Two men convicted of malicious wounding for attacking DeAndre Harris in a downtown parking garage on August 12, 2017, are appealing their convictions, and the Virginia Attorney General’s office will now prosecute their cases.
Jacob Goodwin and Alex Ramos were sentenced to eight and six years in prison, respectively, for their part in the brutal Market Street Parking Garage beating that Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Rick Moore has repeatedly called one of the worst he’s ever seen.
While the Court of Appeals of Virginia has yet to hear the cases, a single judge granted the petitions to appeal without hearing any argument. Legal analyst Dave Heilberg says, “It’s not unusual, but it’s not what usually happens.”
He adds, “They tend not to give appeals without a good reason.”
Anthony Martin, who represents Goodwin, claims there was insufficient evidence to convict his client of malicious wounding.
“The only actions [Goodwin] had taken towards DeAndre Harris was at the most two kicks,” says the petition for appeal, which notes that Harris had a laceration to his head and an arm fracture, but that there’s no evidence that Goodwin caused harm to Harris’ head or arm. “The only conceivable areas of the body that [Goodwin] touched were Harris’ buttocks or bottom.”
To win an appeal on a claim of insufficiency of evidence is “rare,” according to Heilberg. During appellate review, the court will look at all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the commonwealth. “If there’s some evidence to support the conviction that was given, then it stands.”
Martin also argues that the court erred by denying motions to strike four potential jurors from serving on the panel that convicted Goodwin, including two who admitted to participating in Black Lives Matter rallies.
Jake Joyce represents Ramos—who went to trial the day after Goodwin’s conviction. Joyce alleges the jury pool could have been tainted if potential jurors saw media coverage of Goodwin’s trial.
“Ramos would have a stronger case than Goodwin,” suggests Heilberg, adding that the scheduling of their back-to-back trials could be unprecedented.
Joyce believes the trial should never have happened in Charlottesville.
“The danger was not just that jurors would harbor bias against the Unite the Righters who came to their city and caused a riot,” he wrote in the petition. “There is also danger that the circumstances surrounding the trial and the fear of fallout about their verdict might cause local jurors to decide their verdict on something other than the merits of the case.”
All motions to move August 12-related cases out of Charlottesville have been denied, and Heilberg says there’s a slim chance of winning an appeal on that grounds.
Lastly, Joyce argues that Ramos’ malicious wounding charge should have been reduced to a lesser form of assault, because it’s undisputed that he threw only one punch at the back of Harris’ head. But, says Heilberg, the jury made a factual determination based on the evidence it was given, and “if Ramos and Goodwin are acting in concert…one is as guilty as the other.”
A date has not been set for a full briefing or oral arguments in Richmond.
“Appellate review of criminal proceedings plays an important role in ensuring that defendants were treated fairly and afforded due process of law,” says Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania, who prosecuted the cases alongside assistant prosecutor Nina Antony. “This office welcomes and is confident in that process.”
City Councilors Mike Signer and Wes Bellamy will not seek re-election. Photos: Jen Farriello and Mina Pirasteh
For some, it came as a shock when City Councilor Wes Bellamy announced yesterday that he would not run for re-election, especially considering his public remarks the week before that made it sound otherwise.
At his March 20 Virginia Festival of the Book event with former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, where the two politicians discussed how Confederate statues are symbols of institutional racism, Bellamy indicated he was likely to run for a second term because the best way to change policy “is through elected office.”
But a Rob Schilling report—from just a few hours before the 125 signatures needed to participate in the Democratic primary were due yesterday—cited “recent reports from deep inside the nascent Bellamy campaign” that he was more than 75 signatures short.
Then the former vice-mayor penned an open letter to the community, which said, “I love the people of this city, but I love my wife, my daughters, and our unborn child more. And because of my love for them, I am stepping aside for new energy. …Honestly, I need a break for my mental health, my physical health, and my family’s well being.”
Though city council voted unanimously to remove Charlottesville’s Confederate monuments after the Unite the Right rally, Bellamy, who has been calling for their removal since 2016, bore the brunt of the vitriol from local and faraway statue supporters and racists. Those included Jason Kessler, who dug up some problematic, years-old tweets from the only black councilor at the time, and called for his resignation.
Bellamy has publicly discussed the multitude of threats he and his family members receive daily.
“Some people will say that I’m quitting, or that I’m giving up, and that’s okay,” Bellamy wrote. “Some will say that the haters won. That’s okay, too. What matters most is not what people say, but what we do.”
Local activist and UVA professor Jalane Schmidt says Bellamy’s legacy includes bringing up the city’s difficult white supremacist history and present, a push for equity, a community presence, and an effort to connect people who’ve “been left out by the system” to city resources.
Deacon Don Gathers says he was “troubled and somewhat hurt” to find out Bellamy wasn’t running again, but he understands putting family first.
“I applaud him and I appreciate everything that he’s done and tried to do for the city as a whole and the black community, specifically,” says Gathers. “I really think that he has always had the community’s best interest at heart, and not everybody was going to agree with the direction that he took to try to move us forward.”
Gathers initially planned to run for council this term, but cited health concerns as a reason he did not officially launch a campaign. He and Schmidt have publicly supported Democratic candidate Michael Payne, who will now officially run against Lloyd Snook, Bob Fenwick, Sena Magill, and Brian Pinkston in the primary, where no incumbents will be on the bill.
Former mayor Mike Signer’s name also didn’t make the list of those in the running, and in the public statement he posted to Twitter yesterday, he also mentioned his family.
“My wife and I never intended that I would serve more than one term on city council,” he said. “Another four years would however be hard to balance with the competing demands of raising two young kids, my day job, and my work on initiatives like Communities Overcoming Extremism.”
Schmidt says it was no secret that Signer had higher political ambitions—including an unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in 2009—before moving to Charlottesville and being elected to city council in 2015.
