Month: July 2021

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News

In brief: CBD dispensary opens, Fashion Square Mall auctioned

David Treccariche says his new CBD dispensary, Skooma, could "set the standard" for dispensaries in town. Photo: Eze Amos.

High roller: Boutique dispensary opens downtown 

The future of pot has arrived in Charlottesville. And it looks like an Apple store. 

Skooma, the town’s newest CBD dispensary, opened on the Downtown Mall earlier this month. For the moment, the slick operation is offering the weed-adjacent products that are currently widely available in Virginia—edibles and plants that offer the muscle-relaxing benefits of CBD but lack THC, the ingredient in regular marijuana with hallucinogenic effects. 

Skooma’s style, however, immediately sets it apart from some of the city’s other CBD stores. The shop is pristine and spacious, with hemp flowers perched atop modern stands and employees floating around in floor-length white lab coats. 

Owner David Treccariche says the aesthetic is intentional. Skooma (named after a drug from the Elder Scrolls video game series) is a self-described “boutique” cannabis shop, differentiating it from other head and smoke shops, which Trecaricche says usually have “annoying signs on the door…bright flashing lights [and]  a different environment.”

Before entering the marijuana business, Trecaricche founded a car dealership and worked as an operations manager for Tiger Fuel Company. After recognizing marijuana’s increased presence in mainstream American life, he decided “to jump feet first” into the market for legal weed. He plans to transition to selling THC-based products once he’s legally allowed to do so, and says he’ll eventually open a second location, using demographic information from customers to decide where it should be located. 

Treccariche says he hopes his shop will “set the standard” for dispensaries in the Charlottesville area as the legal buying and selling of marijuana approaches in 2024. For now, one of Skooma’s main points of emphasis is to match customers’ different preferences and comfort levels and “educate” wherever it can. 

“Some people are just strictly gummies, and that’s great, we love that,” he says. “And some people like to be old school and smoke, and that’s great too.” With full legalization in sight, entrepreneurs like Treccariche have set their sights high.—Joseph Riley   

City approves eviction right-to-counsel program 

During its Monday night meeting, Charlottesville City Council dedicated $300,000 of American Rescue Plan funds to establish a right-to-counsel pilot program for eviction hearings. Charlottesville is the first city in the south to guarantee representation for those facing eviction. An additional $400,000 was allocated towards emergency rent assistance. Headed by the Legal Aid Justice Center, the new program will include community outreach and education, as well as rent relief navigation and support. Once the Centers for Disease Control’s ban on evictions ends on July 31, local housing activists, who have been advocating for the program since spring, say the legal representation will help keep struggling tenants in their homes.

“We’ve had several drivers get sick. We’ve been here with the major snowstorms. We were there on August 11 and 12…The need for a transit union is one that is long overdue for us.” 

—CAT bus driver Matthew Ray, advocating for a collective bargaining ordinance for city employees during Monday’s City Council meeting

In brief

Guns down in Albemarle

Tighter gun control could soon be coming to Albemarle County. On Wednesday night, the Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing and then vote on an ordinance outlawing guns in buildings, parks, and community centers owned (or used) by the county. Some community members have spoken out against the proposal, claiming it will not prevent gun violence and will negatively impact law-abiding gun owners. Localities across the state have enacted similar gun bans—Charlottesville enacted a very similar policy last year.

Sold!

Fashion Square Mall. Photo: Jack Looney.

The practically-empty Fashion Square Mall was up for auction last week. During a foreclosure auction outside the Albemarle County Circuit Courthouse on Friday, the mall’s mortgage lender, an LLC called Charlottesville JP 2014-C21 LLC, bid back and forth with local real estate mogul Richard Hewitt for about 20 minutes, before repurchasing the property for $20.2 million, reports the Daily Progress. The mall’s owner, Washington Prime Group Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month. The long-term future of the mall remains to be seen.

Game of Throneburgs   

A new politician has thrown his hat in the ring for the 2022 5th Congressional District race. Josh Throneburg, a minister and small business owner, has announced that he’s running as a Democrat for the seat currently held by Bob Good. Throneburg hopes to create green jobs in rural areas, expand access to healthcare, and work to address systemic racism. He says he was inspired to run by his daughters and “the uncertain future they are inheriting.”

