This August marks five centuries since the first recorded enslaved Africans arrived in what would become the United States; 81 years before Jamestown and nearly 250 years before the Declaration of Independence, a group of 100 Africans landed with a Spanish expedition along the South Carolina coast.
Jeff Bennett
Jeff Bennett is a native of Danville. Besides freelance writing, Benett works as a business consultant for transportation and emerging technology companies. Bennett resides in Alexandria and holds an undergraduate degree in English from the Virginia Military Institute.
Posted inOpinion
Bennett: My father spent 33 years working in Virginia’s prisons. Here’s how we should judge prison reform.
Correctional officers are often absent from our public conversations about criminal justice.
Posted inOpinion
Will VMI survive?
A VMI grad says that partisanship has put the institute’s future in jeopardy.
Posted inOpinion
Across Virginia, nearly 8,000 Black families were displaced by urban renewal
Of 133 total jurisdictions in Virginia, 76 communities in 38 localities were noted as having Black communities that were displaced.
Posted inOpinion
It takes a village: How the Black community in Lexington supported VMI and its first wave of Black cadets
VMI accepted its first Black cadets in 1968. Here’s how the Black community in Lexington supported them.
Posted inOpinion
The Berry Hill megasite was moved to avoid disturbing hundreds of enslaved people’s graves
What is now a promising industrial site in Pittsylvania County was once a plantation where enslaved people labored before the Civil War. Here’s a look back at the history.
Posted inOpinion
From Dan’s Village to Dan-Vegas
Danville’s evolution to become an economic power of Southside Virginia.
