Browse Items (194 total)

Ishmail Conway, Director of the Luther P. Jackson Cultural Center at the University of Virginia, was a guest speaker at the University of Richmond during Black History Month. During his speech, he focused on the importance and significance behind…

University of Richmond President, Richard Morrill, orders the Commission on Diversity to address the multiple incidents’ of minority students experiencing racism on campus. All aspects of racism will be reviewed by the commission including the…

The writer of this piece questions her black identity in the form of asking if she is allowed to say the "n word." While she feels unable to because of her middle/upper class upbringing, she relays anecdotes such as her sister straightening her hair…

The author of this piece reflects on being "more American" than she thought when seeing black men in the news, likely after the killing of an unarmed black man, while she's out of the country. She states that, even though America is her home, it…

This poem, narrated by "the slave's dream and hope," attacks the idea of "good hair" as a superior, more acceptable alternative to natural black hair. It asserts that good hair should have been left on the plantations, and compares it to the song…

The narrator of this poem expresses his identity as part of a "colossal being" of black people, preferring the collective 'we' to the singular 'I.' He explores slavery as "the torture that was endured for years and still / Silently exists today"…

This poem by a white student tells of the race dynamics of a public bus. It contrasts young students from St. Catherine's with black riders as the bus enters a poorer section of the city. The narrator claims that she is the only one who acknowledges…

This poem is a celebration of the narrator's "angel," a black woman with "coca skin" and "dark softness." It was the only poem by a black student in the 1984 Messenger.

This poem by a white student describes two "bums," one black and one white, who ultimately realize that, despite their differences and the oppressive attitudes of the white person towards the black person, each is the only friend that the other has.

This essay in the 1915 yearbook is written by student Evan Chesterman who is writing about the pride of Richmond ancestry. Chesterman uses metaphors when decribing the abandoned college campus during the Civil War as "a little darkey's kinky head…