Updated 7/26: An earlier version misspelled Josh Throneburg’s name.

Categories
Culture

Drink C’ville

Vitae Spirits teamed up with Mudhouse Coffee Roasters to create the Espresso Martiki. Photo: Eze Amos.

By Carrie Meslar

Bar seats around Charlottesville are filling up again, which means area bartenders are finally able to put pouches and to-go cups behind them and offer patrons in-person crafted cocktails. While making use of the abundance of locally produced spirits and ingredients is not new to our bartending scene, the opportunity to delight customers with creative libations has certainly taken on a whole new meaning in this summer of reopening. Growing season is in full swing—and the number of liquor producers and distillers calling Virginia home keeps growing, too. Local bartenders are happy to create cocktails to share this summer. Here’s a sampling of the best local hard stuff in town.

Espresso Martiki

The Bar: Vitae Spirits Tasting Room

The Bartender: D

The espresso martini has become a modern classic, picking you up and calming you down with each sip. Vitae Spirits’ take on the drink uses the distillery’s own coffee liqueur, a local collaboration with Mudhouse Coffee Roasters. The liqueur gets a vacation vibe with an infusion of coconut, then it’s amped up with Mudhouse cold brew, housemade orgeat, and Typhoon Bitters from D.C.’s Modern Bar Cart. It’s a powerhouse matchup that is equal parts tropical and Charlottesville.

Violet B

The Bar: Tonic

The Bartender: Cris Morales

Morales starts each Violent B by using local blueberries to create nuanced and tart flavored vodka. The brilliantly purple spirit is then shaken up with Vitae gin, lemon and demerara syrup. The end result is a cocktail with a classic sour tang and a little extra backbone thanks to the split base of vodka and gin. When asked about the source of the blueberries, the staff jokes that there couldn’t be a more local purveyor for that batch: They came from a team member’s garden.

.38 Special

The Bar: The Local

The Bartender: Alec Spidalieri

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This stalwart of The Local’s cocktail menu is one of the first cocktails Spidalieri created when he arrived at the Belmont restaurant, and there are no plans to bid the drink farewell any time soon. A variation on the old fashioned, this particular iteration uses Bowman Brothers Virginia straight bourbon, Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur, Peychaud’s bitters, and local honey. It meets the needs of many a thirsty patron, while incorporating both a bourbon and honey brand that call Virginia home.

The Original WJ Moonshine Punch

The Bar: The Whiskey Jar

The Bartender: The Stuff of Legend

Another long-standing bar item, this deceptively powerful mixture’s popularity keeps it a menu staple. Moonshine has played a significant role in the history of drinking in America—until fairly recently it was an illegal product, only shared among friends in Mason jars with dubious labels. At the Whiskey Jar, Richmond-based Belle Isle Moonshine gets dressed up with a mix of seasonal fruit and citrus, with some dashes of orange and angostura bitters thrown in for good measure. While its staff has changed since the drink’s creation, The Jar shows no sign of slowing down, with Kayla Cohron now at the helm of the bar program.

The Bar: The Alley Light

The Bartender: Micah Lemon

The Drink: The Spruce Goose

This drink was definitely a team effort to produce. When bartender Clay Tolbert (newly departed to join the prestigious Inn At Little Washington) happened to have access to a Christmas tree farm this spring, he was joined by head bartender Micah Lemon to harvest spruce tips. The tips were then used to infuse Bomaby gin and whip up a gimlet-esq cocktail with depth and complexity. The spruced-up gin is combined with Genepy, lime, lavender syrup, wormwood tincture, and a pinch of peppermint. Those who’ve scrolled through The Alley Light’s Instagram know Lemon’s garden is the source for numerous ingredients throughout the year, and the Spruce Goose is no exception, as the lavender, wormwood, and peppermint are all products of his green thumb.

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Culture

Reason to believe

Mark Fulton left a desk job to learn the brewing process before founding Reason Beer with college buddies from UVA. Photo: Eze Amos.

