give it a chance.”

“Yeah,” Wright said, looking across the room at his neighbor and Charlottesville High School classmate. “Give it a chance.”

The post After decades dealing with stigma, Friendship Court residents decide to rename their community appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Want more news on Virginia’s population trends? We’ve collected all our coverage here.

Danville, I have good news for you.

Don’t get too excited because I have some key caveats to wrap this good news in. But it is good news. 

First, though, I have to put things in context. We’ll start here: Every year the Internal Revenue Service releases figures on where people are filing their income taxes from, and how those figures differed from the year before. Put another way, we can look at those IRS stats to see migration trends — where people are moving in, where people are moving out.

In some ways, this data might be better data than the Census Bureau headcount. Not everyone files an income tax form, of course, so the data’s not perfect, but guess what: No data is. This is still a good hard number on migration trends that, when combined with other population data, helps us get a better picture of what’s happening. So that’s the first caveat: Don’t rely completely on this, but this is important stuff.

Last week, I reported the big headline for Virginia: For the ninth year in a row, these IRS stats show more people moving out of Virginia than moving in. That doesn’t mean the state is losing population. Census Bureau data shows that births outnumber deaths, and this net out-migration, so Virginia’s population is still growing, just more slowly than before. I’ll look at birth rates another day; for now we’ll just focus on people who are moving into or out of the state.

The figures last week also showed that Virginia’s net out-migration is driven by Northern Virginia. From 2020 to 2021, Virginia had a deficit of 7,224 people from more people moving out than moving in. In Fairfax County alone, the net out-migration was 14,588 people.

I promised then I’d dig deeper into this data, so here we go.

Here’s something else important to know: These are the first figures we have since the pandemic began so we get our first real look at what effect that might have had. If there’s a Zoom-era migration, here’s where we might expect to see it. 

Also: We shouldn’t hang too much on the data for any one year in these migration trends. A lot of population data is like the stock market. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down. The important thing is to look at trends, not every wiggle and jiggle.

Yes, I realize those two things seem contradictory: Hey, this information is a big deal! Hey, don’t take it that seriously! I also realize you’ve read all this way and you’re thinking like the woman in that 1980s Wendy’s commercial: Where’s the beef? You’ve seen prescriptions with fewer warnings than all this. 

Just hang on, OK? We’re almost there. We have just one more warning: Don’t pay attention to places with universities. The pandemic may have played havoc with those places’ stats, with colleges emptying out to go virtual. Montgomery County shows up as suffering from net out-migration, but nobody who has been there really believes that Montgomery County is shriveling up. 

All right, it’s finally showtime. Here’s the big picture:

1. Most of Virginia is seeing more people move in than move out.

It’s mostly just Northern Virginia, parts of Hampton Roads and parts of the Richmond area that are the problem. That means …

2. Most of rural Virginia is seeing more people move in than move out.

That runs counter to a lot of what we think but it’s true. And get this:

3. This trend of net in-migration in rural Virginia isn’t all that new.

Many rural localities have been seeing more people move in than move out for several years now, so we can’t specifically attribute these figures to that Zoom migration. However:

4. In some rural localities, we’re seeing in-migration accelerate. 

We might be able to attribute that acceleration to the pandemic (and rural broadband). We should probably hold off declaring that, though, until we’ve seen several years of data, not just one — remember, we’re looking for trends, not what might turn out to be one-year blips. Finally:

5. Many of these rural localities will continue to lose population even if there’s an influx of newcomers.

That’s because rural localities tend to be older, and old people tend to die, and those large numbers of deaths outnumber both births and the net number of people moving in. 

Now let’s look at some of the specific numbers, some of which might qualify as trends.

• Lee County saw seven straight years of net out-migration before things turned around in 2020. That year, Lee County saw a net gain of 128 people from migration. Was that a fluke or the start of a new trend? We won’t know for a few years but in 2021, Lee County saw another net gain from migration, this time of 194 people. Those seem pretty hopeful figures.

• Henry County has seen more people move out for 11 of the past 16 years, and when it has seen net in-migration, it’s always been under 100. But then in 2020 Henry County saw net in-migration of 224 and in 2021 that net in-migration went up to 376. Something seems to be going on there, and it’s not the only place.

• Grayson County has been pretty even through the years — half the time it’s had net in-migration, half the time it’s had net out-migration, but those numbers have all been about the same. The last four years, though, Grayson has consistently seen net in-migration. In 2018, it showed a net gain of 54 people. In 2019, a net gain of 49. In 2020, a net gain of 74. But in 2021, Grayson’s net in-migration jumped to 125, the biggest ever that I can find (the searchable database goes back 16 years).

• Patrick County next door has long had a history of net in-migration but has still lost population for the past two decades because deaths have outnumbered both births and all those newcomers. Those newcomers have also been pretty consistent, year by year. In 2018, the county saw a net gain of 64 people through migration. In 2019, a net gain of 36 people. In 2020, a net gain of 59 people. In 2021, that net in-migration accelerated to 295. 

• Pittsylvania County, like Grayson County, has seen its migration trends toggle back and forth between people moving in and people moving out over the years, with 2020 being one of those moving-out years. But in 2021, Pittsylvania County saw net in-migration of 302 people — again, the biggest I can find in the records.

• That brings us to Danville, which lost people through net out-migration for every year in that IRS database — until 2021, when it showed a net gain of 25 people through migration. That’s not many but it’s better than losing people, and it runs counter to all those other years that preceded it. Once again, maybe this is just a one-year aberration, but in the context of all these other localities, maybe it’s the first data point in a trend. If so that would a) be a big deal and b) not surprise me. Danville hit rock bottom two decades ago when textiles collapsed and has been reinventing itself ever since. Danville now calls itself “the comeback city” and that’s not just hyperbole. If this is, indeed, a trend, this would be some statistical support for that slogan.

While the numbers vary from place to place, the big story is that even before the pandemic, many rural localities were seeing more people move in than move out — and now the pandemic seems to have amped up those trends. We are going to have to adjust our mindset: Rural Virginia isn’t seeing people move away. As reported previously, it’s not even seeing a disproportionate number of young adults move away. Rural Virginia might like to see more people move in (or not, in some cases) and more young adults stay home, but the basic trend lines there are in its favor. What hurts rural Virginia is an aging population that is dying faster than it can be replaced. What hurts Virginia overall is the hemorrhaging from Northern Virginia. We are in the odd position that our state’s economic engine is also right now the main drag on the state’s economy. 

So, good news for Danville, but not necessarily the Old Dominion.

The post New migration data shows an uptick of people moving into some rural areas appeared first on Cardinal News.

Chuck Moran looked fondly at the portrait of his great aunt Sarepta as he carefully adjusted its position on the wall outside the Burnley-Moran Elementary School auditorium.

Chuck remembers the pride he felt as a child when his dad pulled the sheet off of Sarepta’s portrait in the 1954 unveiling. Almost 70 years later, the paintings of Sarepta Moran and Carrie Burnley — the school’s namesakes — still face each other near the auditorium doors.

“She was a teacher with us, but she was not a disciplinarian,” Chuck said. “She was just a really, really wonderful influence.”