“There were many of us who suspected that this was a kind of stepping stone,” she says. “It seems that his aspirations were dashed by his failure to address the [August 11 and 12, 2017,] attacks.”
Signer’s leadership came under fire in former federal prosecutor Tim Heaphy’s independent review of that summer’s white supremacist events. In what was already a maelstrom of poor planning, Heaphy found that city council further complicated matters by making a last-minute decision to move the Unite the Right rally to McIntire Park, despite nearly unanimous advice that such a move would not withstand a legal challenge and spread police resources even further.
In an August 24 Facebook post, Signer publicly pointed the finger at then-city manager Maurice Jones and police chief Al Thomas for the devastating events.
And then on August 30, his fellow councilors held a three-hour closed door meeting to discuss his performance and potential discipline, where they seemingly accepted his apology—which he also read to reporters and community members who gathered in council chambers.
“In the deeply troubling and traumatizing recent weeks, I have taken several actions as mayor, and made several communications, that have been inconsistent with the collaboration required by our system of governance and that overstepped the bounds of my role as mayor, for which I apologize to my colleagues and the people of Charlottesville,” he said.
Schmidt says he’ll also be remembered for his reluctance to move the statues, support of luxury developments such as Keith Woodard’s now-defunct West2nd condos at a time when affordable housing was a pressing need, and his “foray into public consciousness,” when he became president of the Fifeville Neighborhood Association just as it was starting to gentrify, she says.
Though Gathers was one of Signer’s more vocal critics, especially in the fallout of August 12, he says he wishes him success in all his future endeavors.
“As he exits, I’m certainly not going to take shots at him,” he says. “I’m sure that he did the best that he thought he could, and what he felt was best at the time.”
Though Fenwick is once again in the running, the departure of Signer and Bellamy—along with Kathy Galvin, who’s running for the House of Delegates, instead—means there could be no remaining councilors on the dais who called the shots during the Summer of Hate. Is Charlottesville turning over a new leaf?
Tensions ran high at Charlottesville City Council meetings in the aftermath of August 12, 2017. Photo: Eze Amos
I had lived in Charlottesville for 10 years almost to the day before I saw the inside of City Council chambers. I’d paid my gas bill in person once or twice. I think I bought a trash sticker in 2012. But I’d never even been upstairs at City Hall before. If you’d asked me at any point between August 2007 and August 2017, I would not have been able to tell you the mayor’s name.
I’m not sure what I was looking for when I squeezed into the packed chambers that night in August. I didn’t understand how Unite the Right had been allowed to happen to us. I didn’t know how our local government worked, but I needed to know what had gone wrong because surely something had. Things were out of control—cops were dragging people from the room, white supremacists were showing up at public comment. Even without any understanding of municipal government, this was noteworthy content, and like any millennial, I took to social media to tell my friends. And, unexpectedly, people seemed to enjoy reading what amounted to meeting minutes. I have tweeted out a blow-by-blow, real-time account of every City Council meeting since December 2017.
I started attending city government meetings for myself, because I had questions I couldn’t answer. What I found was not a simple explanation. Slowly, the meetings became about the mundane business of governing a city again, and it was clear the violence of the summer of 2017 was a symptom of a disease we have had for a long time—a nasty flare-up of a chronic illness. There is white supremacy deeply entrenched in the most boring parts of our government. We think of that violence as the Nazis who marched in our streets, but that was just the ugly cold sore caused by the virus that reproduces quietly in decisions about school district boundaries and funding allocations and building permits.
As the meetings became less about the spectacle, I was fascinated by the process of government. Decisions made in council chambers are based on decisions made in still more meetings—boards and commissions and work sessions. I was between jobs with time to kill, so I went to another meeting, then another. I realized the real work of governing was happening in open meetings that were open in name only—they were sparsely attended and lightly reported on.
The reporter is, typically, not part of the story. The news should be dispassionate. But we have no dearth of sterile, detached coverage of the events affecting our daily lives. What I’ve found is that we need more than that. Entirely accidentally, I discovered there is a real desire for news with an audience surrogate. For as intimately as it affects our lives, government can be opaque and inaccessible. We want the facts, but the lack of any emotional context makes them hard to grasp. In my coverage of city meetings, I am not just accountable to this community, I am a part of it. I don’t hide my frustration, my sadness, or even my boredom during long hearings on easements or alleyways.
Charlottesville as a community is uniquely civically engaged, but civic engagement is time consuming. Some board meetings are held in the middle of the day, some are held inside the jail, and City Council meetings can last until one in the morning. I never intended for my strange hobby to become a public service, but the combination of having the time and tenacity to sit through dozens of hours of meetings per week and no editorial board asking me to tone down the emotional intensity of my coverage has created a unique public record that I am still shocked to find so many people rely on for their city government news. With this column, my hope is to bring you not just a bi-monthly update about what happened in some dry public meeting you missed, but to make the business of these meetings more relatable, more accessible to you, my neighbors.
My personal style of intensely emotional, tonally conversational coverage cannot and should not replace traditional reporting from our local mainstream press. Those reporters provide an invaluable service. While my coverage may be less comprehensive, I see these forms of media as complementary. Providing people with bite-sized, digestible, relatable coverage makes broader engagement possible. I’ll sit through a full day city budget work session, a six-hour City Council meeting, and days of motions on that statue lawsuit so you don’t have to–although I’d be happy to save you a seat.
Follow Molly Conger’s real-time coverage of city meetings on Twitter @socialistdogmom
Sons of Confederate Veterans’ Frank Earnest is unwavering in his belief that the Civil War was not about slavery, and the statues of generals Lee and Jackson honor defenders of the state. Photo: Timothy C. Wright
Before August 12, 2017, many people thought of America’s Confederate statues as harmless pieces of history—if they thought of them at all. Then the hate groups came to Charlottesville, ostensibly to protest the monuments’ removal. The violent clashes that led to the death of Heather Heyer and the injury of dozens, and the sight of Confederate flags waving alongside Nazi flags, brought new urgency to the conversation about the meaning of Confederate symbols.