At first, making beer was just a hobby for Mark Fulton—when he finished punching the calculator during his day job as an accountant, he’d head home to his lab. Then, in 2010, the amateur beer enthusiast snagged a craft brewing apprenticeship with the American Brewers Guild. He untied his tie, quit his accounting gig, and moved to Maine to brew beer full time. Before long, he was the director of brewing operations at Maine Beer Company.

The mountains of Maine were beautiful, but the Blue Ridge called Fulton back. In 2017, he returned to Charlottesville and joined two friends from his student days at UVA—Patrick Adair and Jeff Raileanu, both avid home-brewers in their own right—to start Reason Beer.

Fulton says the business has enjoyed the support of the Charlottesville community since day one and is also seeing growing support throughout Virginia.

The brewmaster credits the popularity of Reason Beer to a focus on approachable and balanced beer, with recipes designed to produce depth and complexity while remaining complementary to food. The current offerings at Reason include a large range of classic beer styles, but also a wild ale program that focuses on beers aged in barrels obtained from local wineries.

When asked, Fulton says he believes the current popularity of hazy New England-style India Pale Ale is here to stay. For the future, he sees a growing interest in and demand for lower calorie, lower alcohol beers (known as “session” beers). Reason currently offers examples of each, a double-NEIPA style known as Unreasonable, which comes in at 8.5 percent alcohol by volume and the aptly named and contrasting session India Pale Ale named Reasonable, which is a lighter drinker at 4 percent ABV.

Unreasonable is a big, bold beer that is full of both flavor and alcohol. It manages to present a fine balance of biscuit and citrus fruit flavors while maintaining a nice mouthfeel despite lower alcohol. If you are looking for other styles of lower alcohol beer, Reason also has a blonde ale that comes in at 4 percent ABV (Hoppy Blonde), a German-style pilsner with 4.3 percent ABV (AOK), and a Saison farmhouse ale at 4.5 percent ABV.

On September 18, Reason celebrates its fourth anniversary with a block party at the brewery with new releases, food trucks and other programming. As if you needed another reason to check it out. 

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Culture

New domaine

Matthieu Finot expands his family’s winemaking legacy with a new Virginia bottling. Photo: Eze Amos.

Most people think of their parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles as their family tree. For award-winning King Family Vineyards winemaker Matthieu Finot, it would be more accurate to call it a family vine. Finot’s relatives own vineyards and make wine in their native country of France. The recent launch of the Domaine Finot label in Virginia marks the debut of Finot’s personal project, but is also a nod to the family’s eponymous Domaine Finot winery across the pond.

The idea of this nascent project started in 2016 when Gilbert Tallard hired Finot to assist with the management of Tallard’s Turk Mountain Vineyards. For Finot, growing grapes in the vineyard and winemaking go hand in hand, and he was excited by the opportunity to produce wine “from grapes to bottle.” He also wanted to get closer to his roots as a winemaker by working in the vineyard. After three years of trial and error, the first release is from the 2019 vintage.

In contrast to the state-of-the-art equipment that Finot uses at King Family, his approach to Domaine Finot wines is simpler and minimalistic. He is intentionally pursuing a philosophy referred to as “garagiste,” a term that implies small-batch winemaking done in a garage. All of the wines are made whole cluster (not requiring equipment for destemming) and without added yeast or sulfur. This mirrors the philosophy of French wineries, where organic farming is practiced and wines are made with minimal intervention.

Finot is excited to see more small, personal labels in Virginia. He calls these projects “honest and interesting” and feels they represent an opportunity to tell a different, perhaps more personal, story and present another style of winemaking often not seen in larger wineries. Like others with personal projects, it’s obvious the primary motivation for Finot is simply the love of wine.

The Domaine Finot 2019 Malbec is a wonderful surprise, as malbec is not usually a grape variety that flourishes in Virginia. The nose presents with blackberry and black plum with some brighter notes of red cherry and raspberry. On the tongue, it exhibits bright acidity, red fruit flavors of strawberry and cherry, and some darker fruits such as blackberry jam. It is balanced, complex, well concentrated, and lingering.

