PS: I know you grew up in Richmond. I want to ask, what was it like to grow up with these monuments to white supremacy in plain sight, and then to see them come down?
JS: Powerful. Growing up here, you see those monuments and they're normalized to you. The figures they portray are taught to you in school as being positive people in history and important people in our state's history. What's been so enlightening over the last few months is seeing the number of Black and Brown people on Monument Avenue. I read in The Atlantic that more people have been to Monument Avenue in the last few months than in the entire history of Richmond, and it's so true. Because it just wasn't a place people went down to. It was just Monument Avenue mansions, monuments. And no one walks down that aisle: no one disrupts it. For me, it's kind of a cool moment, seeing how people are coming together, and it's become a hub for young people, and people of different races and identities to come to that didn't exist before in Richmond.