Cities like Baltimore and New Orleans quietly sent their monuments packing. Descendants of General Robert E. Lee and General Stonewall Jackson have said statues of their ancestors have become tributes to white supremacy and need to go. And many brought up the words of Lee himself, who was opposed to memorializing the Confederacy after the war was over.
But one group of citizens remains unconvinced—the 13 plaintiffs in the lawsuit known as Monument Fund v. Charlottesville.
The people and organizations suing to stop the city from moving its Confederate statues straddle a spectrum that ranges from First Families of Virginia to a heritage organization that has members who were here August 12 with a secessionist, neo-Confederate gang.
“You’ve got the bow tie, upscale people tied to the League of the South people who want to secede and are slavery apologists,” says activist and UVA professor Jalane Schmidt.
Three years ago, some City Council members and local activists raised the idea of removing the Confederate statues from downtown. The city appointed a community commission that spent months examining the issue and ultimately presented City Council with two options to consider: relocating the statues to McIntire Park or re-contextualizing them by transforming the existing sites. In February 2017, City Council voted 3-2 to remove the Lee statue, and in April voted to sell it.
Then came August 12. Following the trauma that made Charlottesville a national hashtag, former “no” votes Mike Signer and Kathy Galvin joined Wes Bellamy, Kristin Szakos, and Bob Fenwick in saying that both the Lee and Jackson statues should go.
And that’s the issue in the lawsuit: whether councilors violated Virginia state law, which forbids the removal of war memorials, when they voted to send the Confederate generals on their way.
The lawsuit is approaching its second anniversary March 20. It’s scheduled to be in court March 11, but plaintiff spokesman Buddy Weber is dubious that it will go to trial then because Jones Day, one of the largest law firms in the world, is representing four of the five councilors and has asked for a jury trial.
In the two years the case has been active, Judge Rick Moore has ruled that the councilors do not have immunity and are personally liable for voting to remove the monuments.
In January, Delegate David Toscano carried a bill to allow localities to decide for themselves whether they want Confederate statues in their midst. The bill was killed in subcommittee.
While much has been written about—and much blame thrown at—those who first raised the idea of removing Confederate monuments from the center of town, very little attention has been paid to those still fighting the city’s decision. C-VILLE reached out to the plaintiffs to find out why they joined the suit and whether anything had changed for them since 2017.
Here’s what we found out:
Edward Dickinson Tayloe II
Tayloe, 76, comes from a First Family of Virginia that was one of the largest slave-owning dynasties in Virginia. His ancestor, John Tayloe II, called “one of the richest men of his day,” built Mount Airy plantation in Warsaw.
John Tayloe III, ancestor of lawsuit plaintiff Edward Dickinson Tayloe II, was one of the wealthiest men of his generation and “bred horses and slaves,” says the New York Times review of Richard Dunn’s A Tale of Two Plantations.
Tayloe’s great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, invested in his brother Henry’s plan to start a cotton plantation in the Black Belt of Alabama in 1835, according to Richard Dunn’s 2015 book, A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Jamaica and Virginia.
An 1807 ban on importing slaves had opened the domestic slave trade for Virginia and other coastal states. The Tayloes had a surplus of enslaved laborers at their Mount Airy plantation and they sent them to the Deep South.
In 1838, the Tayloe brothers forced 57 slaves to walk 800 miles to Alabama, where most were sold. It was “the cruelest act that I have found recorded in the Tayloe papers,” writes Dunn.
Benjamin Ogle Tayloe continued to send rebellious slaves to Alabama as a warning to remaining slaves, says Dunn.
Between 1833 and 1854, the Tayloes marched 120 enslaved people to Alabama, and another 98 were sent during the Civil War, says Dunn. The domestic migration of enslaved people separated families, made Virginia a major slave exporter, and further enriched the Tayloes.
Plaintiff Tayloe’s father, Edward Thornton Tayloe IV, was vice-chair of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority when the decision was made to raze theAfrican American community of Vinegar Hill over the objections of its residents, many of whom were unable to vote on the issue because of a poll tax.
And the plaintiff, a portfolio manager, was past president of the Lee-Jackson Foundation, which has an endowment of nearly $4 million, according to 2014 IRS filings, and awards scholarships to students who write essays examining the legacies of the Confederate generals.
According to the lawsuit, Tayloe saw combat during the Vietnam War and served in Special Forces, and has a “special interest in the protection and preservation of war memorials in the city.” The Lee-Jackson Foundation contributed money in 1997 to the restoration of the Lee and Jackson statues, says the suit.
A woman answering the phone at the Tayloe residence referred a reporter to spokesperson Weber.
The plaintiff’s cousin, Tayloe Emery, who lives at Mount Airy plantation and who used to work at C-VILLE Weekly, bristles at a reporter’s inquiry about whether family members share his uncle’s enthusiasm for Confederate monuments. He writes in an email, “It’s a shame that our family name is being dragged around by the media and that reporters have the audacity to ask me stupid questions, like ‘do all of your family support Confederate monuments?’
“The answer is of course, no. The vast majority of my Virginia family are against Confederate monuments and anything that pays lip service to white nationalism in any way, shape, or form. Though many of us do in fact disagree with this lawsuit, we still support family members who may think differently on the subject and we hope that through continued conversation that they might see things from a different perspective and understand the bitter feelings and abhorrent racism associated with Confederate monuments.”
Says Schmidt, “For generations this family has been roiling the lives of black people, and this is what [plaintiff Tayloe] chooses to pursue.”