Finot will also produce petit verdot, tannat, cabernet franc, and merlot with his Turk Mountain grapes. His 2019 Tannat is bottled and will be ready for release in about six months. An early sample showed a big, bold, structured wine full of black fruits, stewed fruits, and a hint of licorice. It’s built to age and will reward those who are patient with its evolution. 

Categories
Culture

A glass act

As the self-taught wine director at Tilman’s wine and cheese bar, Lizzy Trevor offers customers a chance to explore pairings by way of her wine geek wisdom. Photo: John Robinson.

Lizzy Trevor became wine director at Tilman’s on the Downtown Mall a year ago, coming to the position by sheer force of will. The oenophile, who recently aced the Wine & Spirit Education Trust’s level 2 examination, is completely self-taught and self-driven. She started working at Tilman’s two years ago as a team member and climbed into the wine director’s chair with no previous professional experience.

Trevor says her focus is on making esoteric wine varieties approachable to casual consumers. Courtenay Tyler, the restaurant’s co-owner, who also operates Tonic on Market Street, says she couldn’t be happier with Trevor’s programming, which involves setting the eatery’s wine menu, selecting wines for its wine club, organizing events, and training staff.

Prior to turning her hobby into a career, Trevor had been an esthetician. Now, she only has eyes for the vine and is looking ahead to taking the WSET level 3 and 4 tests. “I just love geeking out on wine,” she says.

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Best of C-VILLE 2019 Culture

Awoke to folk

Charlottesville’s Blake Layman takes a break from playing bass in the Richmond band Frames to issue the EP Goodness, Littered. Publicity photo.

Blake Layman’s solo offerings have been called “folk adjacent,” and he’s taken to the tag. Although the way he puts it is “almost folk.” The distinction’s subtle. But words are important to him.

Layman, a Charlottesville native who plays bass for Richmond’s hot indie pop foursome Frames, has come a long way in the last decade or so. Not much more than 10 years ago, he was playing bass in a C’ville metal band.

But Layman knew metal wasn’t his thing. “I enjoyed the music, but it didn’t really feel like the kind of music I wanted to write myself,” he says.

Layman learned the kind of music he did want to write in stages. He started a band called Raintree with his brother Gavin, making heady instrumental indie rock layered under dreamy lyrics. Along the way, he wrote songs here and there that didn’t necessarily work for Raintree and were never recorded.

Then in 2019, around the same time he joined Sarah Phung’s Frames, Layman decided to put his own writing together for a solo record. Cobbled from songs that were penned as far back as 2014, imagined as fully acoustic, and demoed in various oddball places (including a school bus that served as Layman’s one-time home), the result is Goodness, Littered, a nine-song LP released on June 25. 

“Over the years moving around Virginia, I had written half these songs, but I got busy and interested in other things,” he says. “Then COVID hit and it provided me the perfect opportunity to sit down and finish. It’s about little things from my life, mundane things. It’s almost a folk album, but not quite…It is a love letter, or a bookend, to my 20s.”

Mundane or not, Layman’s 20s have led to a solid set of tracks. On Goodness, the burgeoning songwriter is lyrically obtuse enough to maintain intrigue, and more times than not, the songs are musically moving. The final recordings feature Layman on multiple instruments (bass, acoustic and electric guitar and pump organ) with contributions from brother Gavin and other past band mates. While Layman produced the demos in multiple places—there was the furniture workshop where he was an apprentice in addition to the old bus—Jacob Sommerio tracked and mixed the finished album at Charlottesville’s English Oak Recording.

“It was something I felt like I needed to do for myself, and if nobody gets anything from it, I suppose that’s okay,” Layman says. “I had been sitting on these songs and I had gotten to the point where I decided I am just going to release this so I can say I completed something.”

Now a furniture maker by trade, Layman cites influences ranging from the ’40s jazz and country that his elderly mentor played during his apprenticeship, to older influences like Tom Waits and Billie Holiday along with modern nudges from Sufjan Stevens and The National. Listeners might also hear a breathy resemblance to Iron & Wine or a folk-ified Band of Horses.