That’s partly why Chuck finds it so unfair that City Schools staff and community members have, in his view, disparaged his great-aunt’s name in the process of renaming the elementary school. 

City Schools announced in early April that the school will no longer be named after Burnley or Sarepta Moran. The decision comes as part of the district-wide school naming review, in which the district is reexamining the names of each of its schools.

The district made the decision after hearing from community members who believe it is problematic to name schools after white individuals who were leaders during racial segregation.

That is exactly who Sarepta Moran was. So, when information about her was presented publicly at various district meetings this year, some Black Charlottesville students and community members came forward to say her influence is a reminder to them that their existence was once considered secondary to their white counterparts.

“These names are affecting people,” said Johnson, the student School Board representative. “These names are not representative of the culture of Charlottesville City Schools in the way that they should.” 

Sarepta Moran and Carrie Burnley were the first two women to be school principals in Charlottesville.

Most of what City Schools officials know about these two women comes from research compiled by a local historian named Phil Varner. He published information about Moran, and all the people for whom Charlottesville schools are named, on a website that he called, “Correcting the Narrative: The Names and Namesakes of Charlottesville City Schools.”

Sarepta Moran worked at what was then called Charlottesville Public Schools from 1897 until she retired in 1945, according to Varner’s research

During her time there, she was honored for her dedication to setting “high scholastic standards” for her students, according to an old Daily Progress clipping. She was awarded the Algernon Sydney Sullivan award from the University of Virginia, which is given to people who exert great humanitarian efforts and “strive each day to better the lives of those around them.”

The trouble with these accolades from a modern interpretation is that they were given exclusively to white educators who improved the lives of white students, Varner told Charlottesville Tomorrow.

What’s more, there is evidence that the Burnley-Moran namesakes participated in racist groups and activities. Namely, the Daughters of the American Revolution and the United Daughters of the Confederacy Albemarle chapters.

The UDC campaigned for public schools to teach students the Lost Cause Myth of Civil War history, Varner said. The Lost Cause was an ideology pushed by white southerners who wanted to paint the Civil War as a heroic, patriotic effort from the South that wasn’t based in slavery, according to the Encyclopedia Virginia. It claimed that enslaved people were loyal to their owners and were not ready to face the reality of freedom, among other things.

The Albemarle chapter of the UDC, of which Sarepta Moran was a member, was also the driving force behind erecting the now infamous statues of Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jonothan Jackson in downtown Charlottesville.

While compiling his research, Varner was unable to find any activities Sarepta Moran did while in the UDC, but did include her application to the organization. The application detailed her father’s service as a Confederate soldier. Isaac K. Moran enlisted in the Confederate States Army in 1864, at the age of 17, and served until he lost his leg in the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff in Chesterfield County later that year.

Sarepta Moran was more directly involved in the Daughters of the American Revolution, where she was the group’s historian. DAR and UDC had many of the same members and DAR excluded Black members until 1977.

According to a Daily Progress clipping in 1961, Sarepta was active in offering “awards of excellence in American history study in elementary schools” in Charlottesville on behalf of the organization.

It’s impossible to know what Sarepta Moran’s personal beliefs were about Black students and community members. But, Varner said, her membership in these two groups indicates a certain level of agreement with their racist tenants.

“We’re not trying to make a judgment, like was she a good or bad person,” said Varner. “We’re saying, should there be a school named for her, merely due to the fact that she was a member of a white supremacist organization.”

Chuck Moran thinks this isn’t fair.

Sarepta Moran didn’t have much of a choice but to join the patriotic groups, he said. As the daughter of a former Confederate soldier, it was normal to join the UDC, let alone DAR. That’s what the time called for.

Judging a person who existed during that time period is wrong, he said.

“Just because you’re a member of something, that doesn’t mean you support everything that the organization is promoting,” said Chuck Moran.

But not everyone agrees.

There are Charlottesville students who say the affiliation doesn’t have to go far for it to produce a sour image.

Je’Saun Johnson, Charlottesville High School student representative for the school board, said he’s done his own research on the school name. The high school student was appalled to learn the history of the namesakes, but was even more surprised when he remembered how little information he and other students received on the legacies.

“It’s like being in a building that you weren’t invited to but you didn’t know until you left,” he said. “We need to take action, and we need to start educating each other.”

Black students were not allowed to attend Burnley-Moran Elementary School for the first 40 years of its existence.

Black Charlottesville alumni have had similar reactions to learning about the school namesakes. 

The legacy of the Burnley-Moran name wasn’t something Patricia Edwards, a Charlottesville alum and former City Schools teacher, paid much attention to. Even during her 20 years teaching at Charlottesville High School, she said it was rare to learn about the history of the school namesakes.

Edwards had a feeling it was something potentially controversial but was never taught the history until City Schools began to reconsider the names in 2022.

“It’s something that, in light of what we have come to know, the name needs to be changed for anybody who is associated with something that has to do with the Confederacy,” said Edwards. “I don’t think kids today, Black or white, should go to a school that’s named after somebody who found those things okay.”

City Schools is currently reconsidering the names of Burnley Moran and Johnson elementary schools. It has already renamed two others.

The School Board decided to reconsider the namesakes of all its schools in 2020 and kicked off the renaming process last fall. The district decided to start with the elementary schools and complete them by the end of the school year, then reexamine the secondary schools in the 2023-2024 school year. It’s behind schedule.

Chuck Moran is not against renaming Burnley-Moran — or any school whose namesake is connected to racist times or practices. But he said he wants the district to conduct more thorough research into the namesakes, and for the district to acknowledge that Sarepta Moran may not have been personally racist.

“In this particular case, a woman who gave her life to educating the children of Charlottesville is being represented as someone who supported slavery and white supremacy by inference, without proof,” Chuck said.

Regardless, Burnley-Moran will get a new name.

The School Board has decided to stop naming schools after individuals. Board members want to avoid having to rename schools if controversial information about the individuals arise at a later time. Names of major landmarks with “problematic associations” (such as Monticello) are also exempt. Instead, the Board intends to use names that are “aspirational” or highlight a geographical aspect or the neighborhood the school is in.

Originally, the naming committee presented the names Blue Mountain for Burnley-Moran and Cherry Avenue for Johnson elementary schools. But the School Board wasn’t satisfied with the names.

On April 13 the School Board voted to change the names of the schools from Burnley-Moran and Johnson, but hasn’t decided what they’ll be. They’ve paused the vote to have more time to find name recommendations from the two school communities. They are encouraging members of the community to send in their suggestions to schoolnames@charlottesvilleschools.org.

The post The great nephew of one of the Burnley-Moran Elementary School namesakes defends his aunt’s legacy appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

A recent Lynchburg high school production of the musical “The Prom” met with controversy from one Lynchburg City Council member, who called for the show to be canceled over what he said were anti-Christian sentiments depicted — but the show went on to become Heritage High School’s best-attended production post-COVID. 

The theater departments at Heritage and E. C. Glass High School collaborated on the production, becoming one of the first high school drama groups in Virginia to put on “The Prom,” a musical that tells the story of discrimination faced by a lesbian couple trying to go to their high school prom together. 

