Virginia Voices

Afghan refugee, Sajia Afzali and her young family escaped their home in the capital city just hours before the brutal Taliban regime regained authority. The family is building a new life – with local support – in Virginia.

Yehudit Shamir and her husband returned to the Kibbutz on the Gaza border where they first met decades earlier. October 7 sent the family running from tragedy.

Zeina Azzam, a Palestinian American who is poet laureate of Alexandria, writes longingly about her ancestral home in Palestine while celebrating her American identity, often peppering her English poetry with Arabic. Azzam, 68, came to the U.S. at the age of 10 after living in Homs, Syria and Beirut.

Her parents fled their home in Haifa in 1948 when Zionist paramilitary forces drove more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes to establish the Israeli state. The Zionists were largely European Jews who themselves suffered through centuries of displacement, antisemitism, and genocide.

This mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians is called Al Nakba, or The Catastrophe, and ignited a refugee crisis that’s lasted decades. Today, Israeli settlements continue to displace Palestinians in the West Bank. This history has fueled both Israel and Hamas to conduct violent strikes and retaliations.

Next month, VCIJ at WHRO will profile an Israeli-American.

Azzam has made a colorful and happy home in Alexandria, decorated with cultural emblems from the Arab World, fig trees and jasmine plants.

Her poem, “Write My Name,” has gone viral with its vivid description of children surviving in war-torn Gaza. Azzam read the poem before the United Nations Palestinian Rights Committee, and the verse has been translated into multiple languages.

Speaking independently, not as the Poet Laureate of Alexandria, she shared stories about her life as a child of refugees in America, Al Nakba, the Israeli-Hamas War and her hope for the future.

Jammie Hale moved to a rural hilltop in Southwest Virginia to get back to his family’s roots. When the Mountain Valley Pipeline came through a neighboring property, he found another purpose

Georgia Allen, 70, remembers growing up during segregation in Pleasant Ridge, a sleepy, agricultural community in southern Virginia Beach. Her family bought groceries at the local country store, where her parents suffered the indignities of white customers always being served ahead of them.

But as a young girl, Allen wasn’t aware of it because her mother would find ways to distract her during shopping trips. Before Allen walked to the counter with her chosen toy or candy, her mother would say, “Come here a minute, are you sure you want that?”

“She would keep us busy, I ultimately realized later in life that you know, my mom was creative,” Allen said. “She was making sure we weren’t experiencing it (racism) as much as other people.”

Allen is now a civil rights activist and long time member of the Virginia Beach branch of the NAACP, having served as branch president from 2001 to 2012.

In 2021, she was a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit that successfully changed the local election system in Virginia Beach after decades of underrepresentation for the city’s Black residents. In most cities, people living within voting districts elect city council members from within their districts to represent them in local office. But Virginia Beach had a system in which council members must win elections citywide, instead of solely within their districts.

This voting system prevented the election of candidates preferred by voters of color, plaintiffs argued. The city of Virginia Beach, created in 1963 by a merger between Princess Anne County and Virginia Beach, did not have its first Black city councilmember until 1986. Before the lawsuit, it had had only five Black city councilmembers in its history.

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Teaching Black history in Virginia classrooms today means sprinting through a political minefield. One misstep brings the ire of parents and conservative leaders who say teaching how race has shaped American history is harmful and divisive.

Virginia is one of 18 states that limits how teachers can discuss racism in the classroom. Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin made the issue a cornerstone of his election campaign, and his first executive order banned teaching “inherently divisive concepts” in the state's public schools. The order says K through 12 curriculum are subject to a compliance review by top education officials in Virginia. Youngkin even established a short-lived hotline for parents to complain about teachers and lesson plans involving race.

Matthan Wilson, who teaches government and African American American history at a high school in Newport News, aims to objectively teach the painful parts of American history, while dodging a political firefight. A 56-year-old Black man, Wilson, was raised in Portsmouth and was bussed to a predominantly white elementary school. As a young student, he began to distrust the history he was being taught, leading him to read independently and question narratives that favored white American exceptionalism.

Today, Wilson teaches the African-American history elective. The course was developed in 2020 under former Governor Ralph Northam, following the racial reckoning brought by the Black Lives Matter movement. He helps his students think critically about complexities such as Blacks passing as white during segregation, and the contradiction of the founding fathers owning slaves and advocating for equality under the law.

In his classroom, only two students stand for the pledge. Most feel the U.S. government has failed them, having spent their formative years in a society where systemic racism persists, as evidenced by many metrics of inequality.

But Wilson sees hope. He’s inspired by his student’s motivation to learn outside of the classroom, and desire to bring Americans of all races closer in both fellowship and equity. He encourages students to seek balanced perspectives and to challenge the mythos of American history. It’s his way of making sure that some of the darker chapters of history are not repeated..

“Understanding your mistakes makes you a better person, Wilson says, “because you say I messed up, which means I can change it.”

Deborah Skeldon met her husband, Patrick, on a blind date in Hawaii in 1980. He was a Marine Corps fighter pilot, a Vietnam veteran based at Kaneohe Air Station. The two forged an immediate bond – one that would remain unbroken for decades through the devastating diagnosis of ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, attributed to his military service. Deborah Skeldon shares her first-person story - fighting for VA recognition, caring for Pat, and the memories of her brave —and funny —Marine.

Virginia Voices captures first-person stories from the people most affected by current politics, policy and the economy. The series gives a stage to Virginians outside the news to share stories about how these forces have shaped their lives.