When Mayor Doug Wilder Ruled Richmond: Strong-Arm Politics in Virginia’s Capital City, Thursday, November 14, 2024 12:00PM

Item details

Date

Thursday, November 14, 2024 12:00PM

Name

When Mayor Doug Wilder Ruled Richmond: Strong-Arm Politics in Virginia’s Capital City

Description

Our nation’s first elected Black governor, L. Douglas Wilder, returned to public service in 2005 as the first popularly elected mayor of Richmond, Virginia, in sixty years. Despite his landslide election, voters may have had little idea what they were getting themselves into, because many were ill-prepared for Wilder’s strong style of leadership. He had remarkable success in reducing crime, cutting government spending, and boosting economic vitality, but Wilder’s relationship with City Council and the School Board—and the disagreements that ensued from both sides—tarnished his record as mayor. Author and former press secretary to the mayor, Linwood Norman, skillfully recounts the turmoil of Richmond’s transition to the “strong mayor” model of local government during what was a memorable chapter in Richmond’s rich political history that is still deliberated today, more than fifteen years after Wilder’s charismatic tenure concluded.

A Richmond native with a master’s degree in journalism from Virginia Commonwealth University, Linwood Norman served as the city’s director of communications during Wilder’s “Strong Mayor” administration. His career has spanned the public, corporate, and nonprofit sectors and includes posts as senior communications adviser for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; communications manager for Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield; and communications director for ZERO—The End of Prostate Cancer. Earlier in his career, Norman was a reporter for the Newport News Daily Press; the Petersburg Progress-Index, where he received a Virginia Press Association First-Place Award for Investigative Journalism; and a contributing writer for Richmond Magazine and Virginia Town & City Magazine.

The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

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