Anthony Griffin
Britton Franklin Earnest
Virginia Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans
Smithfield resident Tony Griffin, 57, is a Sons of Confederate Veterans “commander,” and Frank Earnest, who lives in Virginia Beach, holds the title “heritage defense coordinator.”
Earnest, 63, has been representing the Sons for almost 30 years, he says. “We are the bloodline descendants of the Confederate Army,” and when people start “mudslinging” about the Confederacy, they’re “talking about my great-great-grandfather.”
The Sons of Confederate Veterans contributed money to the 1997 restoration of the Lee and Jackson statues, and to the litigation, according to the lawsuit. “We don’t want to see monuments to defending our state removed,” says Earnest.
Earnest was in town August 11, 2017, for a Katie Couric interview and then got the heck out of Dodge. “It’s pretty bad when you know a riot is coming,” he says.
But the violence and open white nationalism of the Unite the Right rally have not changed Earnest’s mind about Confederate monuments. “Absolutely not,” he says. “It’s not something that comes or goes. They honor our ancestors.”
And he maintains the SCV has nothing to do with the white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups that showed up here, adding that it advised its members to stay away. “We have always denounced racist groups over our hundred-year history,” he says. “We have nothing to do with those people.”
Yet some Sons of Confederate Veterans members were here and hold dual affiliations with League of the South, which describes itself as a “Southern nationalist organization.” Its website honors John Wilkes Booth for his service “to the South and humanity.”
“We’re an organization of thousands,” says Earnest when asked about brothers George and Gregory Randall. He believes they’re still SCV members. “I don’t think we determined anyone in SCV did anything that rose to the level of complete expulsion.”
And, he says, Sons of Confederate Veterans are “in no way associated” with League of the South.
Sons of Confederate Veterans member George Randall carries the flag of neo-Confederate League of the South at Unite the Right. Photo: Rodney Dunning
Gregory Randall, who portrays General Stonewall Jackson in Civil War reenactments, and his twin George were in Charlottesville August 12 with League of the South.
George Randall, who lives near Fredericksburg, says he keeps his memberships separate and describes Sons of Confederate Veterans as a “historical” group while League of the South is “more political.”
Of the latter, he explains, “We’re secessionists.” He cites his ancestors and the Lost Cause narrative in objecting to Confederate monument removal. “We were invaded.” And he insists, “The war had nothing to do with slavery.”
He also blames Wes Bellamy for the whole monument mess, and says Bellamy is a “black supremacist.”
Says Randall, “I’m tired of everything being about race, race, race.” He objects to being called a white supremacist for wanting to “protect our culture. If you stand up for your people, you’re a Nazi or racist. It has nothing to do with hate.”
Randall was here for a lawsuit hearing in 2017 to provide security for an unnamed person, he says, but did not seem keen on returning for the upcoming court date because the last time he was here, his tires were slashed.
“I think Charlottesville sucks,” he says, denouncing “anarchist communists” and “antifa” whom he says threw urine and feces at him and his League of the South colleagues August 12. Says Randall, “You can’t wear a MAGA hat. I think it’s a crying shame.”
“Did we have a couple of rogue members in Charlottesville?” queries Earnest. “Probably, but we told them not to come.”
Is there a perception that the Sons of Confederate Veterans is a racist organization? “How much more prejudiced and bigoted can you be to ask that?” says Earnest, who has had a lot of experience talking to the press, not all of it to his satisfaction.
For instance, he was not pleased with a November 28 Washington Post story about him titled “Sins of the Fathers: The Confederacy was built on slavery. How can so many Southern whites believe otherwise?”
“I was very disappointed,” he says.
Charles L. Weber Jr.
Buddy Weber was in the U.S. Navy for 27 years, serving as a combat pilot before getting his law degree from UVA in 1998. He was chair of the city GOP, and in 2013, he ran for City Council with former city cop Mike Farruggio.
Attorney and Vietnam War vet Buddy Weber worries that if memorials to unpopular wars can be removed, Vietnam War monuments could be next. Photo: Elli Williams
Weber, 73, initially was appointed defense attorney for Heather Heyer’s murderer, James Fields, but cited his role in the lawsuit as a conflict of interest.
He says he signed on as a plaintiff for two reasons. As a lawyer and firm believer in the rule of law, “it’s my earnest belief City Council had violated the law, whether you believe the statues should stay or go,” he says.
And as a veteran of the “very unpopular” Vietnam War, he worries that those memorials could be next, negating the sacrifice citizens made of life and limb to defend this country. Virginia state law “protects these memorials from the shifting tide of public opinion,” he says.
If the General Assembly decides to change that, it can, he says, but he thinks Toscano’s bill to allow localities to make their own decisions about Confederate monuments is “a cop out.”
Weber also distances himself from those who showed up to support the Confederate monuments in 2017, taking the battle to court instead. “We do it without lighting tiki torches,” he says. “I don’t personally feel tarred because we have no association with them.”
Lloyd Smith
The founding partner of law firm Tremblay and Smith and a founder of Guaranty Bank and Virginia Broadcasting, the parent company of today’s NBC29, died last summer at age 85.
From 1997 through 1999, the former Marine represented a private group of citizens who raised money to restore the Lee and Jackson statues. That was a major reason he signed onto the lawsuit, says his son, Garrett Smith.
“The city agreed to maintain the statues in perpetuity,” he says, adding that his father always felt that when he represented people as clients, he continued to represent them.
Lloyd Smith “had a great love of history” and would visit Civil War battle sites, says Garrett Smith. “He believed the facts of the Civil War and the oppression of enslaved people was a history that needed to be told and understood.”
According to Smith, when Weber and attorney Fred Payne were helping to organize the lawsuit, they knew his father as “a Democrat and he represented a different group. He wasn’t a hardcore conservative Republican.”