“I had only really planned on it being an acoustic album [but decided] it would be fun to add some other instruments,” he says. “I like to think I tend to focus on the lyrics—that has always been really important to me. I play guitar and bass, but I don’t feel like I am exceptionally good at them. I am good enough to write a song and communicate what I want.”

The multi-instrumentalist is being modest, but in the end, it’s Layman’s ability to balance earnest lyric writing with a sense of humility and humor that makes Goodness feel genuine rather than overwrought. A whimsical spaghetti western thread runs throughout the record, driven in part by the use of a pump organ. And the thread is reinforced in the video Layman released for the LP’s first track, “Unhistoric Acts.” The video opens on a bucolic, sepia-toned scene and features two cowboys—Blake and Gavin Layman, one dressed in white, the other in black—facing off in an over-the-top, farcical duel.  

“I had thought I wanted to do a video that maybe communicated the lyrics of that song, then I got worried it would come across as too try-hard,” Layman says. “So I think the main point was to have fun with it. One of my pet peeves is artists that take themselves too seriously.”

Goodness is now available streaming, and Layman is working on a vinyl release, as well. In the meantime, Frames is also working on a new album with Layman on bass.

“I’ve always played bass in other bands, but I’m actually more of a guitar player,” he says. “I am trying to step out of my shell.”

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News

Carried away

Lewis Clark and Sacajawea statue about to be lifted in the air by a crane
The statue of Lewis, Clark, and Sacagawea shows the Native woman cowering behind the two white men, when in fact she guided them throughout their journey. Photo: Eze Amos.

On Saturday afternoon, just hours after the Confederate statues in downtown Charlottesville were removed, the city’s contractors also took down the statue of Lewis, Clark, and Sacagawea from the intersection of Ridge and Main streets.

Local activists and descendants of Sacagawea had long called for the statue’s removal. It portrays Lewis and Clark standing tall, gazing out over the horizon, while Sacagawea, who guided the feckless explorers throughout their expedition, cowers behind them. 

In November 2019, City Council invited Sacagawea’s descendants to town for a work session to discuss the statue’s removal. Descendant Rose Ann Abrahamson said she’d visited nearly every statue of her ancestor in the country, and that “this statue in Charlottesville is the worst we have ever seen.”

Area activists had made similar points for years. Monacan tribe members Karenne Wood and Ken Bradham had spoken out against the statue, as had Anthony Guy Lopez, a member of the Crow Creek Sioux tribe. In 2009, the city placed a plaque at the foot of the monument in an effort to add context to it. 

In 1919, local philanthropist and segregationist Paul Goodloe McIntire commissioned sculptor Charles Keck to produce a statue of Lewis and Clark, who each had ties to Albemarle County. Keck added Sacagawea of his own accord. “The sculptor threw in the Indian and she is the best of the lot,” McIntire said at the time. 

At the 2019 work session, after hearing from the descendants, City Council resolved 4-0 to get rid of the bronze eyesore. On Saturday afternoon, council convened an emergency meeting to vote on the immediate relocation of the statue—the construction crew that had come to town to remove the other two statues finished “in record time,” said City Manager Chip Boyles, giving the city a golden opportunity to remove the third statue at no additional cost. The impromptu meeting lasted 25 minutes, and saw council vote 5-0 to take speedy action, with Vice-Mayor Sena Magill calling in from her car to cast her vote.

The monument has been sent to the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center in Darden Towe Park. Alexandria Searls, the center’s director, joined the emergency meeting, and committed to working with Indigenous peoples’ groups to properly contextualize the statue in its new setting. 

Abrahamson joined the call as well. “I feel it’s entirely offensive, and it should be obliterated,” she said. “But if it can be utilized to give a greater message to educate the public, that would be an opportunity. So I’m very pleased with what is taking place. It’s been a long road.”

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News

Looking good

Men’s basketball player Kihei Clark was among the first UVA athletes to announce a name, image, and likeness sponsor, partnering with apparel company Locker Room Access. In the above Instagram post, Clark takes a bathroom selfie while rocking a Locker Room Access hoodie—and former UVA teammate Trey Murphy comments to express excitement that Clark can “GET PAID.” Photo: Kihei.Clark/Instagram

The summer before her second year, Greer Gill planned to hold a field hockey camp at her former high school. Gill, a UVA field hockey player, teamed up with four of her closest friends—Division I field hockey players at various schools—to make graphics and marketing materials for their camp, all of which included their names and the universities they attended. Within five minutes of posting a flier to Facebook, one of Gill’s teammates texted her.