“The Prom” is based on the true story of Constance McMillen, a high school senior from Mississippi who wanted to bring her girlfriend to prom, and also asked to wear a tuxedo. The couple ended up banned from the event, and the school division withdrew its sponsorship of the prom.

The musical by Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin follows an Indiana high school senior as she requests to bring her girlfriend to prom, but the couple gets banned. The PTA instead sponsors a different prom elsewhere for other students. Four fading Broadway stars who are desperate for anything that might propel them back into the spotlight hear about the case, and make their way to the Midwest to involve themselves in a bid for attention. 

The real-life case from 2010 made its way to court. The Itawamba County School District was sued with assistance from the ACLU, and it was found that the district violated McMillen’s First Amendment rights, according to ACLU’s records of the case. Ultimately, McMillen won the case. 

The play is relatively new. It first debuted in 2016 and hit Broadway around 2018. “The Prom” got a Netflix adaptation in 2020, and last year, the play became available for theater groups to buy the rights to produce it. Since then, high schools in multiple states have put the show on.

A Charlottesville high school performed the show earlier this year, according to Larry Hart, artistic director of Heritage’s Pioneer Theatre for the past 30 years. A Woodbridge high school theater group also put on “The Prom” this year.

The show at Pioneer Theatre ran April 21-23 and April 26-28. It featured 27 students from the two schools and a technical crew of 10, Hart said. The show was directed by guest director Jeff Krantz, a longtime area director and actor who has contracted with Pioneer Theatre for the last several years.

The first weekend of performances went smoothly, Krantz said. 

Then, during a city council work session on April 25, Lynchburg City Council member Marty Misjuns raised the topic of the production, which he said was brought to his attention by “constituents concerned about the content of the play.”

Misjuns’ objection to the show was what he perceived to be anti-Christian sentiments.

“It’s absolutely appalling to me that the publicly funded Lynchburg City Schools would put on a production with children that openly mocks the vast Judeo-Christian majority in our city,” Misjuns wrote in a public social media post on April 26, the day that the final performance weekend of “The Prom” began.

Reading selected lines from the play’s original script during the work session, and later sharing them on his Facebook page, Misjuns demanded that Heritage’s Pioneer Theatre cancel the remaining performance of the show immediately, and said the city school board should ask for the superintendent’s resignation for permitting production of “The Prom.” 

In both his work session comments and his public post, he asserted the content of the play contributed to student behavior problems. 

“We’ve got behavior problems in our schools, and when we’re teaching kids completely disrespectful garbage like that, that’s the problem,” Misjuns said at the work session.

“Lynchburg City Schools should immediately cancel the rest of these productions out of respect for those that believe in, prescribe to, and practice the Christian faith. Teachers came out in droves last night discussing behavior problems in schools. If our school superintendent does not cancel the rest of these plays for the offensive content, the school board should ask for her resignation,” he wrote in a public statement. 

In further comments to Cardinal News last Friday, Misjuns reiterated his primary issue with the show. 

“The only concern that I ever stated was about the anti-Christian sentiment in the performance,” he said in an email. “It is completely unacceptable for publicly funded facilities to be used to promote anything that openly mocks any race, religion or creed.”

During the work session, Misjuns read a portion of lyrics from one of the original songs to illustrate his concern, in which some Christians from the small town are described as: “Those fist pumping, Bible thumping, spam eating, cousin humping, cow tipping, shoulder slumping, tea bagging, Jesus jumping losers and their inbred wives, They’ll learn compassion…”

Misjuns said such sentiments were “completely disrespectful and marginalizing” to the city’s Christian population. 

“Imagine if that was the other way around. Imagine if that marginalized some other segment of the population other than the Judeo-Christian part of our community? This woke mind virus has infected the school system so much that they think it’s OK to do that,” he said during the work session. 

As for relating the musical to student behavior issues, Misjuns added, “I cannot see how promoting disrespect of someone’s faith will teach the children in our schools how to respect one another.”

Misjuns did not attend any of the performances. Fellow council members did not weigh in heavily on the topic of the play, but listened to Misjun’s remarks. 

Lynchburg Mayor Stephanie Reed, a fellow Republican, said she was not aware of the production prior to Misjun’s work session comments. 

“I had not heard about it from any voters, from any parents, from any citizens, nothing. I hadn’t actually even ever heard of the play,” she said. After Misjuns’s comments spread publicly, Reed said the only messages she received from constituents were ones in support of the play. 

“I still, to this day, have not received any calls or emails from any parents or citizens that were against the play. I’m not saying that there weren’t; I’m just saying I never personally received them,” she said. 

Certain lyrics and lines from the original script were revised in a bid to be less divisive, according to Hart, Krantz, and the production’s musical director, Heather Brand, in a public Facebook comment.

“What you are reading is the original script and not what is being presented on stage. Anticipating backlash of this nature, every effort has been made to remove divisive language, while still providing a place and space to speak about the subjugation and denial of basic rights and common sense considerations a large portion of our society faces each day,” Brand said.

The very line Misjun quoted from the play’s original script during the work session was another portion revised slightly for the high school production, Hart said. 

“One of the rhymes that changed was putting Forrest Gumpin’ instead of cousin hump in’. And instead of Bible thumping I think it was something like Bible Lovin’,” he said, adding this line was delivered by a “very liberal” Broadway star, when they first heard about the discrimination.

“Once the Broadway stars got to Indiana they found the humanity of people who actually live there and everybody grew some. But they represent one aspect of the antagonist when they arrive to the small town in Indiana,” Hart said. “Not everything antagonists say is pretty. Gaston does not say nice things about women, Pontius Pilate does not say nice things about Jesus Christ.”

Reed said city council’s legal department informed the council through an internal email about the revisions made to the original script, although she clarified she had not seen the performance personally.

“Anything that you see, in or out of context can make a huge difference. I really can’t comment to the show since I haven’t seen it. I have not watched it; I haven’t read the script,” Reed said.

Hart said that students initiated the production.

Several seniors had begged to do “The Prom” since they were freshmen, Hart said. After the rights became available last year, the students chose the show.

“I read the script and loved its overarching messages of love and acceptance because I know so many students past and present that this story speaks to,” Hart said.

The theater group obtained the rights to produce the play and set about producing it.

“This year these students were tired of the children’s theater and wanted something with relevance,” Hart said. “In the recent past we have performed ‘Les Miserables’ about the injustices of post revolution France and Ragtime which dealt with prejudices in early 20th Century America.”  

A production of “Cabaret” last February dealt with the rise of Nazi Germany. 

“When you deal with the ‘Wizard of Oz’ or other children’s shows, your villain is the Wicked Witch of the West. But, for non-children shows, the ‘villains’ as well as the ‘heroes’ are real people,” Hart said. “The interesting thing about a villain is that you cannot play a villain as if he or she knows they are evil.  A villain thinks they are acting for the good.”  

After Misjuns’ comments, other community members came out in support of the school and the show. Numerous people responding to Misjuns via social media, many of whom said they had either seen or read the play, commented on a lack of context surrounding Misjun’s selected lines and lyrics. 

