| Before this spring, Patricia OâShea, a rising senior at Granby High School in Norfolk, hadnât heard of Louis Latimer, a Black inventor who helped Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison. Or Henry Brown, who climbed in a box and mailed himself from Virginia to Philadelphia to gain his freedom. Or Sarah Garland Jones, the first female licensed to practice medicine in the commonwealth. An elective class on African American history opened OâSheaâs eyes to these and many more Black Virginians who helped shape the state over the centuries. In previous history classes, she said, topics like slavery and Jim Crow laws were barely talked about â one unit at most. But as other states across the country introduce legislation restricting educators from teaching about race, Virginia has gone in another direction. The state has started an initiative to incorporate more African American history into its public schoolsâ curriculum. More Black history is included in all history classes now, but students like OâShea who want to explore it deeper have the option to with the new elective. Experts say itâs an effort to move away from looking at Black history as separate from the countryâs history and to see it for what it is: an integral part of the American experience.  Read more in this Sunday's Main News section The casket had been polished and the flowers arranged. Children filed into the church to remember their friend, a rising ninth-grader. Some had yet to attend a school prom. Others had only the first traces of facial hair. Yet here they were, filling the pews of Bethany Baptist Church to mourn the person shot and killed in Norfolk this year, Kristopher âBe-Bopâ Edmonds. They wore red, white and black clothing with Edmondsâ name. âThe good die young,â read the T-shirt of one boy who looked no taller than 5 feet. Later they would watch the casket, topped with a basketball nestled among flowers, be heaved onto the back of a white pickup that would take Be-Bop for one last ride, to his final place of rest. But now they sat and stared at his smiling face on the projector screen, listening as a reverend spoke from the stage: âFather, we declare the guns have to be put down.â Edmonds, 15, had been struck by gunfire the week before, in the early hours of July 13, at a playground near his Norfolk home. Heâs one of 10 children shot in the city this month â a jarring string of violence involving Norfolkâs youth, even for a city peppered with gangs that like to woo the young. Edmonds is one of two who died. The other was also 15 years old: Teonna âTee Teeâ Coburn. The Virginian-Pilot spoke with nearly two dozen families impacted by gun violence, elected officials, community organizers and the cityâs police chief who reflected on the cluster of shootings involving children and outlined their path forward. Everyone has their calls for change â more funding for recreation centers, expanded peer mentorship, getting guns off the streets â but they also agree that there is no single solution. Read more in this Sunday's Main News section Step into the Pamunkey Indian Museum, located at the tribeâs reservation in King William, and each artifact will transport you to a different age. Stone points dating to 12,000 years ago. A treaty from 1677 between several tribes and the English crown, guaranteeing the Indigenous members control over their homeland. Ceremonial headwear and dresses worn in the 1930s. But the museumâs timeline, depicting traditional pottery styles through the Pamunkeyâs history, stops in 1980. Untouched for more than 40 years, the exhibitionâs displays are still dotted with carefully cut circles containing information about the artifacts, carefully typed out. In fact, Shaleigh R. Howells, the museumâs director, is considering putting the typewriter used to write these descriptions on display. Read more in the Sunday Break section We feared weâd missed it. For six hours, cousin Georgie Kendall and I had been driving northeast from Reykjavik on Icelandâs Ring Road, a mostly asphalt ribbon that rims the mainland; we gawked at every bend â a thundering waterfall here, a glacier tongue there, drifts of amethyst lupine, towering cliffs, sky-scraping glaciers and a 360-degree horizon always. But no Diamond Beach. Relying solely on a paper Michelin map and with towns 100 miles apart, Georgie and I frequently didnât know exactly where we were. We hadnât seen another human for more than an hour. Locals had warned, only half-jokingly, that Iceland is so completely beautiful, so raw, that a sort of awe ennui could set in. We were nowhere near that on the first of our 10-day circumnavigation, and Diamond Beach was a must. Finally, we spotted the unmarked gravel road, parked, zipped up coats and crunched across a sheet of coarse black sand to the edge of the heaving North Atlantic. There, we stood transfixed as chunks of icebergs â some pale blue, some white and one brown â bobbed out of the Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon and ceded to the oceanâs swells and currents.  Lorraine Eaton and her cousin tour Iceland Read more in the Sunday Break section After more than 17 years in Hampton Roads, a Norfolk used bookseller has finally expanded into Chesapeake. Book Exchange opened its third location in the region on June 26 in the Crossways Shopping Center in Greenbrier. As a result, the small business has hired six new staff members and expanded into a city that customers have long requested for a new location, owner John Knight said. âWeâve wanted to get out there for a long time,â Knight said.  Read more in the Sunday Work & Money section Going to the Olympics has always been a dream for Chidi Okezie. It began in 2008 after he watched the Games for the first time. âBeing a track athlete, thatâs the highest notch of running track,â he said. âItâs one of the biggest stages.â Okezie, a 2015 Hampton University graduate, realized his dream last month when he anchored the Nigerian mixed 4Ã400-meter relay to an Olympic qualifying time of 3 minutes, 14.09 seconds at Yabatech Sports Complex in Lagos. Their time set a Nigerian national record. Read more in the Sunday Sports section    Â
Note to Readers: Parade Magazine is not scheduled to publish this Sunday, August 1st. Parade will return Sunday, August 8th - below is a sneak peek!     Â
Aretha! Parade Picks - Dogs We Love What America Eats - Deli Meets Burger | 