This is Richmond, the City of Monuments.
Needless to say, we like our history here — even if at times that history can be a bit discomfiting. And thanks to this modern age, it's a history that can be easily edited.
For a brief few months, Richmond added an online monument at Wikipedia.com dedicated to our very own Fresh Prince, the right honorable Mayor Dwight Clinton Jones.
It seems that Jones' online edifice recently fell victim to virtual vandals who were no less fiendish in their defacement than the graffiti artists who occasionally target our city's prolific Confederate statuary (most recently the Jefferson Davis monument).
In March — and perhaps for some time before that — Jones' Wikipedia entry included not only a brief bio about his upbringing in Philadelphia, his move to Richmond to attend Virginia Union University, and his ascendancy to the mayoralty in 2009, but also a few extra tidbits about his early life — all set to verse that was hauntingly familiar:
Rev. Dr. Jones, who was born in Philadelphia and on the playground is where he spent mosta [his] days, chillin out, maxin', relaxin' all cool, an' all shootin some B-ball outside of the school. When a couple of guys who were up to no good, started makin' trouble in his neighborhood. He got in one little fight and his mom didn't listen, she said, "You're movin with your auntie and uncle in Richmond!"
Yes, straight from the Will Smith sitcom from the 1990s, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air .
As of April, the entry had been fixed. Repeated calls to the mayor's press secretary went unreturned; mayhaps they aren't exactly jiggy with the joke.