He says his father was saddened by the events of August 2017, but Garrett Smith doesn’t think that changedhis father’s mind about the statues. “The city had become a flashpoint for a larger national debate.”
Frederick W. Payne
Attorney Fred Payne declined to comment for this story. In the first court hearing on the case May 2, 2017, Payne testified as an expert on Civil War uniforms because he “grew up with Confederate insignias since he was 10 years old.”
Fred Payne, an attorney and lawsuit plaintiff, has testified as an expert on Civil War uniforms. Staff photo.
The founder of Payne and Hodous in 1992, he serves as county attorney for Fluvanna, and was deputy county attorney for Albemarle from 1974 to 1987. He was also was an assistant commonwealth’s attorney for the county in 1979, according to the Payne and Hodous website.
Payne graduated magna cum laude from Yale, and got his law degree at UVA. He’s been president of the Charlottesville Albemarle Bar Association, as well as head of the city and county criminal bar association.
One of Payne’s better-known cases was his defense of widow Shirley Presley, who, in 2002, strung razor wire to block Rivanna Trail hikers from a path on her property along the river. The Rivanna Trail Foundation neglected to get her permission or an easement for that portion of the trail. A judge ruled in Presley’s favor on a code violation, and she settled her $1.5 million lawsuit against the city and foundation in 2008.
John Bosley Yellott Jr.
The Monument Fund
Jock Yellott is the fourth plaintiff in the lawsuit who’s an attorney. He’s also executive director of the Monument Fund, a nonprofit formed in October 2016 to help fund the statues’ defense. In 2017, it raised nearly $119,000, according to its IRS 990 form.
Because of his fundraising, Yellott, 64, has a financial interest in the outcome of the suit, and he conducts history tours describing the monuments, according to the complaint. He testified that he walks his dog through Market Street or Court Square parks daily. He did not return C-VILLE’s call.
Betty Jane Franklin Phillips
Phillips, 82, is described in court documents as a collateral descendant of Paul Goodloe McIntire, who donated the controversial statues and the once-segregated parks they inhabit, along with a number of other monuments, parks, and buildings around town. The Keswick resident is a Lane High School graduate. She did not respond to phone messages from C-VILLE.
Edward Bergen Fry
Ned Fry, 31, is the youngest of the plaintiffs. His great uncle Henry Shrady was the sculptor McIntire hired to create the Lee statue, and Shrady also did the Ulysses S. Grant statue in Washington near the Capitol.
Fry is himself a sculptor and graduated with a degree in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University. The CHS grad did not get back to us to discuss further his participation in the lawsuit, but at a 2016 Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces hearing, he said he was in favor of keeping the statues because, “They are historical works of art and, more importantly, because Henry Shrady is my great-great-great uncle.”
Virginia C. Amiss
The 94-year-old plaintiff remembers riding the trolley from downtown to the Rotunda when she was 7 years old to take violin lessons, and that’s when she decided she wanted to study nursing at UVA, she wrote to Virginia magazine in 2010. She graduated in 1946, and worked at UVA and in Houston, as an operating room supervisor.
Amiss had had dental surgery and didn’t feel up to talking when C-VILLE reached her, and she did not respond a follow-up call.
While she is suing to keep the Confederate statues, she was not a fan of other sculptures installed around town by the city’s Art in Place program, a nonprofit dedicated to public art. In 2005, she asked City Council to eliminate the $5,000 it gave to the program. As Cvilleindymedia.org reported, “At the last meeting, her immortal words rang out: ‘Rearranged junk is still junk.’”
On Facebook, she supports prayer in school—and in the White House.
And through marriage, Amiss is related to Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler. According to Ancestry.com and U.S. Census records, her husband, Lester “Randy” Amiss was first cousin to Kessler’s great-grandfather, LaSalle Norvell.
Stefanie Marshall
Albemarle resident Marshall is chair of the Monument Fund and has “personally expended money and effort in cleaning graffiti from the Lee monument in 2011 and 2015,” says the complaint.
She and her husband own construction company M3, which specializes in masonry. The company supports the Fraternal Order of Police, Live Arts, The Paramount Theater, Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society and various local charitable organizations, according to its website.
The lawsuit is not the first time the county resident has had a problem with city government. In 2016, she took issue with City Council’s decision to honor Khizr and Ghazala Khan, and told council: “It seems to me that in order for a Gold Star family to be honored and recognized by the current City Council, they must speak at the Democratic National Convention. This is not appropriate, nor is it acceptable. It reeks of choosing to honor specific families or individuals because they fit your narrative.”
Marshall, 52, did not respond to a message from C-VILLE.
Correction March 7: Tayloe Emery is a cousin, not nephew of Edward Tayloe, and this Stefanie Marshall did not graduate from Albemarle High.
Jason Kessler claimed Phoebe Stevens assaulted him when she wrapped her arms around him to protect him from an angry mob at his August 13, 2017, press conference. Photo by Eze Amos
Phoebe Stevens is a pacifist.
She says that’s why she wrapped her arms around Jason Kessler at his August 13, 2017, press conference as a crowd of angry protesters closed in on him. But after she knocked him down in the chaos, he accused her of assault and battery—a charge she was convicted of in Charlottesville General District Court a year ago.
Stevens appealed the conviction, and was scheduled to go to trial on February 14. Before a jury was seated, however, her defense team and the prosecutor reached a special agreement: If Stevens apologized, agreed to do 100 hours of community service, and stayed on good behavior for six months, her charge would be dismissed.
That’s when her attorney, Jay Galloway, walked her over to Kessler, who was seated in the front row of the nearly empty courtroom.
“I apologize for putting my arms around you,” Stevens said, to which Kessler harshly responded, “What about [tackling] me, do you apologize for that?”
During the Unite the Right rally, Stevens could be found using her body to shield counterprotesters and white supremacists alike, and in recordings of the alleged tackle, she can also be heard saying, “We love you, Jason.”