“Take that down right now,” the text read. “You could be suspended for a year for that.”

Gill didn’t realize that hosting a field hockey camp using her name and image was illegal under NCAA regulations at the time. If her teammate had not seen the flier, it is likely that Gill would have been reported and could have faced up to a year-long suspension.

Gill and her friends were forced to rebrand their field hockey camp as a camp led by five Division I field hockey players. 

“Money-making wise, I think we would have gotten a lot more kids if we could have said who we were,” says Gill.

Prior to July 1, NCAA rules prohibited Division-I student-athletes from profiting off of their names, images, and likenesses (NIL). Athletes were not allowed to so much as sell a T-shirt they had autographed. The stringent rules led to some serious consequences for high-profile athletes. In 2011, all-star Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor sat out his senior season after his decision to sign mini helmets and other memorabilia blossomed into a scandal. And former NFL running back Reggie Bush had his 2005 Heisman Trophy vacated after receiving benefits from a marketing agency.

In June, after a lengthy legal battle, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the NCAA’s policy was unfair, putting the organization in a position to pass an interim policy allowing college athletes to “benefit from name, image and likeness opportunities, no matter where their school is located,” according to an NCAA press release. The temporary policy will stay in place until federal legislation or new NCAA rules are adopted. (Since the change, Bush has publicly petitioned to get his Heisman back, to no avail.)

This doesn’t mean athletes are getting paid to play.  NIL rules allow athletes to work on their own to build their own brands and their own platforms. Sean Conway, a third-year on UVA’s swimming and diving team, says that activities related to the sport, practices, team meetings, and games or meets cannot be tied to endorsements.

“It’s really kind of up to us to be creative and figure out what brand deals work for us, and how we could go about tying that into our daily schedule,” Conway says. 

Conway says the new policy will be a gamechanger for college athletics, and especially for Olympic sports like swimming and diving. “It’s going to present an opportunity for these younger star swimmers to make a name for themselves,” he says. “[They can] provide themselves a nice little platform for when the big stage comes around.”

Olusegun Oluwatimi, a redshirt senior center on the UVA football team, shares a similar sentiment. “I’m just figuring out some ways to get myself out there,” he says. “Build my brand now so hopefully when I’m in the league there’s good opportunities.”

Not many UVA athletes have struck deals yet. Conway, for example, is waiting to figure out exactly how he wants to use NIL to his advantage. “I’m trying to find a niche,” he says. “Once I figure that out I actually might start taking advantage.”

Other athletes are wondering if the whole thing is even worth it. “As much as I would love to partner with someone and make a profit off of it or get free products, at the same time I don’t want to be annoying to a follower,” Gill says. “I’m a decent athlete, but I’m not like a professional athlete being paid for what I do. I do this for fun.”

But there are other ways athletes can use the NIL rule changes, besides promoting streetwear and supplements to their Instagram followers. Prior to the provisional ruling, athletes were not allowed to use their name at all, including outside of their sports—if their names were attached, student-athlete artists could not sell their art, musicians could not stream their songs, and entrepreneurs could not sell their products.

“They all had to give that up for the sake of maintaining compliance for sports,” Conway says. “Now that the opportunity’s there, that’s really exciting.”

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Uncategorized

Statues fall at last

The statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee came down early in the morning on Saturday, July 10. Photo: Eze Amos.

Elation, joy, frustration, heartache—for community activist Don Gathers, watching the removal of Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson statues stirred up a wide range of emotions.

“This moment is truly surreal. In spite of everything, I wasn’t sure if we would actually get to this point,” he said on Saturday morning, shortly after the statues came down. “I’m completely awash with [happiness], but also a tinge of sadness over what it’s taken to get us to this point.”