“I believe that politicians should actually do their due diligence before taking a stand against something. The arts have always been and always will be a place for exploring ideologies, this should be encouraged, especially for those against indoctrination. I am against indoctrination on either side,” Amber Carderelli wrote in a public response to the Facebook post from Misjuns.

Describing herself as a Christian and “staunchly pro-life,” Carderelli pointed out how often Christians fail to obey their greatest command to “love thy neighbor” and continued, “It is clear sir, that you really don’t know the city you represent, because the 2 things Lynchburg loves most are Christianity and Theatre… and you have greatly disrespected both.”

Hart said this isn’t the first time someone criticized a play selected for Pioneer Theatre; the principal of Heritage High School received a letter from a disgruntled individual over a production of “Cinderella” two years ago. 

“I am sorry that someone took offense to the show — someone who didn’t see the show,” Hart said. 

Krantz said he did not go into the production intending to cause controversy. 

“I didn’t go into it thinking, ‘Hey, I’m going into it to upset people,’” he said. “I went into it thinking, ‘This story needs to be told, and it needs to be told in Lynchburg.’”

Krantz said he began acting in community theater groups at age 5, and is currently on the board of directors for Lynchburg-based Renaissance Theatre Company. In his long theater career, Krantz said he has never seen reactions quite like the one drawn recently. The backlash lately seems to come from a vocal minority.

“It didn’t surprise me that some people made comments. What surprised me was that it was an elected official, who’s elected to represent all people,” he said.

Hart and Krantz both said they were proud of their students, and their school division. 

“The  audience size tripled on the last night from the outpouring from the community.  Lynchburg has a deep tradition of gentle, intelligent and educated people. Our town is uniquely traditional and creative,” said Allison Daugherty, director of E.C. Glass theater. “I am proud of the students involved who are especially kind, accepting and loving people. They worked, and used their talent to tell someone’s story. Happily, many came to enjoy and appreciate it.”

Pioneer Theatre’s production of “The Prom” is not the only one that faced backlash. 

While in Lynchburg the outcry came from primarily one individual, Cedar Grove High School in Essex County, New Jersey, initially scrapped plans to perform the play after facing similar community backlash. The controversy was primarily driven by concerns over what was called “inappropriate content.” When supporters of the show pushed back, however, the school came back and announced it would put on a “high school version” of “The Prom” that was made available through the play’s licensing organization, according to an article from NJ Advance Media last October. 

Such a trend is not isolated to Lynchburg and its surrounding counties. School theater is one of the latest platforms to be targeted in cultural wars playing out in schools nationwide. 

Book banning and censorship efforts that target material dealing mostly with sexual orientation, race and what some call “sexually explicit” material have been ongoing, along with pushes to alter certain curriculums. These movements within school systems are led primarily by conservative groups and individuals including local chapters of Florida-based “Moms for Liberty.” Across the U.S., school administrators have had to contend with the turmoil. Responses vary from division to division. 

Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Florida — in these states and more, The Washington Post recently reported, musical theater productions in high schools have been targeted. These instances, too, predominantly deal with queerness or address race and racism, or contain what those who object call “inappropriate content” like language or mature themes. In some cases, scripts were edited to appease disgruntled community members and groups; other times, a high school theater department ended up putting on a different show altogether.

“Art by its nature begs criticism. And everyone is a critic,” Hart said. “The most important thing to remember about critiquing is when one critiques something they most generally say more about themselves that they do about the thing they are critiquing.” 

The post A high school musical starring LGBTQ characters draws criticism from a Lynchburg city council member. It’s part of a trend. appeared first on Cardinal News.

When Brendalyn King and her partner, Osei Doyle, quit their jobs and left Brooklyn, New York, in 2020 to buy land, they had high hopes of entering the growing industrial hemp industry.  They moved to Salem, Illinois, to farm on a family friend’s land until they were able to buy the property. However, they never […]

The post Black Farmers Looked to Cash In on the CBD Industry. Now, Hemp Is in Decline. appeared first on Capital B.

Squire Miller Henry is at rest now.

The 50 years he put in at Emory & Henry College carrying suitcases and trunks from arriving trains, hauling coal to heat dormitories and classrooms, ringing the nightly dinner bell and advising students on matters moral and material earned him an eternal respite beneath the broad boughs of God.

He lies in repose on a wooded hilltop in Glade Spring, Virginia, just up from the Mount Zion Baptist Church he helped establish 149 years ago and a short hop across Interstate 81 from the college campus he first set foot upon Feb. 13, 1868.

The man traveled a long way to get there.

Squire Henry was born into slavery on a plantation in Rockbridge County on Sept. 13, 1845. Shortly after the Civil War he headed not north, but south, to find work as a farmhand.

At the entreaty from a Washington County resident named John Buchanan, his journey stopped at Emory & Henry, a small liberal arts college founded in 1836 in the tiny community of Emory by the Holston Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and named for Methodist pastor John Emory and firebrand legislator Patrick Henry.

For 50 years, he served the campus and surrounding community with distinction.

Upon Squire Henry’s death in 1923, college officials solicited donations from students and alumni to pay for a headstone placed at the dearly departed gentleman’s gravesite.

The final epitaph has yet to be etched in stone.

Saturday, a full century after Squire Henry’s fire went out, the college is honoring its 50-year employee in a remarkable way.

During the school’s 2023 commencement ceremony at 10 a.m. at Fred Selfe Stadium on campus, Emory & Henry will confer a posthumous honorary Doctor of Divinity degree on the old porter, furnace stoker and tree-stump philosopher.

The school also will rename one of its existing dormitories in honor of the former slave, making it the first building of any kind on the growing campus named for a Black person.

Squire Henry’s descendants — some now eight generations removed and ranging in age from 90 years to 2 months — will be guests of honor at the ceremony honoring their ancestor.

And for one day, maybe for an hour or two, the ground that old Squire walked just might be called Emory & Henry … and Henry.

* * *

One hundred thousand bushels of coal hauled up and down the hilly campus.

A bushel of coal weighs 80 pounds.

Do the math.

The man carried 8 million pounds of coal — that’s 4,000 tons — in his five decades of service to Emory & Henry College.

Limber of back and clear of mind, the son of Woodroe and Francis Henry arrived in Southwest Virginia in 1868, soon to get to work at the college which was founded 32 years earlier as an all-male school and once served as a Confederate hospital during the Civil War.

He never left, serving all but the very first Emory & Henry president until his retirement in 1918.

Squire Henry might have been the first person an arriving freshman encountered after stepping off a train at the Emory station.

” ‘Trunks, gen’l’min, trunks! Trunks took to the college for 15 cee-unts,’ ” was the old porter’s shout, according to the author of a profile on Squire Henry in the 1901 college yearbook “The Boomerang.”

Squire Henry piled several trunks at a time into his trusty wheelbarrow. In cold weather he was “conspicuous” for carrying “two large coal buckets made of lard cans fastened on wire balls strapped with rags.”

He maintained a ledger containing the sums owed by individual students. The pocket-sized book was as ever-present as the dusty old hat atop his head.

Daily, Squire Henry rang the large dinner bell, stymied only once when campus pranksters swiped and absconded with the clapper.

