A voicemail changed everything.
After News 3’s February report on Norfolk Botanical Garden’s decades-long effort to identify the 220 African Americans who cleared the land for the garden 90 years ago, a woman named Barbara Rice left a message.
“I was watching the news this morning as I normally do. I saw your story about the Azalea Gardens and the Black ladies that worked there,” Rice said in the voicemail. “I don’t know if you have my grandmother’s name or not, but I do know that she was one of the ladies that worked there.”…