History

The “Richmond Writes!” poetry contest is back

The Richmond Arts and Culture Commission is looking for short poems written by students or Literacy is for Every Adult Program members who attend school or live in Richmond. The annual October contest, called Richmond Writes!, celebrates national arts and humanities month. Participants will receive a certificate recognizing their participation and their poems will be published in a chapbook. The top three submissions from each bracket – elementary school, middle school, high school, and LEAP — will be honored by…

Fred Jackson, North Richmond leader, dead at 73

As odes from well-wishers flow from Washington D.C. to the Bay Area, North Richmond mourns one of its greatest products. Fred Jackson was born in rural Mississippi and came to the Bay Area in 1950. Over the next 61 years, he would establish a reputation as one of the region’s most consistent humanitarians and community leaders, amassing an innumerable collection of accolades and commendations along the way.

Celebrating Mother Payne: North Richmond church remembers a matriarch

Graddye Mae Payne, a longtime matriarch of North Richmond Missionary Baptist Church, went by many names in her 97 years: Mrs. Payne, Dr. G.M. Payne and Auntie Graddye among them. But even though she had no children, she was known to most simply as Mother Payne. Scores of church members and Payne’s loved ones came together Tuesday to remember a woman marked by wisdom, a passion for teaching, and getting deep-down into her Bible. Payne, a former Berkeley resident and…

Part 8: North Richmond, where the city’s boundaries end

Civic leaders who seriously grapple with the question of how North Richmond can break its ruinous cycle of crime, poverty and decline often come to the conclusion that its current political arrangement is untenable – and that the city would fare better if it was annexed to Richmond.