He was fastidious in duty and free with advice. Whether pontificating from a porch railing on the rural campus or offering personal advice to struggling scholar or lovelorn soul, he had a seemingly endless supply of homespun homilies and hope.

“Squire Henry’s work is not only carrying coal and ashes, gathering rubbish and trundling a wheelbarrow,” the 1901 yearbook reads, “but bringing into the room of the home-sick boy or ‘busted’ Senior, cheer and hope and sunshine — a word of encouragement or advice, which no less serves its mission by often provoking a smile.”

* * *

Squire Henry had more than one mission on his mind.

Three years after arriving in Emory he married Mary Brown, a 14-year-old local girl. The wedding took place inside the home of Ephraim Emerson Wiley, the college’s second president and the first full-time faculty member.

The young couple settled in an area in Washington County known as “Blacksburg.”

The community, mostly located along Indian Run Road just off U.S. 11, was given its name because it became a Black enclave within the largely segregated county and state.

“After slavery, a lot of Black people in the area moved here,” said Gaynelle Heath, a fifth-generation descendant of Squire and Mary Henry who now lives in Bristol. “It was a long time before there were any white people on this end [of the road]. It was called Blacksburg because it was a little burg where a lot of Black people stayed.

“It was not my chosen name.”

Some printed accounts state that Squire and Mary Henry had 14 children. Surviving descendants can account for 11, several who might have died at a very young age, according to family members.

Nevertheless, the family tree has sprouted wide branches, beginning with the couple’s first child in 1871, Benjamin Franklin Henry, and continuing through the 11th child, Ephriam Wiley Henry, named for the old Emory & Henry president and born in 1894.

The name of Wiley Henry is one of distinction in Washington County, particularly in the halls and haunts of Abingdon’s famed Martha Washington Inn.

Before the inn became a destination that attracted the likes of Harry Truman, Clare Booth Luce and Tennessee Williams as guests, it housed Martha Washington College. It was a women’s school that operated from 1850 to 1931. Upon the school’s closing, some of its students transferred to Emory & Henry, which first admitted women in 1899, according to the E&H website.

A 1964 Bristol Herald Courier article called Wiley Henry “Abingdon’s king of Southern hospitality.” Following Squire Henry’s blueprint, he served the former women’s college and inn for five decades from 1918 until his death in 1967 “without stint and far beyond the limits usually deserved.”

In 1969, alumnae of Martha Washington College endowed the Wiley Henry Memorial Scholarship, given to a deserving African American student at Emory & Henry. Rachel Sheffy, a great-great-granddaughter of Squire Henry, was the recipient in 1998, graduating from E&H in 2001 as a history major.

Heath was the first of Squire Miller Henry’s descendants to graduate from Emory & Henry. She completed a degree in elementary education in 1972, four years after the college produced its first Black female graduate.

She attended on a scholarship named for her grandfather Jim Foster, who was the grandson-in-law of Squire Henry.

“I knew about [Squire Henry’s] history with the college, but I didn’t know I could get a scholarship,” she said. “I only paid a hundred dollars to go to Emory.”

Heath’s cousin, Mary Lampkins, also became a teacher following her graduation from Emory & Henry. So did Carolyn Foster Doss, a 1986 E&H graduate who was inducted into the college’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1999 after a women’s basketball career that still has her ranked No. 1 on the school’s all-time list for rebounding average.

Foster’s daughter, Taylor Doss Dean, played softball at Emory & Henry, graduating in 2016.

When the surviving descendants convene for Saturday’s ceremony, 23-year-old Chandler Foster will have a unique perspective … in more ways than one.

The youngest great-great-grandson of Squire Henry, he is the only descendant currently enrolled at Emory & Henry. The mass communications major also has another distinction.

He has been totally blind since birth.

A lack of eyesight hasn’t stopped Chandler from his studies or from activities such as co-hosting a blues show on the college’s radio station, WEHC (FM 90.7).

“I’m not a blind person, I’m just a person,” he said. “My blindness might be total, but I sure can see through people.”

The Emory & Henry junior also doesn’t need eyesight to see the footsteps he is following.

“I feel honored to know that my great-great-granddaddy took pride in something that we have in common, Emory & Henry, the students, the people and the well-being of the campus,” he said. “That makes me feel connected to him.

“To see Emory & Henry, focusing on my family … I feel very respected. That says a lot to me. It speaks volumes.”

* * *

Emory & Henry held an inaugural Juneteenth Celebration on campus in 2022 when assistant professor of library science Rebecca Grantham delivered a brief address on the life and times of Squire Miller Henry.

The presentation piqued the interest of the college’s associate vice president for advancement, Shannon Earle.

Earle did the math.

The year 2023 would mark a full 100 years since Squire Henry’s death. Why not find a way to honor the old porter with a posthumous honorary doctorate during the May commencement exercises?

Earle, who has spent 23 years working in higher education, certainly got no argument from her husband, current Emory & Henry president John Wells. She drafted a document and presented it to the college’s board of trustees, who voted unanimously in favor bestowing the honor upon the old coal hauler.

Precedent had been established in 2021 when Emory & Henry conferred an honorary Doctor of Food Sciences degree on Willie Thompson, a chef at the college for nearly 60 years.

Earle contacted Squire Henry’s family to gauge their interest in participating in a ceremony connected to Saturday’s commencement. As of Thursday, 70 descendants had pledged to attend, ranging from the oldest, Rose Marie Lampkins, 90; to the youngest, 2-month-old Dawson Anthony Dean who might need a boost to view the tribute from a distance of seven generations from his ancestor.

“We’re all standing on his shoulders,” said Earle, who will join her husband in serving the family for lunch at the college’s student union. “He did so much work to ensure this institution [survived] through some of the hardest times. Not all schools were able to stay open in that time after the Civil War. Without the work of Mr. Henry, I wonder how students, faculty and staff would have functioned.

“There was no discussion on ‘Should we do this or not?’ The discussion was on why we haven’t done this before. Every time I think about the institution honoring Mr. Henry, I get teary. I get a lump in my throat. It’s so special. He obviously carried a lot of weight.”

* * *

Squire Henry is buried in a small, rough-hewn cemetery in Glade Spring dotted with scattered headstones, small markers and unmarked graves.

The old campus caretaker’s official death certificate shows that he died Dec. 6, 1923. Shortly thereafter, Emory & Henry professor J.L. Hardin took care to make sure Squire’s final resting place would not be lost under layers of anonymity.

Hardin issued a circular letter a month later to former students and other “sons of Emory & Henry,” in an attempt to raise $350 for a proper burial and headstone. The professor placed a limit of $5 per donation so the campaign was vigorous. The sum of $350 in 1923 money would equal nearly $6,200 in 2023.

Despite the princely amount, Hardin did not miss the mark with his missive.

The response was swift.

Letters and enclosed funds flooded the post.

The return addresses included the likes of the University of Virginia McIntire School of Commerce; University of Maine, Orono, Maine; Ear Nose and Throat of Akron, Ohio; Dallas Sanitarium of Dallas, Texas; and Methodist Episcopal Church South of Nashville, Tennessee.

