Emails Contradict Mayor as Black Leaders Report Intimidation, Fear, and Exclusion Under ‘One Waynesboro’

After a Black Panther Party leader reports being hunted through city streets and a nonprofit founder’s home is targeted by a masked trespasser, Black advocates say Waynesboro’s “One Waynesboro” has left their community more divided than ever.

Written by: Samuel Orlando

WAYNESBORO, VIRGINIA - The City of Waynesboro’s top elected official is facing serious questions about truthfulness after written records obtained by Breaking Through News show that Mayor Kenny Lee made statements to this newsroom that directly contradict his own past emails.

In a formal response issued Thursday, Mayor Lee and City Manager Michael Hamp denied that Waynesboro ever offered classroom space at the historic Rosenwald Community Center to the Black-led nonprofit RISE Organization, claiming the group’s account “does not reflect the communication that occurred between the City and RISE.”

But Breaking Through News has reviewed a September 2024 email chain showing the opposite — and showing that Lee himself was part of the discussions approving RISE’s use of the building.

In that exchange, Parks and Recreation Director Dwayne Jones confirmed that RISE could use “two classrooms upstairs” and a “dedicated computer room” for its youth education programs.When that access was later rescinded, Lee personally emailed RISE co-founder Chanda McGuffin to say,

“I am disappointed we were not able to meet the needs of the children and RISE.”

That admission from Lee — now serving as Mayor — directly contradicts the City’s current denial and raises new questions about transparency and honesty inside City Hall.

A Familiar Pattern of Exclusion

For McGuffin and RISE, the reversal over Rosenwald was not an isolated setback. It was the latest in what she calls “eight years of ideas lifted, copied, and rebranded without the people who created them.”

RISE, a Black-led community education nonprofit, has spent nearly a decade mentoring at-risk youth in the Shenandoah Valley. The group has worked with local judges, school counselors, and families to keep kids in classrooms and out of detention, offering tutoring, advocacy, and youth employment training.

Yet, despite years of partnership with City staff and leaders, RISE found itself excluded from Waynesboro’s newest publicly funded initiative — the $100,000 One Waynesboro program — which partners with five local nonprofits, none of them Black-led.

“They waited until we were drowning and having to suspend our services to implement the plan,” McGuffin said. “Our children still weren’t included.”

Bellamy’s Brush With Intimidation

While RISE struggled to hold on to its classrooms, another Black community leader says he narrowly escaped a deadly attack.

Dewan Bellamy, Deputy Chairman of the Black Panther Party of Augusta County, told Breaking Through News that just days after presenting his Community Homeless Youth Initiative to City Council, he was chased through Waynesboro’s back roads by white men in a pickup truck waving guns and ropes.

In a Facebook video that has since gone viral, Bellamy described the terror of the night he thought he would die.“They had guns. They were hanging ropes out the window,” he said. “They followed me for miles. I thought I was about to die.”

Bellamy said he recognized one of the men as resembling an Augusta County deputy who had previously clashed with him during protests. He claims that instead of investigating the assailants, Waynesboro police went to his ex-girlfriend’s home at 3 a.m. “to ask if I was lying about it.”

In the City’s written response, Hamp and Lee said the incident was reported to police and remains “actively under investigation.”

Harassment at Home

Days after Bellamy’s ordeal, security video captured a masked intruder approaching the home of RISE co-founder Chanda McGuffin, stealing campaign signs supporting Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears.

“Someone came to my house,” McGuffin said. “He or she is very lucky my husband or my sons weren’t home.”

McGuffin said the theft followed her organization’s public praise for Earle-Sears — a Republican — and her outreach to Black-led nonprofits. The same bipartisan approach, she said, has often made RISE an outlier in local politics. “We work with whoever will help our children,” McGuffin said. “That shouldn’t make us a target.”

One Waynesboro, Many Divides

Bellamy’s and McGuffin’s experiences converge around the City’s One Waynesboro initiative — a collaboration the City says will tackle homelessness, food insecurity, and poverty through “coordinated accountability.”

But community leaders argue the program’s rollout tells a different story. Bellamy presented his Community Homeless Youth Initiative to Council on October 15, outlining a nearly identical plan. Two weeks later, the City unveiled One Waynesboro. Neither Bellamy nor RISE were contacted.

To many, the timing looked deliberate. “They didn’t just ignore us,” McGuffin said. “They took our ideas and cut us out of them.”

The City’s own statement confirms that Councilman Terry Short (who helped draft the One Waynesboro plan) and CAPSAW, a local grant administrator, worked together to identify the program’s five nonprofit partners — none of which are Black-led.

The City insists no funds have yet been paid under One Waynesboro, and that the initiative is “not an organization but a program.”

When ‘One Waynesboro’ Leaves Some Behind

Repeated requests for comment to Mayor Lee and other City Council members went unanswered until the City’s written statement was released Thursday. That response, however, now appears to contain demonstrably false information about RISE’s prior relationship with the City.

Breaking Through News has sent a follow-up request to Mayor Lee and City Manager Hamp quoting the 2024 emails and seeking clarification by 5:00 p.m. Friday, October 31, 2025.

Both the reported attacks on Bellamy and McGuffin’s home are under investigation by the Waynesboro Police Department, according to the City’s statement.

Still, for many in Waynesboro’s Black community, the damage extends beyond physical threats. “This is my home,” McGuffin said. “I stayed here to give back and to grow where I was planted. But now I realize my home doesn’t love me back.”

The stories of Dewan Bellamy and Chanda McGuffin reveal a deeper crisis in Waynesboro — not just of policy, but of recognition. In a city that preaches unity under banners like One Waynesboro, Black advocates who have spent years building bridges say they are still left standing on the outside.

Their message now is simple: inclusion cannot be borrowed, and progress built on exclusion will always collapse under its own hypocrisy. Until City leaders are willing to listen — truly listen — to the people who’ve been doing the work all along, Waynesboro’s promise of “one community” will remain just another slogan painted over division.