Skip Long

Principal, Church Hill Academy & Church Hill Resident
B. 1960

Every Monday and Tuesday, 17 community kids come to my house for tutoring. That’s what we want to be about—opening up and sharing what we have with others in the community to continue making it a vibrant place.

My dad and my grandfather grew up in Richmond, so I came here many times as a youngster to visit my grandfather. He passed in about 1975 and that was the last time we came to Richmond.

Our community is the same as Ferguson. The reality is we live in a fallen world. There’s going to be injustice that goes on. We can instill in young people and others a correct way to deal with conflict, a direct way to deal with communication, a way to deal with when things aren’t right. I hope we’re beginning to create that kind of community with law enforcement, government, city council, with all the powers that be. And yet those kinds of injustices can happen. They happen to me daily because of how I look. Even though I might have been to college and can wear a tie, if I happen to forget that I’m a person of color, it doesn’t take long for someone to remind me—by a simple thing: “hey boy.”

Through history, folks are going to hold onto an old paradigm unless we speak up. I think it’s what God’s ordained us to do.