By Hazel
(TriceEdneyWire.com) – When the news began to spread that the Richmond Free Press was about to publish its last edition, the rumor blew like a cold wind through the Commonwealth of Virginia.
At a reception on Feb. 11, the eve of the official announcement, the buzz had already hit the streets, circulating among civil rights, business and political leaders. Former Richmond Crusade for Voters President Sylvia Wood, former Metropolitan Business League President/CEO Lynda Sharp Anderson and former Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder – all in attendance at a corporate reception Downtown – passionately expressed to this reporter their deep concern about rumors that, at 34 years old, the Black-owned newspaper was flailing.
The next morning, it officially hit: “The Richmond Free Press will cease publication this week, a bittersweet conclusion to a landmark publication that has served the Richmond community for 34 years,” said the Feb. 12 announcement on RichmondFreePress.com.
For some, the news stung. Gov. Abigail Spanberger led the painful way: “The closing of the Richmond Free Press is another major loss to those who value independent journalism and speaking truth to power. Thank you for your service to the Richmond community for more than three decades,” she wrote.
For me, well, it cut. It cut deeply like a death in the family. Actually, I’d gotten the call on the evening of Feb. 10 from Free Press Reporter George Copeland. He was asking for my reflections on the legacy of the Free Press. I was wondering…I thought it was an anniversary or something until he gave me the heart-rending news. The newspaper that I helped to birth in October 1991 by becoming its first reporter four months before its first issue hit the streets on January 16, 1992, was about to cease publishing.
As the story broke last week, the national award-winning publication – a renowned and acclaimed institution within the Virginia Black Press – quickly became known across the country as Free Press President and Publisher Jean Patterson Boone was invited to appear on Al Sharpton’s Politics Nation to discuss the newspaper’s saga and the plight of the Black Press. She recalled the decision to start the newspaper:
“We received many messages from Richmonders who cared and said we need your voice. We need you to come back to Richmond and help amplify the needs of Black people and people of good conscience. And so, after thinking about it and taking a deep breath, we decided to come back to Richmond,” Mrs. Boone told the story of how the legendary Free Press founder Ray Boone rose from the position of a highly respected editor of the Richmond Afro-American Newspaper, to a for the Baltimore Afro Chain to a distinguished professor at the Howard University School of Communications; then back to Richmond to start the Free Press in 1991.
“We stepped out on faith. And we worked very hard, very hard to make this paper the success that it has been until the Trump Administration had its way. And it has infiltrated the thinking and the decision-making by advertising agencies, by advertisers, by corporate leadership. It’s been a very difficult task to keep it going when you have the winds against you.”
Sharpton responded, “This is part of the fall out of ending DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) and a lot of corporations cutting back on anything that looks like diversity. So, the result is advertising dollars freeze up.”
Sharpton pointed out that Mr. Boone founded the Free Press in Richmond, Va., which is the former capital of the Confederacy and one of the largest slave-trading hubs before the Civil War. Drawing from that legacy, Sharpton described Richmond as a city “still associated if not synonymous with racial tensions.”
I recall that hardened, entrenched mentality and our stories drawn from the fights against racism and White supremacy. Mr. Boone, who I had come to know as “my chief mentor and father in the Black Press”, was unwaveringly focused on justice. The Richmond Free Press was indeed what I have described as a Marine Boot Camp for journalists, focused on excellence in service by telling our stories and fighting our battles.
- Under his editorship, we broke the July 23, 1992 story that told how the Virginia Air National Guard had a Confederate Flag emblem emblazoned on its planes and uniforms since 1947, a tip given to us by a Black member of the air guard. The day that story was published, Gov. Wilder issued an executive order to have that emblem removed and replaced with the flag of the United States of America.
- We also broke the story that told how the Richmond Public Schools, with more than 90 percent Black students, had a staff of psychologists that were all White. Within weeks, the school system hired its first Black psychologist.
- And then there was the story of how Gilpin Court, Richmond’s largest and oldest public housing development, had for decades been plagued by a towering trash dump with rats, rodents and the smell of rotting refuse. The City Council had ignored the complaints of the residents until the Free Press published a series of stories, pushing them to clean it up. Our tenth story on the topic was that the council had finally seen the light. The dump was finally cleaned up and the people were contemplating making it a playground.
Story after story, the Richmond Free Press, from 1992 to its final addition on Feb. 12, 2026, fought for Black Richmonders, Black Virginians, Black Americans. Accolade after accolade, award after award, the applause for this publication – even beyond Mr. Boone’s death in 2014, still resonate in my mind as among the greatest contributions to humanity in the former Confederate capital.
That fight for justice, for freedom, for equality is not over. Mr. Boone made that clear to me before his death when he advised me to never think twice about what I should say or write when addressing issues in public. He said, “Tell the story of Black people because the story has not been told.”
Of the hundreds of Black-owned newspapers and Black-owned media agencies across the country, many are still struggling against the rabid racist regime of the Trump administration. We will continue to tell our story. As for the Richmond Free Press, Publisher Jean Patterson Boone, who took up the torch from her deceased husband and ran with it for nearly 12 years, leading talented editors, writers and dedicated staffers, including their first administrative employee Tracey Oliver and their children, award-winning photographer Regina, and circulation executive Raymond Jr., perhaps the proudest accomplishment was that despite the struggle, the quality of the newspaper never suffered – never.
“I was going to end on our terms; not on someone else’s terms,” Mrs. Boone told Rev. Sharpton. “I never missed a payroll. That was my thought and my intention and my promise. Though Ray never talked to me about continuing, he knew how difficult this is.” She concluded in a social media post, “Perhaps dear readers, we’ll meet again.”