Emory & Henry maintains a file folder full of the return letters at its Kelly Library on campus, available to the public.

E.T. Cecil, M.D., of Bramwell, West Virginia. included the following handwritten note:

“I am glad to make a contribution for a nice burial and monument to the memory of ‘Squire Henry.’ I remember him very well though it has been 30 years since I came to Emory to enter college. I am enclosing you a check for $2.00 and if you don’t have enough you can call on me again. Very truly, E.T. Cecil.”

A Dec. 14, 1923, Roanoke Times article stated that Professor Hardin sought to have the funeral service inside the college’s auditorium, but Squire Henry’s family preferred the confines of nearby Mt. Zion Baptist Church, where he was a founding member in 1874, later becoming a deacon.

The church held a 41st anniversary celebration in 1915. Deacon S.M. Henry, Esq., delivered the Sunday morning address titled “Our Church.”

The small white chapel at the mouth of the road leading to old Blacksburg remains the family church, although attendance on recent Sunday in April numbered 10 souls.

“We have about 11 every Sunday morning and we just do what we have to do,” said Debbie Foster, a great-great-granddaughter of Squire Henry who worked in the dean’s office and the Office of Residence Life at E&H from 1976-86.

Foster said that when she worked at the college, “Nothing was ever mentioned about Squire Henry. Nothing.”

So she went to find out for herself, poring through the file at the E&H library and recoiling at some of the 1920s-era descriptions of her proud ancestor.

Along with the willing contributions for Squire Henry’s headstone came a few stark reminders that racial differences remained part of the equation. One gentleman’s response offered an illustration:

“I am enclosing a contribution to the fund for the purpose of erection [sic] a memorial at the grave of my friend, ‘Squire Henry.’ He was a man whose skin was black but within his body beat a white heart.”

“It was sad,” Debbie Foster said.

Things can change over the course of 100 years.

When Squire Henry’s descendants numbering 70 strong take their place of honor Saturday, there will be familiar Southwest Virginia names: Foster, Cato, Lampkins, Carter, Preston, Pender.

They will come in all shapes and sizes and yes, colors.

“Let them see the diversity in our family,” Debbie Foster said. “We had a lot of different colors in our family, but we are family. We stick together no matter what.”

* * *

The last word belongs to Squire Miller Henry himself.

The former slave who came to Emory & Henry College as a janitor, who hauled coal and ash in and out of school buildings, who counseled frightened freshmen and gave sage advice to departing seniors, who raised a family on a meager pittance, who founded a church that still serves parishioners today, who left a legacy of fair play and honesty on generations to come … his words alone will be the epitaph.

Old Squire addressed Emory & Henry’s student body on Feb. 3, 1920, exactly 52 years to the day from when he first showed up at the college to work.

His remarks were printed verbatim in the school’s “The Weekly Bulletin,” a weekly publication by the Emory & Henry Athletic Association.

Here are the excerpts:

“I am in a strange country this mornin’, but you don’t know how glad I am to be here on this occasion. Fifty-two years this mornin’ I came on the College place to make a home worth livin’; and I have been here some way, somehow or ‘nother ever since. But this mornin’ I can’t see the face of no one a tall that was here when I came; no one. When I begin runnin’ it over in my mind to see where they all are, pretty nigh all of them have gone to the other world, only one of our professors, who was here, is livin’ now; only one. All the rest dead and gone, and somehow or ‘nother the Lord saw good enough to spare me for some purpose, some purpose, or nuther.

“When I first come here and got settled down Professor Buchanan was so good to me and so kind to me, that I had a direct talk with myself to make a man out of myself. I was way out in a strange country by myself without free schools and no money. I tried to fight it off, but it stayed in my heart, still come to me; and I decided to make a man somehow or ‘nother — did not know how in the world I was goin’ to do it — and I started out.

“Just nature or somethin’ told me what to study: ‘You study RIGHT FROM WRONG.’ Well, now, I went to work at that. I studied the same as the students studied their books, RIGHT from WRONG, and kept on studying it for about three of six months and another spirit came to me: ‘Now, you studied that pretty well, study HOW TO DO BETTER.’ Well, I studied in that and that was a lifetime study. Did not have any books, don’t have to have books. … I graduated in 44 years and got my diploma …

“This is another thing that come to me. I was a man with a family, and now if you want to be –- if your want your children to grow up in the world and be something you take care of those other people’s children. That was the reason I was so kind to the student bodies. I may never see their mothers and fathers –- they live thousands of miles away, maybe. But when my children go through the world they will be remembered by them parents. …

“If I want my children to come up and be protected, I am to protect the children of other people, and they was here, and I done it the best I could. I don’t know, I have tried in every way, not only in this student body but in the student bodies from the day I come here until today. They ought to say that ‘Squire Henry gave me good advice.’ …

“I thank you for the privilege of talking on my [anniversary] at the college, fifty-two long years, fifty-two long years. Supposin’ I was to go on fifty-two more years. You would be gone as those before you. … If you come in the world and don’t do the world some good you had better never been in it. So, gentlemen, I thank you for what I’ve said in a broken manner; obliged to do that. I thank you for your attention, only hoping that you all will be Christians and will meet where congregations never break up and where Sabbaths have no end.”

The post He hauled 4,000 tons of coal for Emory & Henry. A century after his death, he’ll now have a building named after him. appeared first on Cardinal News.

You can find all our coverage of Virginia’s changing demographics here.

In January, we reported on Virginia’s new population estimates, which showed that Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads — but especially Northern Virginia — are now losing population while some parts of rural Virginia are now gaining.

Those estimates were a precursor to national estimates, which the U.S. Census Bureau has now released, which gives us an opportunity to see Virginia’s population changes in a national context. So let’s get to it.

1. The population losses in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads stand out even more because they are at odds with other Southern metros. Raleigh, Charlotte, Nashville, Atlanta, you name it — all those places gained population. In losing population, Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads have much more in common with Northeastern metros such as New York and Boston that also lost people. I’ve looked before at why this is: High housing costs are typically blamed but this becomes a complicated debate. Gov. Glenn Youngkin says Virginia’s taxes are too high; Del. Vivian Watts, D-Fairfax County, has countered that the state hasn’t invested enough in transportation to ease Northern Virginia’s infamous traffic congestion. We will not resolve that debate today. Whatever the reasons, the important thing to know is that Virginia’s two biggest metro areas are losing population while other big Southern metros are gaining. Virginia’s leaders from both parties might want to ponder why that is.

2. Virginia’s most popular destination for people moving in — Richmond — isn’t nearly as popular as other places in the Mid-Atlantic. We’ve reported before that more people are moving out of Virginia than are moving in; Youngkin has cited this as a worrisome metric that he regularly monitors. That net out-migration is driven mostly by outflows from Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, but some places in Virginia are attracting more new residents than they’re losing. The most popular destination is the Richmond metro. In fact, the Richmond metro is now the fastest-growing part of the state. However, Richmond’s population gains due to net in-migration are well below those of other metros in the Mid-Atlantic. Since 2020, Richmond has seen 15,848 new residents through domestic migration. However, 10 other metros in the Mid-Atlantic rank higher. The Charlotte metro leads the way with 63,742, while Myrtle Beach is second with 53,801 and the Raleigh metro is third with 47,750. Some context: “Raleigh, which is about 8 percent larger than the Richmond metro area, attracted over three times more domestic migrants between 2020 and 2022 than Richmond,” says demographer Hamilton Lombard at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia, “while Myrtle Beach, which is close to a third the size of the Richmond metro area, attracted even more domestic migrants than Raleigh.”

