Click here to read or download the special 4-page issue of The Virginia Defender This issue is an expository to help visitors to Richmond learn the current social struggles in Richmond regarding Confederate symbolism, racism and coming to terms with the conflicting narratives of our history as a freedom-seeking nation. Learn about the call to move the race route from highlighting the city's largest single Confederate shrine: Monument Avenue; the struggle to protect Shockoe Bottom from destruction just as we're coming to understand the enormity of its role in the slave trade and the origins of the city; and on the community proposal for Shockoe Bottom. Richmond today bears the scars of our country’s original contradiction: that the “Land of the Free” was founded as a slave society, and continued as such for 246 years. The effects of that history on today’s social, economic and political issues have never been fully examined. Shockoe Bottom can be the place ...