RICHMOND, Va. — As fencing is set to be installed Jan. 25 around the 130-year-old Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond, Va., in preparation for its removal, the monument itself has become an unlikely symbol of hope and persistence for many in the surrounding communities. Gov. Ralph S. Northam ordered the removal of the Confederate general’s memorial in June 2020, but it has been delayed by legal action from local residents who want it to remain. The 60-foot, 12-ton statue on Monument Avenue is covered in graffiti, applied and reapplied multiple times since June’s Black Lives Matter protests. Queen, 32,…
Author: Tn Tribune
In It didn’t take long for Shakur Stevenson to show the world his talent in the boxing ring. As an amateur, he won a silver medal in the bantamweight division at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. As a pro, he established himself as one of boxing’s future stars, showcasing an abundance of skills along with superstar qualities. Stevenson won the WBO featherweight (126 pounds) title in just his 13th professional fight, cruising to a dominant unanimous decision victory over Joet Gonzalez, who had been undefeated through 23 professional fights. After securing the featherweight title, Stevenson moved up…
It was a mission she knew she might not survive. Still, in March 1944, a young Jewish immigrant to Palestine named Hannah Senesh (Anna Szenes) parachuted into occupied Slovenia on behalf of the British Army. The goals were twofold — to help Allied pilots who had fallen behind enemy lines flee to safety and to work with partisan forces to rescue Jewish communities under Nazi occupation. Senesh was captured by the Hungarian police on June 7, tortured for months, and executed on November 7. She was only 23. Hannah Senesh’s immigration certificate, 1939. (National Library of Israel)A year later, a…
The holiday gift that keeps teenagers on the sofa with game controllers in their hands may help parents pay their college tuition. For some, training to compete in cyberspace contests like Fortnite and NBA2K could soon replace training for team sports — and create a new scholarship pipeline and professional opportunities after graduation. Gaming and esports are becoming sources of camaraderie and competition for students at HBCUs. Three of the four HBCU athletic conferences have corporate partnerships with developers of gaming platforms that allow students to compete against on-campus peers as well as students at schools in their conferences. And…
Back when street hustlers and killers called him “Glaze,” the crack cocaine king of New York was among the most feared men walking the streets of new York. But in 1990 the enforcer for a drug kingpin from Queens pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges that put him in the middle of five murders and two attempted murders between 1985 and 1988. Brian Gibbs was 26 and had spent most of the 1980s fueling the city’s addictions and getting his hands dirty in Brooklyn. Glaze terrorized both the weak and the strong as the leader of what was known as…
Trainer and onetime champion Jeff Mayweather is a prominent member of one of the great dynasties of American boxing. The Mayweather clan includes two other former champions or title challengers who became world-class trainers. Its most storied member, Floyd Jr., will be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame — an inevitable tribute to his perfect 50-0 career. Jeff, Floyd Jr.’s uncle, held the IBO junior lightweight championship title from 1994 to 1995 and has trained several champions. In a conversation with Zenger News, Jeff Mayweather, 56, recalls how the family knew Floyd Jr. was destined for greatness, voices…
At 15 years of age, Schea Cotton was a bona fide basketball star. When he famously held his own as a teenager while working out with hoops legend Magic Johnson, it only solidified that he was head and shoulders above anyone else in his age group. NFL Hall-of-Famer Randy Moss even called Cotton the greatest high school athlete he had seen — all while the young athlete was selling out high school gyms, with everyone wanting to catch a glimpse of the phenom. Cotton seemed destined to be a “one and done” college player and many thought he could leap…
On the Investigation Discovery program “The Coroner: I Speak For The Dead,” Graham Hetrick exposes everything from the over-diagnosis of Covid-19 on death certificates to the spiraling addiction crisis in the United States. “I’ve got more people dying of drugs than I do homicides,” he tells Zenger News. Hetrick, a professor at Harrisburg University, has been the coroner of Dauphin County, Pennsylvania for 25 years. He investigates nearly 700 suspicious deaths every year. Being around death seems abnormal to most people, but it’s par for the course if you’re a coroner. Hetrick figures out how you died — and how…
African American cowgirls do exist. Each year hundreds of Black women travel across the United States to compete in ladies steer wrestling, breakaway roping, bull riding, barrel racing, and other rodeo competitions — many while holding down full-time jobs. The rise of Black women in the rodeo circuit is largely due to the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo (BPIR), the nation’s only African American touring rodeo, which was founded by Lu Vason in Denver, Colorado, in 1984. Named in honor of Willie M. ‘Bill’ Pickett, BPIR was an African American cowboy, actor, and ProRodeo Hall of Fame inductee. He invented the…
Arguably one of our generation’s best fighters, undefeated (26-0) welterweight boxing champion Errol Spence Jr. was riding high after defeating Shawn Porter in 2019. He couldn’t have known he was on a path that nearly ended his life. Just a month later, photos surfaced of Spence’s demolished vehicle. One look at the condition of Spence’s Ferrari and many critics wondered if he would ever be able to fight at the same level again. As speculation about Spence’s health circulated, more graphic footage hit the Internet revealing just what one of boxing’s pound-for-pound best had endured. Somehow he walked away with…