(Sept. 2020) This book is an excellent work of research, scholarship and storytelling. Dale Brumfield, a native Virginian, historian, author and cultural archaeologist continues to write about the untold history of this Commonwealth that we never learned in school.
Railroaded is a window into the history and culture of the Commonwealth of Virginia through a very specific lens of capital punishment. To understand how so many young black men were put to death, we must first acknowledge that Virginia is ground zero of the slave trading of captured Africans that began in 1619. Those sales of Black Africans to White landowners established human beings as property, not people, and slavery as an important economic engine of Southern prosperity.
While this book is dedicated to telling the stories of the first 100 people put to death in the newly introduced electric chair from 1908 to 1920, the subtext of these stories is one of white rage, resentment and institutional racism in Virginia that is present to this very day.
There are so many layers to this book. The first that struck me was that the names of the victims and the names of the accused look so very similar. They are the same old Virginia family names that used to fill pages of local phonebooks. I recognize these family names because I have lived in Virginia all of my life and these are the names of my schoolmates, neighbors and leading citizens of the communities where I have lived from Southwest Virginia to Northern Virginia.
That is a reminder that many Black Virginians bear the surnames of the people who owned their ancestors. They do not have a family history of their own with an ancestry separate from those who enslaved them. Their identity was stolen when they were abducted from their own communities on another continent and sold as property to White people who chose what they would be called and whose mark was left on their children, and their children’s children for all of their days.
Reducing Black people to less than human is the foundation upon which this country’s culture and our system of justice and punishment has been built. Virginia’s legislature and our law enforcement created a two-tiered system that was both codified and legitimized in the law.
For many years a Black person was not allowed by law to testify against a White criminal defendant, so crimes such as the rape of a Black woman by a White man were rarely prosecuted, and never resulted in a death sentence since the victim could not testify against her attacker.
As a carryover effect, there was not one White-on-Black capital crime punished by execution – and unbelievably, Virginia did not execute a White for killing a Black person until 1997, when Thomas Beavers was executed for the murder of Marguerite Lowery.
Another startling layer to this book is the long and detailed history of violence against women. Rape and assault, along with husbands killing wives, and men stalking and killing the objects of their obsession. Women have not fared well here in the Commonwealth. It took until 2020 for legislation to pass in our current legislature that allows the Courts, through due process, to issue Risk Orders removing guns from the hands of people who are a risk to themselves or others. It’s hard to imagine how many women could have been spared murder while fleeing domestic violence if only we had the political will to protect them.
This book is an important part of Virginia’s history. I think it’s difficult for many people to understand how unarmed Black people can be killed with impunity and no one held accountable. It has ever been thus. It is hardwired into our culture and carried forward generation after generation. The history of law enforcement, the judicial process, mass incarceration and capital punishment present the blueprint to how we got here in 2020. More books like Railroaded need to be researched, written and widely read so that the next generation perhaps makes the intentional choice not to carry these terrible precedents forward.
Listen to my interview with author Dale Brumfield here: https://youtu.be/z0c36–BJWA
(March 2019) Beth Macy again brings her keen skills in research and journalism to tell another story about Virginia. A long time journalist with The Roanoke Times, she brings to life the stories of Virginia few people have heard before – as she did with her two previous books 
is also collaborating with local companies in workforce development training through increased literacy that is both industry and company specific. 
(March 2018) We don’t get to pick how big our good gets to be, but each of us picks if we gonna do some good right where we are.”– Mattie Freedman
In the last segment, Medicaid Expansion in Virginia is addressed and what the impact would be on the patients 
Walton notes that 
Shivers and Walton invite all who are passionate about improving education in Virginia to join their coalition. They currently have an online 
In America today there is a 
In Northern Virginia, the biggest news was that Prince William County’s House seats flipped in a wave of blue that ousted a number of incumbents:
Ben discusses how the huge voter turnout impacted this election and why so many GOP incumbents could not survive the wave. The idea that this election could flip control of the House to the Democratic Party was not something for which the party leadership had prepared. There are also steep learning curves for the new Delegates heading into their first legislative session. The fact that the Speaker of the House, Kirk Cox, makes assignments for committees in both chambers means that every committee will CONTINUE to have a majority of Republican members. While there was a negotiation for “proportional representation” on the committees, the very early days of session have dramatized how little difference that makes when committees vote along “party lines.”
Activists in Virginia were ready to get to work after the devastating loss in November of 2016 that gave Donald Trump and Republicans complete control of the Federal government. Grassroots organizers came together in unprecedented numbers to help turn the tide in the commonwealth. Spawning groups like 
Finally, when asked about Medicaid expansion Simon felt very positive. As a signature issue of outgoing Governor Terry McAuliffe, as well as a campaign promise of incoming Governor Dr. Ralph Northam, Simon believes that there will be a real opportunity to deliver healthcare to hundreds of thousands of Virginians. With hard work and compromise between the two parties, Del. Simon thinks that they will come to a “yes” in order to take advantage of the 6 million dollars a day that the commonwealth is giving up by not accepting the federal Medicaid expansion program.