“I apologize for making you feel like you were tackled,” she then told Kessler in the courtroom.
“That’s not a real apology,” he replied.
At that point, Galloway said Stevens was not going to engage any further. A few feet outside the courthouse, in her lawyer’s Park Street office, Stevens gave a brief interview, in which she noted it was Valentine’s Day.
“It’s not missed by me that my date today was Jason Kessler,” she said.
Over the past year and a half, Stevens said she’s heard many opinions on her choice to embrace the man who brought hundreds of white supremacists to town for an event that ended in countless injuries and three deaths.
“We’re all human,” Stevens said. “I know the crowd would not have agreed with me, and my visceral self would have battled me on that, too. [But] when we step back, there’s a human there.”
She says she has forgiven Kessler for accusing her of assaulting him and for his behavior during her apology.
“He is incredibly clouded in his understanding of the world and how to remedy this situation,” Stevens added. “He’s a deeply disturbed individual.”
Tyler Watkins Davis. Courtesy Charlottesville Police Department
Tyler Watkins Davis entered an Alford plea February 8, and though it’s technically a guilty plea, it means the man from Middleburg, Florida, is not admitting guilt, but acknowledging that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict him of malicious wounding in the brutal parking garage assault of DeAndre Harris.
Defense attorney Matthew Engle said his 50-year-old client doesn’t challenge the fact that he bashed Harris in the head with a wooden tire thumper, which caused severe trauma and required eight stitches, but he does dispute that it was done with malicious intent.
If the case went to trial, Engle said he would have argued that Davis perceived a threat outside the Market Street Parking Garage and was acting in self defense when he clobbered Harris—and that he did not intend to maim, disfigure, or kill Harris, which is required to meet the standard of actual malice.
Judge Rick Moore has often referred to the racially-charged beating as the worst he’s ever seen, but unlike the other men who participated, Engle noted that Davis only hit Harris once, and backed off when the others piled on.
When participants Jacob Goodwin and Alex Ramos went to trial for their roles in the attack, they were sentenced to eight and six years, respectively. Daniel Borden, who pleaded guilty, was given a lesser sentence of three years and 10 months in January. Davis faces a maximum sentence of 20 years, and will be sentenced in August.
Davis wasn’t caught until months after the others—and he may have Goodwin’s lawyer to thank for his arrest. At one of Goodwin’s hearings, attorney Elmer Woodard played a video of the assault, and asked why police had not arrested Davis, the then-unknown man wearing a wide-brimmed hat, whom Woodard dubbed “Boonie Hat” as he continually referred to Davis’ role in the beating. It wasn’t long after that that Davis was in cuffs.
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony said the two other men who can also be seen attacking Harris in the viral video have not yet been identified.
February is Black History Month, a time when schools across the country dutifully trot out lessons about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. In 2015, a minor firestorm ensued when Orange County High School students connected the civil rights movement of the 1960s and today’s Black Lives Matter movement in a school performance, and an anonymous
deputy complained on Facebook.
“It’s supposed to be black history, not black current events,” another parent, who also worked in law enforcement, told C-VILLE.
Similar complaints have cropped up at other schools when Black History Month events draw a line from the inequities of our past to the problems of the present. But racism can’t be safely contained in feel-good plays. The past, as William Faulkner famously observed, “is never dead. It’s not even past.”
We live in a city that was literally built by black people, in a county that, at the end of the Civil War, was majority black, but which more than a century later is still dominated by monuments to Confederate soldiers. In this week’s cover story, we document the ways our local government, schools, university, and community members are unearthing and commemorating black history in Charlottesville, not out of some wan impulse toward “political correctness,” but because this is our history, and any story that disregards it is incomplete. As Charlene Green, head of the Office of Human Rights, tells us, “You may think that what happened only affects someone else, but it affects you.”
In 2019, as we commemorate the 400th anniversary of the beginning of slavery in Virginia, as our elected officials continue to struggle for the right to control our own monuments, and as our governor has unexpectedly prompted a conversation on the legacy of blackface as entertainment, we are fairly freighted with the past. The question is what we do with it. —Laura Longhine
Charlene Green, a multicultural educator who directed the city’s first Dialogue on Race, says she tries to “connect the dots” between Charlottesville’s black history and the issues the city faces today.
Photo: Eze Amos
In 2010, Charlene Green, now head of Charlottesville’s Office of Human Rights, was directing the city’s first Dialogue on Race, an initiative to engage residents in an ongoing discussion of race, racism, and diversity.
“As I was having discussions with people around the community on these issues, I began to wonder: ‘Who knows all this stuff?’” Green recalls. “Not just school desegregation and the Martin Luther King era, but the anecdotes—the individuals’ stories.”
In response, Green created a PowerPoint on Charlottesville’s African American history, which she currently presents about twice a month (she even has a bus tour version). It highlights people like John West, who was born a slave but became a successful real estate entrepreneur and one of the city’s “first 400,” as the wealthiest African Americans in town were known in the late 19th century. And it adds context to stories that are only half-known.
For instance, “A lot of folks don’t know what all was involved in destroying Vinegar Hill,” she says, referring to the African American neighborhood that was infamously razed in the 1960s. “Like the fact that the Voting Rights Act wasn’t in place when the referendum occurred to keep Vinegar Hill or have the city take it.” Many residents couldn’t vote on the fate of their neighborhood because of a poll tax.
Talking about the city’s African American past, Green says, “got me into talking about history as a part of race and ethnicity.” Why did events that African Americans remembered very well disappear from the city’s narrative? How are the racist attitudes and laws of 100 years ago still affecting residents today?
“When I tell the story of Charlottesville’s history, I try to connect those dots,” she says. “You may think that what happened only affects someone else, but it affects you. If you don’t understand that, you don’t learn the lesson.”