Now, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing obviously depends on your point of view. Youngkin equates population growth with economic growth and economic growth does, undoubtedly, drive population growth. People don’t move to communities that are economically failing. However, others might say there’s such a thing as too much population growth. I live in a rural community because I don’t want too many people around me, so we can have robust arguments over just how much population growth is too much. On the other hand, a place that’s losing population is clearly a bad thing economically. Maybe people in Richmond are happy with that level of population growth and wouldn’t want to see growth that’s three times or even four times faster — that’s not for me to say. I’m simply pointing out that other places in the  Mid-Atlantic are much more popular destinations than Virginia’s most popular destination.

3. Virginia’s second most popular destination for domestic migration may surprise you: It’s Bristol. Well, technically, the Kingsport-Bristol metro, so there’s more Tennessee in that metro than Virginia. Still, that metro saw a domestic migration of 8,928. That’s more than Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina (8,527), and Greensboro-High Point, North Carolina (6,285). Bet you wouldn’t have predicted that. “This lines up well with Realtor.com ranking the Kingsport-Bristol region as having one of the best housing markets in the country,” Lombard says.

For comparison purposes, the Winchester metro is 3,530, the Lynchburg metro is 2,658, the Staunton metro is 1,928, the Roanoke metro is 1,028, the Charlottesville metro is 872, the Danville metro is 545, the Martinsville metro is 348 and the Bluefield metro is 276. It’s noteworthy that those last three metros – all small and less affluent – are in the plus range. By contrast, Hampton Roads shows a loss of 6,754 while the entire Washington metro (covering Northern Virginia, D.C. and parts of Maryland) has a loss of 135,014. As I’ve pointed out before, many parts of rural Virginia may be losing population because deaths outnumber births, but in terms of migration, some places have fixed their population outflows. When Virginia shows more people moving out than moving in, the problem is Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, not Danville, Martinsville, Bristol and so forth.

4. “Lifestyle communities” are gaining population fast. Notice that Myrtle Beach has seen more new people move in than any other place in the Mid-Atlantic except for Charlotte. Some other smaller communities rank high on the list. Hilton Head, South Carolina, has gained 12,030, almost as many as Richmond. Asheville, North Carolina, has gained 11,060. This is in line with other data we’ve seen; if the Zoom era allows people to live anywhere they want, many are choosing seaside retreats — or, in the case of Asheville, a place with a reputation as a mountain resort. We see that trend play out in Virginia with population growth along the Chesapeake Bay and, conceivably, some of the population growth in some rural counties along the Blue Ridge is driven by this as well. Ours just aren’t growing as fast as other places.

5. Virginia is unusual among Southeastern states because it has a lot of rural areas that are losing population. When Virginia’s population estimates came out, it was noteworthy that many — though certainly not all — rural areas showed some population growth. When we look more broadly, through a national lens, we see that we might be missing the forest for the trees, so to speak. In Southside, Southwest and the Alleghany Highlands, we still have a lot of localities that are losing population. However, in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia, virtually every locality is gaining population. All you have to do is look at the map to see how Virginia’s southern border acts as a demographic demarcation. In Virginia, we have a checkerboard of rural counties, some gaining, some losing. South of us, there’s much more widespread population growth. Once again, Virginia’s leaders from both parties might want to ponder why that is. Youngkin cites tax differences. I’m not in a position to dispute that, but I will gently point out that taxes are more complicated than that. Tennessee has no income tax, for instance, but the tradeoff is it has the nation’s second highest sales tax rates. In a previous column, I looked more closely at why eastern Tennessee has more population growth than Southwest Virginia; the answers involve geography and historic patterns of development. Whatever the reason, the pattern is clear: Population growth in rural areas is more uneven than in our Southern neighbors.

6. Migration to rural areas is slowing, but still continuing. “During the height of the pandemic, many small counties experienced higher levels of domestic migration, while many large counties saw lower levels of domestic migration,” the Census Bureau says. “This pattern has reversed between 2021 and 2022, where many of the small counties that experienced increases in domestic migration saw that pattern slow down.” Slow down, but not halt altogether. Demographers are still watching these trends to see if this Zoom-era bump in rural population growth is a temporary phenomenon or something longer-lasting. Nonetheless, the exodus from some metro areas continues. Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Detroit, in that order, saw the biggest numbers of people moving out. So who’s gaining?

7. The Sunbelt continues to be where the population growth is. In terms of raw numbers of people moving in, the two biggest gainers are Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix), and Harris County, Texas (Houston). The 10 fastest-gaining counties are all in Arizona (one), Texas (six) and Florida (three). There are those who view these growth trends in political terms, making the case that Republican-governed states are gaining and Democratic-governed ones are losing — Illinois and New York are the two classic examples cited, although lately California has joined them. I’m not sure I buy that because there are too many exceptions. Mississippi and West Virginia are governed by Republicans and virtually every county in those states is losing population. Washington state is governed by Democrats and virtually every county there is gaining population. I suspect the reasons are much more nuanced. Party control certainly has something to do with the policies a state enacts (be it the taxes that Youngkin says are too high or the investment that Watts says it too low), but we also have to factor in underlying demographics and economic factors — along with, well, sunshine.

The post Here’s how unusual the population losses in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads are appeared first on Cardinal News.

Cleta Mitchell – the Washington Post identified her as “a top Republican legal strategist,” MSNBC called her a “Trump coup attorney” – recently created a stir when she told a GOP donor retreat that the party should make it harder for college students to vote.

What got less attention was that she said if Republicans win control of the General Assembly this November, then it’s possible for them to undo the state’s early voting laws. “If the Republicans are to hold the state House and reclaim the state Senate, then maybe it’s possible to get rid of 45 days of early voting in Virginia,” she said.

She didn’t say how many days Republicans should get rid of – all 45 days or just some. However, it’s clear that some Republicans seeking office this fall want to do away with all of them. In House District 53, which runs from northern Bedford County through Amherst County to southern Nelson County, both candidates seeking the Republican nomination want to do away with virtually all early voting. We have always had some early voting, in the form of absentee voting for which you officially had to state a reason why you couldn’t make it to the polls; what changed is the institution of what’s often called “no excuse” absentee voting. That’s what both Tim Griffin and Sarah Mays want to do away with – and they’re not the only ones.

On the one hand, this isn’t surprising: Former President Donald Trump has spent much of his post-presidency railing against early voting.

On the other hand, the more interesting hand, the Republicans who are dead-set against early voting are working against their own political interests because it was Glenn Youngkin’s embrace of early voting that helped him win the governorship in 2021 (and bring in a Republican House with him).