Just one day after the city formally announced its plans to take down the racist monuments, construction crews got to work unscrewing the Lee statue from its stone base. At 7am, community activist Zyahna Bryant—who first petitioned City Council to remove the Lee statue in 2016—addressed the small crowd of activists and community members gathered in the early morning light for the historic occasion. 

“This is a crucial first step in the right direction, to tell a more historically accurate and complete story of this place, and the people who call this place home,” said Bryant, who is entering her third year at UVA. “The work did not start here, and it will not end here…To the young people out there, I hope that this empowers you to speak up on the issues that matter and to take charge in your own cities and communities.”

“The work of removing the statues is only the tip of the iceberg,” she added. “There’s so much work left to do to address affordable housing, policing, [and] the wealth gap.”

After thanking city officials and activists for their hard work and dedication, Mayor Nikuyah Walker echoed Bryant’s words. “Taking down these statues is one small step closer to the goal of helping Charlottesville, Virginia, and America grapple with the sin of being willing to destroy Black people for economic gain,” she said. 

Walker spoke of the deadly Unite the Right rally and the long, painful fight to remove the Confederate statues, which were erected in the 1920s during the Jim Crow era and at the height of Ku Klux Klan membership. She also discussed the many more steps that need to be taken to dismantle and eradicate white supremacy.

“The real work has always been, and will continue to be, the willingness to accurately teach history [and] eliminate wealth gaps,” said Walker. 

Applause and cheers rang through the air as a crane lifted the bronze man and horse onto a flatbed truck a little over an hour later. The growing crowd moved over to the Second Street sidewalk to get a better view and take pictures, before the truck drove off at 8:30am. “Hey, hey, hey, goodbye!” sang a few Black community members.

Shortly after 9am, the crew got to work on the Stonewall Jackson statue a few blocks away. Workers were able to strap the Confederate general to a truck and haul him away by 11am, as the crowd once again rejoiced. 

Shortly after Lee was trucked away, a crew took down the Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson monument in Court Square Park. Photo: Eze Amos.

The statues will be stored at a city facility on Avon Street Extended until council votes on what to do with them permanently. Ten entities have expressed interest in the monuments, but councilors are not required to give them away, and could vote to demolish them. At press time, the city had begun removing the plinths where the generals stood for nearly a century.

Gazing at the statue-less Court Square, community activist and UVA professor Jalane Schmidt, who has led walking tours contextualizing the monuments with Jefferson School Executive Director Dr. Andrea Douglas, felt a wave of relief. “[It’s] very gratifying after all the work that we did to see this day finally arrive, and that it happened so quickly and so smoothly,” she said.

Schmidt emphasized that the city should not rush to replace the statues. The space where they stood, the area around Court Square, has a deep history that won’t be easily expressed in a new monument. In 1914, Albemarle County seized the land, known at the time as McKee Row, from its majority Black residents, and later tore down their homes and businesses. White philanthropist and segregationist Paul Goodloe McIntire bought the land and deeded it to Charlottesville to be used as an all-white public park in 1919. He funded the erection of the two Confederate monuments, as well as statues of George Rogers Clark and Lewis, Clark, and Sacagawea, which were also removed this weekend. 

“I hope that going forward we can be more democratic in our process. The process is just as important as whatever might go in there,” Schmidt said. “And in that conversation, we need to hear from folks, and the descendants of folks, who were not listened to the first time around.”

Schmidt also stressed the importance of continuing the fight against systemic racism. In addition to working on a book, she is currently producing a short documentary about the city’s Confederate statues, which she hopes will be used in schools.

“Those values that kept [the statues] there, they are still here and operative,” said Schmidt. “We have a lot of work to do. We can’t just pat ourselves on the back and say, ‘We undid a racism.’”

“This is by no means the end,” added Gathers. “This particular battle has been won—but the war continues.”

How it happened

April 9, 1865—Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army
surrender at Appomattox,
sealing victory for the Union Army in the Civil War.

October 19, 1921—Charlottesville’s statue of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson is unveiled. The statue is funded by Paul Goodloe McIntire, a philanthropist, businessman, UVA dropout, and segregationist.