The white supremacist rallies of 2017 cast a sudden and glaring spotlight on Charlottesville’s troubled racial history. From the national media perspective, #Charlottesville was a statue debate and one horrific weekend. But these events were part of a much larger story. Beginning well before the Lee statue became a lightning rod for controversy, a wide range of people have been working to recover Charlottesville’s African American history, and to help the city tell the full story of its past.
In this 19th-century engraving, an enslaved woman holds the child of a white professor on one of UVA’s pavilion balconies. Albert & Shirley Small Special Collections Library
Honoring African American culture
The hub of efforts to support and celebrate Charlottesville’s black history is the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. The school itself was built in 1926, as the first high school for African American students in Jim Crow-era Charlottesville. (Before that, the only school black students were allowed to attend ended at eighth grade. Families who wanted their children to earn a high school diploma had to send them away from home, at their own expense.) The building’s 2006 listing on the National Register of Historic Places helped spur the city to redevelop it as a community center, anchored by Carver Recreation Center and the African American Heritage Center. The building reopened as the Jefferson School City Center in 2013.
During the Heritage Center’s development, says Executive Director Andrea Douglas, market research showed Charlottesville’s white population was satisfied with the city’s cultural offerings—but the black population wasn’t. African Americans were willing to travel as far as North Carolina to see their experience reflected on stage or in visual arts. That insight helped shape the center’s mission as both a cultural institution and community rallying place.
The center’s programming focuses on black history and culture from 1965 on. It holds four annual events; Douglas calls them “touchstones for the black community”—Juneteenth (which commemorates the end of slavery), Kwanzaa, Veteran’s Day, and the Greens Cook-off—as well as exhibitions and live performances. And it also houses a local history center that includes access to more than 60 oral histories from students who attended the Jefferson School.
The Heritage Center acts as convener and leader for initiatives ranging from last year’s pilgrimage to include Charlottesville lynching victim John Henry James in the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, to helping revive the historically black Charlottesville Players Guild and stage all the plays of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilson.
“Our mission says we celebrate the cultural history of African Americans, and that’s not just for black people,” says Douglas.
“There’s a broad range of social and cultural disparity here, and a lot of history that people who live here or come here don’t see,” she adds. The Center’s ongoing programs are a significant step toward filling that void.
What story do we tell?
One of the biggest ways the city tells the story of its history is through its public memorials and monuments. For decades, these were defined by the now-infamous Confederate statues along Market Street, as well as the statues of white explorers Lewis and Clark and George Rodgers Clark, all of which (except for the Johnny Reb statue outside the courthouse) were commissioned by Paul Goodloe McIntire.
But in recent years, new ideas about who we should memorialize have emerged.
After the initial calls to consider moving the city’s Confederate statues, City Council formed the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces to address the issue. In its December 2016 report, the commission recommended either “transforming” the Lee and Jackson statues by providing new context, or relocating them to McIntire Park. (City Council voted 3-2 to move the Lee statue, and was promptly sued.) But the report also called for city support to preserve and interpret African American historical sites.
The recommendations included creating a more appropriate and visible marker for the former slave auction block in Court Square, as well as a memorial at or near the site. It asked the city to support the rehabilitation and preservation of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery, established in 1873 and the resting place of some of the most prominent members of Charlottesville’s African American community. And it recommended that council provide funds to complete the proposed Vinegar Hill Park, a commemorative area in the walkway between the Omni hotel and the ice rink at the west end of the Downtown Mall, next to the site of the original neighborhood.
By early 2017, the city’s Historic Resources Committee had finalized plans to revise all the markers in Court Square. But after the rallies that summer, according to Jeff Werner, the city’s historic preservation and design planner, the committee decided to revisit the plan, and it’s still under discussion. Vinegar Hill Park is also stalled while the ice rink is being converted into Jaffray Woodriff’s Center of Developing Entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, the Jefferson School is leading an effort to erect a monument to Vinegar Hill on its grounds, with a statue by noted black sculptor Melvin Edwards. The city contributed money to the design phase, but the project is waiting on more private investment.
Despite these delays, the city’s second Dialogue on Race, held in fall 2017, revealed a renewed sense of urgency. “The concerns from the first Dialogue process had been education, employment, social needs,” Green recalls. “This time, the number one action item was for the city to support the telling of all its history.”
Anne Evans, coordinator of world studies for Charlottesville City Schools, says the state’s revision of its social studies standards offered educators an opportunity to include more perspectives on local history. Photo: Eze Amos
Educating the next generation
Schools teach the “official” version of history, and in Virginia, as in most of the South, that version was one that embraced the Lost Cause myth, which presented the Civil War as a battle over states’ rights rather than slavery, and glorified Confederate war heroes while minimizing the contributions of African Americans, Native Americans, and women.
That narrative began to change in the 1990s, when Virginia implemented statewide Standards of Learning (SOLs). In the most recent review of social studies SOLs, in 2015, state educators made a conscious effort to expand the curriculum’s Eurocentric focus to include other groups’ histories, says Anne Evans, coordinator of world studies for Charlottesville City Schools. As a veteran classroom teacher used to incorporating local history, Evans says she saw this as “an opportunity to change our local curriculum.”
Evans convened a group of her colleagues to restructure the curriculum, starting in kindergarten, to include a broader range of perspectives. The group pulled in expertise from throughout the community, includingUVA, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, and local historical sites.
“Our students’ parents who grew up in the city and county schools had a very different curriculum,” she says. Now, not only have state textbooks become more inclusive, but teachers can use the textbooks as just one of many resources. Evans’ group is creating a collection of digital resources—oral histories, photos, maps, and original documents like letters and newspaper stories—that teachers can use to tell a fuller story.
