James Price was an intern with the Richmond National Battlefield Park in 1994 when he first learned of the Battle of New Market Heights that occurred September 29-30, 1864. This battle is also known as the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm. Actually, these are two prongs of a many-sided battle that included engagements at nearby Laurel Hill, and at Forts Harrison, Johnson, and Gilmer, all important outposts prepared to defend all the approaches to Richmond, which was less than 20 miles from the field of action. All these battle sites were linked directly or indirectly to the lengthy Siege of Peterburg. Price had a problem understanding why there was so little attention given to the amazing feats and acts of valor of the Black troops that fought at Petersburg, Chaffin’s Farm, and New Market Heights.  “Why (wasn’t) a battle in which fourteen African Americans had received the Medal of Honor being

On Thursday, May 2, 2024, a group of students at the University of Mississippi gathered for a peaceful protest against America’s support for and involvement in the Israeli military actions in Gaza. Those forty or so students, who just happened to be mostly Black, had, according to the university administration, gone through the necessary channels to stage such a protest. Perhaps because they had gone through the bureaucratic channels and been “scheduled” by the time of the event, several hundred white counter-protesters had gathered to confront them. Unlike many such similar protests across the country against what many on other campuses, in many communities and even by the United Nations have deemed as genocide by Israel, the counter-protesters quickly turned it into an ugly racial incident. Although on a smaller scale, it reminded veteran racial observers of the riot that occurred 62 years earlier when James Meredith, a Black Air