May 21, 1924—The Robert E. Lee statue, also donated by McIntire, is dedicated. The Confederate Veterans, Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy are in attendance at the ceremony.

March 2016—Charlottesville High School student Zyahna Bryant starts a petition to remove the Lee statue from its prominent position in the city park. “When I think of Robert E. Lee I instantly think of someone fighting in favor of slavery,” she writes.

May 2, 2016—The city forms the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces to study the history of the statues.

February 6, 2017—City Council votes 3-2 to remove the Lee statue. Kristin Szakos, Wes Bellamy, and Bob Fenwick vote in favor of the statue’s removal. Kathy Galvin and Mayor Mike Signer vote against.

March 2017—Statue defenders sue the City of Charlottesville, accusing the city of breaking
a law against removing
war memorials by voting to remove the Lee statue.

August 11 and 12, 2017— White nationalists gather in Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally. A terrorist attack kills counterprotester Heather Heyer, and two state troopers die in a helicopter crash.

March 9, 2020—The Virginia General Assembly passes a law allowing localities to “remove, relocate, contextualize, or cover” war memorials. 

April 1, 2021—The Supreme Court of Virginia kills the lawsuit aimed at protecting the statues, declaring that the statues never should have been considered war memorials and that the city is allowed to remove them.

June 7, 2021—City Council votes 5-0 to take the statues out of the city parks.

July 9, 2021—The Lee and Jackson statues are removed and transported to a secure location.

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News

Conqueror conquered

A crowd gathered to watch UVA remove it’s George Rogers Clark statue on Sunday. Photo: Eze Amos.

One hundred years after being erected on West Main Street, the University of Virginia’s George Rogers Clark statue has finally been taken down. 

On Sunday morning, the day after the city took down three other statues, crews began removing UVA’s racist monument at 7:30am. Members of the Monacan Indian Nation and other North American Indigenous communities, UVA students, activists, and other community members gathered to watch. Just under three hours later, the monument was hauled away to an undisclosed location, drawing rounds of applause and cheers from the crowd.

Paid for by philanthropist Paul Goodloe McIntire, the statue depicts Clark, who was born in Albemarle County in 1752, mounted on a horse attacking a Native American family, with three white frontiersmen holding guns and ammunition behind him. 

Last summer, UVA’s Racial Equity Task Force recommended removing the statue—a symbol of white supremacy and genocide—and building a Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies in its place. The Board of Visitors approved the removal in September.

The statue calls Clark the “Conqueror of the Northwest,” a claim more rooted in mythmaking than actual history, scholars say. Clark fought both with and against Indigenous tribes during the Revolutionary War, and led militias who slaughtered Native Americans and stole their land after the war.

Clark wasn’t even a particularly consequential figure, making the awful statue all the more galling. “To claim that Clark was the ‘Conqueror of the Northwest’ is absurd,” writes UVA historian Christian McMillen in a 2020 UVA Today op-ed on the statue. “Clark played a minor role in the centuries-long struggle for control between the French, the English, [and] the Native peoples.”  

A university committee is currently working on a tribal consultation policy, and has invited tribal nations to help decide what to do with the statue and the space where it once stood. 

Since he was a UVA student nearly 20 years ago, Guy Lopez, an enrolled member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, has advocated for the removal of the statue.

“That Clark statue says it’s okay to take whatever [Indigenous people] have. If they’re in the way, they can be destroyed,” says Lopez, co-founder of Native American and Indigenous Studies at UVA. “They made a monument to violence and evil.”

“But the question now is, what difference does [the removal] make for the University of Virginia?” he says. “It actually may be a step backwards if the university doesn’t follow through with actual substantive programs and changes that Indigenous people need.”

According to Lopez, the university has denied many of NAIS’ funding requests, but spent $400,000 to remove the statue. It also has yet to establish a formal NAIS program, or commit to hiring Indigenous tenure-track faculty and postdoctoral students, though it has received a multi-million dollar grant for Indigenous studies. And he says he’s seen little effort put into recruiting Native American students, who make up less than 1 percent of the undergraduate population. 

“This is my country,”  says Lopez. Even with the statue down, “I have no home at the University of Virginia.”