Yes, Democrats were generally far more willing to embrace early voting than Republicans were – particularly in 2020 when Trump was bashing it left and right. In 2021, though, Youngkin made a point of pushing early voting, particularly in Republican-heavy Southwest Virginia. State Sen. Todd Pillion, R-Washington County, appeared in a video talking up the advantages of voting early.

So let’s look at the math.

Big picture first: The reason Youngkin won was that turnout in Republican-voting localities was up more than it was in Democratic-voting localities.

The Virginia Public Access Project produced a helpful graphic illustrating all that but here are the highlights. In Petersburg, turnout was exactly the same in 2021 as it was in 2017. In Hampton, Norfolk and Richmond, it was up by just one percentage point in each locality. In Charlottesville, it was down one percentage point from four years earlier. In Portsmouth, it was down two. Meanwhile, in Republican localities there were big jumps in turnout – often double-digit jumps.

Not all that increase was due to early voting, but a good bit of it was, so I’m surprised that some Republicans want to do away with the very thing that helped them win.

Let’s start with Goochland County. It had the highest voter turnout in the state – 71%, up from 61% four years early.

This is also a strongly Republican county where about two-thirds of the voters cast Republican ballots. In Goochland, if you have a bigger turnout, you get more Republican voters. And that’s exactly what happened between 2017 and 2021.

The Democratic vote went up by 999 votes, but the Republican vote went up by 3,065 votes.

So where were these “extra” Republican votes coming from? Some were “new” Republican voters showing up at the polls, but a lot were Republicans casting early votes. In Goochland, 31.15% of the votes were cast early, one of the highest percentages in the state – higher even than some strongly Democratic localities. (Again, thanks to VPAP for doing the math). In Norfolk, just 14.46% of the votes were cast early. In Richmond, 17.1% of the votes were. In Petersburg, 17.79% were. In Alexandria, the figure was 23.7%. In Arlington, 25.08%.

Goochland Republicans apparently loved early voting, so much so that they voted early at more than twice the rate of voters in strongly Democratic Norfolk.

Here’s another way to show that: In 2021, early votes were tabulated in a “central absentee precinct.” Since then, legislation sponsored by state Sen. David Suetterlein, R-Roanoke County, requires that those votes be counted as part of their home precinct – this is a good thing in the interest of understanding election returns – but the now-discarded 2021 method proves useful here. In 2021, 63.8% of the early votes in Goochland were Republican votes. In terms of actual numbers, 3,503 of those early voters in Goochland County went for Youngkin, 1,974 for Democrat Terry McAuliffe.

Between 2017 and 2021, the total vote in Goochland was up by 4,011.

In theory, 3,503 of those 4,011 new votes were Republican early voters. In practice, I doubt that was the case, of course, but the point is that in Goochland County the early voting was undoubtedly good for Republicans.

Goochland wasn’t alone, either. Mathews County, over by the Chesapeake Bay, is even more Republican than Goochland is. Goochland voted 65.9% Republican, Mathews voted 71.6% Republican. It saw an even higher percentage of early voters than Goochland did – 34.7%, rivalling the 35.6% in strongly Democratic Falls Church. And once again, when we look more closely at that “central absentee precinct” of early voters in Mathews County – it was more than two-thirds Republican.

Republican voters in Mathews County loved early voting, too.

The Republican vote in Mathews County went up by 962 votes. However, 1,562 of the 2,269 early votes cast in Mathews were Republican. In theory, early voting accounted for all of the increase in the Republican vote in Mathews County – and a little more.

Now let’s look at a different type of county – James City County. In 2017, it went narrowly Democratic. In 2021, it went narrowly Republican. There were 8,937 early Republican votes in the county that year. Youngkin carried the county by 2,212 votes. Mathematically speaking, the Republican push for early votes enabled Youngkin to flip James City County from blue to red.

Yet more evidence of how early voting benefited Republicans more than it did Democrats in many places: In Democratic Roanoke, 17.4% of the vote was cast early. In Republican Roanoke County, 21.09% was. In even more Republican Botetourt County, the early voting rate was a smidge higher: 21.88%. In Republican Salem, the early voting rate was higher still – 24.22%.

So if many Republican localities have embraced early voting more enthusiastically than their Democratic counterparts, and if that early voting has demonstrably helped elect Republican candidates, why, then, do some Republicans want to do away with it? Or at least restrict it?

We can’t dismiss the role of ideology, of course. Some Republicans are just philosophically against anything other than the traditional one-day Election Day – even if that means the risk of gambling an entire election away. Party leaders may be starting to re-think that; the recent “autopsy” on the 2022 mid-terms commissioned by the Republican National Commiteee concluded that the party needs to do a better job of persuading voters to vote early.

Here’s another way to look at it: In Virginia, the voters most reluctant to adopt early voting haven’t been Republicans statewide, not from the looks of places such as Goochland and Mathews and many others. It’s been a specific sub-set of Republican — rural Republicans west of the Blue Ridge; no doubt one reason why Pillion recorded that video in 2021. In Buchanan County, just 7.10% of the votes were cast early. In Smyth County, just 7.60% were. In Lee County, just 7.97%. (This VPAP chart illustrates the trends.)

Meanwhile, these counties had some of the lowest voter turnouts, too. Their turnouts were often much, much higher than four years before, but they were still quite low by statewide standards. Buchanan County, for instance, posted a turnout of 40% – up from 30% – but still lower than all but one other locality in the state. (That was Democratic voting Petersburg, at 38%).

If I were a Republican operative – and I’m most assuredly not an operative for either party – I wouldn’t be trying to get rid of early voting. I’d be trying to encourage it. In the most Republican part of the state – Southwest Virginia – there are clearly a lot of uncast votes. In 2017, Buchanan County had a turnout of 30% while Goochland County was more than twice that, at 61%. In 2017, Galax, Norton, Russell County and Tazewell County all had turnout of just 37%. They posted big percentage increases for Youngkin in 2020 but still the best of them, Russell County, only saw 52% turnout. (In Russell, early voting account for nearly two-thirds of the extra turnout).

What if all those localities routinely saw turnout at the level of other Republican-voting communities, such as Goochland? If Buchanan County’s turnout percentage matched Goochland, that might mean 3,400 or more extra Republican votes. That wouldn’t elect more Republicans in Southwest Virginia; that part of the state is so sufficiently Republican that Republicans can easily win, whether it’s a low turnout or high turnout election. But in a close statewide election, a few thousand extra Republican votes might make the difference. (Youngkin’s statewide margin in 2021 was 63,688 votes; Jason Miyares’ winning margin in the attorney general’s race was just 44,146 votes. In 2013, Democrat Mark Herring’s margin over Republican Mark Obenshain in the attorney general’s race was just 165 votes).

Republicans ought to be looking at early voting as a way to dramatically increase turnout in Southwest Virginia as a small insurance policy against Democratic gains elsewhere (and a way to increase the region’s declining influence), then early voting is the easiest way to do that. By that measure, the Republican candidates who want to do away with early voting are working against their party’s own interests – and perhaps the interest of Southwest Virginia.

The post In 2021, early voting benefited Republicans. Why do some want to abolish it? appeared first on Cardinal News.