From our Arthur Ashe commemorative issue: These Richmonders share Ashe's commitment to strengthen the African-American community.
Bonnie Winston (Photo by Jay Paul)
Bonnie Winston knew she had big shoes to fill when she became managing editor at the Richmond Free Press, just a few months after the newspaper’s founder, Ray Boone, passed away in 2014. But Winston takes pride in the paper’s continued coverage dedicated to “the people you don’t see in the daily,” nearly 30 years after Boone began publishing the independent weekly.
She rattles off some of the issues she’s particularly proud of: postal workers being granted back pay after the Free Press found that they weren’t being paid overtime; highlighting the lagging participation of black-owned businesses competing for city and state contracts; delving into disparate discipline policies toward minority and special needs students in Richmond Public Schools — the list goes on.
“That’s what we try to do every week,” Winston says, “to be a voice for the people, to reflect the lives you don’t see all the time in the daily, and to reflect our community and raise questions to try to move things forward.”
She draws direct parallels between these principles and the narrative of endurance embodied by Arthur Ashe, whom her family watched compete as part of the United States team in the Davis Cup at Byrd Park, which was near their home. She and her sister received tennis rackets after watching him play in the international competition, and they would often walk or bike to the courts to play.
Later, Winston explains, she became a mentor in the Virginia Heroes program, an organization started by Ashe for Richmond Public Schools students. Winston’s own teaching legacy includes work at Hampton University, the University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University.
“I mean, what kind of courage did he have?” Winston says. “He has done so much — getting arrested, working against apartheid elsewhere when he faced apartheid in his own hometown.”
When Winston was in third grade, her family and two others in their neighborhood integrated Mary Munford Elementary School, but even in the midst of the blatant racism Winston faced at school, the segregation Ashe endured still felt foreign. She recalls being 11 years old when her father — a physician who was friendly with Ashe’s father — explained how “Arthur wasn’t allowed to play on the courts in Richmond because of his color.” Ashe’s legacy followed Winston in her career, too. She began working as a journalist in 1979 as a reporter, and later as an editor, for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where Winston covered Ashe’s funeral in 1993; later, she covered the controversy over the statue on Monument Avenue in 1996.
“It was only after he achieved so much … that he came back and was honored, finally, in some way by the city.”
Winston later went on to report on legislative affairs for the Boston Globe before returning to Richmond to cover state politics for the Virginian-Pilot.
Now, as the head of news operations at the Free Press, Winston draws upon the same reservoir of resilience intrinsic to Ashe’s legacy and leadership style.
“In my life, no matter the situation you find yourself in — as a person of color, as a woman, as sometimes the only [one] in the room, I’ve been in that situation so much in my life — a sort of a calm, quiet leadership style is what you need,” she says. “You try to keep fighting — fight the battles that are here and don’t seem to change for our city, but we try to push the city forward.”
