El-Amin's Bridge to Bitterness

-- Richmond.com 2011

Armed with a piece of the truth, a determined advocate’s argument can sound convincing. That is, as long as that advocate is allowed to shape his audience’s focus and control the context of the dialogue.

Now comes Sa’ad El-Amin to tell Richmonders just whose names ought to be on a bridge over a creek in Forest Hill Park. According to a Richmond Times-Dispatch’s report on Jan. 4, 2011, former city councilman El-Amin sent a letter to City Council calling for names to be added to the official name of the bridge.

The bridge is on public property, it crosses Reedy Creek. On Sept. 20, 2010 it was dedicated as the Harvey Family Memorial Bridge. A bronze plaque with an image of the family, cast in relief, was affixed to a granite stone on the north end of the bridge. Neighborhood civic associations and friends of the Harveys had put together some $2,500 to cover the costs.

In his scolding missive El-Amin said, "Excluding the Tucker family's name on the new bridge was not simply an oversight by City Council, but a blatant act of omission which has clear racial overtones."

In short, El-Amin wants to memorialize nearly all Richmonders slain by convicted murderers Ricky Javon Gray and Ray Joseph Dandridge five years ago.

Out of some sense of charity, El-Amin has said he isn't insisting the Tuckers’ daughter’s name -- Ashley Baskerville -- be included, since she probably acted as a lookout/accomplice for the two murderers of the Harveys.

Some time after Gray and Dandridge set fire to the Harveys’ home in Woodland Heights, Gray and Dandridge finished off Baskerville and her parents in their home in the Swansboro neighborhood. The Tuckers were thought to have played no role in the other murders.

For background on this story go here.

El-Amin decried an element of racism that he has seen in how the local press has treated stories about murder victims, claiming that the stories about black victims don‘t get as much play. No doubt, he has a point -- that piece of the truth. The stain on our landscape from the Jim Crow Era has not yet faded from view.

Hate still exists, but it’s not tolerated in the halls of power like it was in the past.

However, when El-Amin suggested that racism kept the names of black victims off that memorial plaque in the park, he was ignoring the larger view. El-Amin was willfully averting his eye from the specific history that led to the naming of the bridge.

The Harveys, a family of four, were found dead in their home on Jan. 1, 2006. Because the father, Bryan Harvey, 49, was a well known musician, news of his murder was noticed far and wide. Because the mother, Kathy Harvey, 39, ran a popular toy store in Carytown, the story was a sucker punch to her many customers -- lots of local parents.

Because Bryan, Kathy and their two daughters, Stella and Ruby, were murdered in a spectacularly brutal way during a home invasion, reports of the nightmarish news that staggered Richmond’s arts community echoed all over the world.

The Harveys had family and many friends who wanted to create remembrances of them. Money has been raised to establish several memorials to the Harveys; four new seats in the Byrd Theatre will be dedicated to them soon.

Which is especially fitting, because about 1,400 people attended the Harvey Family memorial service at the Byrd Theatre a week after their deaths. A stage full of musicians reminded the grieving audience to remember the Harveys as they were -- folks who loved to laugh. Six months later, at a ceremony at William F. Fox Elementary School, which Stella, 9, had attended, a bench remembering Stella was dedicated. Her classmates released thousands of Painted Lady butterflies as their parents fought back tears.

While it might make us sad to think of it, the other three local victims of that 2006 crime spree were not well known. So there was no widespread outcry to hold a memorial service in a theater’s auditorium. No butterflies were released.

The fact that the Harveys were white and the other victims were black is hardly the main reason the press treated the murders differently in this specific case.

In the wake of the shocking news about murder in Arizona over the weekend, it’s important for leaders, for all of us, to remember to choose our words carefully. Fanning the embers of old hatreds into flames does none of us any good.

For the sake of making the point that the media pays too much attention to the lives and deaths of good looking, talented celebrities, El-Amin seems eager to slather more bitterness over the memory of the Harveys, just to win points in a nonsensical game that only he wants to play.

Enough is enough!

-- 30 --

All rights reserved by F.T. Rea
813 words