They’ve also helped facilitate community connections. That includes bringing in “witnesses to history” like Charles Alexander, one of the Charlottesville 12 who integrated the city’s schools almost 50 years ago. He speaks with students about the experience of being one of the first black children in all-white Venable Elementary school.
In December, CCS partnered with the Jefferson School for a program with Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give, a bestselling YA novel about a black girl from a poor family who attends a wealthy, mostly white prep school. “We’re pulling these strands through in other areas, from English classes to the libraries’ speakers’ program,” says Evans.
CCS is also one of six school systems statewide involved in Changing the Narrative, a Virginia Humanities initiative funded by a Kellogg Foundation grant. This two-year effort tackles racism from a range of angles, from bringing resources that explore black history and culture into schoolrooms to encouraging young people of color to explore and highlight their heritage. It also taps Virginia Humanities’ digital resources (like its history podcasts “Backstory” and “With Good Reason,” and web-based Encyclopedia Virginia) to enable students to research events and sites around the state and produce their own history stories.
The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers broke ground in December, helped in part by $2.5 million in matching funds from UVA. Rendering: Howeler + Yoon Architecture
The world of the university
UVA has been a huge part of Charlottesville’s identity since the school’s founding in 1819. So what has the University been doing to acknowledge its own history?
In 2007, taking a lead from the Virginia General Assembly’s resolution expressing “profound regret” for the state’s role in slavery, UVA adopted its own resolution and installed its version of a slavery memorial—a floor marker in the Rotunda’s underground passage honoring the workers who “realized Thomas Jefferson’s design.” UVA students, faculty, alumni, and staff made it clear that the plaque was inadequate at best, and in 2010 a student-led group began lobbying for a real memorial. Soon, other student groups were creating a brochure and campus map about slave history, conducting black history campus tours, and recovering an African American burial site on campus.
The groundswell of activity —student projects, the UVA IDEA Fund (an alumni group supporting diversity and inclusion), and the University and Community Action for Racial Equality—led to the 2013 formation of the President’s Commission on Slavery at the University. The Commission was co-chaired by Dr. Marcus L. Martin, University vice president and head of the Office of Diversity and Equity, and Kirt von Daacke, assistant dean and professor of history. Martin describes the commission’s work as restorative justice. “We haveto tell the full story of the past, so we can move ahead and become more inclusive,” he says.
The commission released its final recommendations in July 2018; in the meantime, however, the push for UVA to reckon with its past has accelerated. Von Daacke says the Slavery and its Legacies course he co-teaches is full every semester. The Cornerstone Summer Institute, launched in 2016, enables students interested in history, archeology, and community engagement to examine UVA’s past and the modern legacies of slavery. And the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers broke ground in December, helped in part by $2.5 million in matching funds from UVA.
Last spring, the President’s Commission on the University in the Age of Segregation was formed to examine UVA’s role during racial segregation in the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s headed by von Daacke and the Heritage Center’s Douglas, and some wonder if dealing with Jim Crow, white supremacy, and segregation’s legacy will be harder than looking at slavery. “What we know about healing is that we have to acknowledge and atone…to achieve repair,” says von Daacke. “We’ve examined our past; what comes after that is the hard part.”
UVA associate professor Jalane Schmidt, who leads walking tours of downtown monuments, sees her public history work as “amplifying the footnotes”—sharing stories that the majority white city narrative has left out. Photo: Eze Amos
So where are we?
In these ongoing efforts, some concerns came up repeatedly: How do we make sure all this history stays visible and accessible to the entire community? How do we make sure this history is not just acknowledged, but incorporated into a new narrative?And how do we as a community face and work through the legacy of years of deliberate forgetting?
Jalane Schmidt, an activist and UVA professor of religious studies, sees her avocation as a public historian to be “amplifying the footnotes”—the people and incidents the majority white city narrative has omitted. One way she does that is through the downtown walking tours she began conducting last year, often co-led with Douglas, which give context to the Confederate monuments in the Court Square area. She points out, for instance, that the Jackson statue was erected in the same year the local KKK was founded, on the site of a largely black neighborhood that was demolished to make way for the statue and a whites-only park.
Schmidt has also called attention to inaccuracies in the way the city presents its Civil War history. On March 3, 1865, Union soldiers “occupied” Charlottesville in the final weeks of the Civil War in Virginia. But at that time, the majority (52 percent) of the residents of Charlottesville and Albemarle County were African Americans, almost all of them enslaved. To the majority, then, the Union troops weren’t invaders riding roughshod over the Lost Cause—they were allies bringing freedom and self-determination.
Schmidt says, “People say history is written by the winner, but in this case it wasn’t: The only monument [to this liberation] is the little plaque downtown.” She and other activists wore 52 Percent T-shirts to the Blue Ribbon Commission meetings, to force that historical fact into the deliberations about who and what the city should memorialize. As a result, the Commission recommended that City Council begin marking Liberation and Freedom Day on March 3, citing the persuasive case made by Schmidt and historical researcher and Commission member Jane Smith (who was instrumental in finding the likely site of John Henry James’ 1898 lynching). The city’s first Liberation Day event was held in 2017 at the UVA Chapel—on the site where Union soldiers first met with city leaders 152 years earlier.
Schmidt and others involved in recovering these stories agreed that the 2017 summer of hate has sparked greater interest in Charlottesville’s African American history, more discussion, and more community self-examination. She says the commemoration held at James’ lynching site, and the subsequent pilgrimage to Montgomery, drew more people than could be accommodated. Attendance on her black history walking tours is rising steadily—68 people participated in the last one. Discrimination-related issues like zoning, affordable housing, policing tactics, and incarceration are more visible.
And more organizations want to be part of the city’s third celebration of Liberation and Freedom Day. This year’s events will roll out over three days, which is how long the Union troops were actually here. Participants have expanded from City Council, the Heritage Center, and UVA’s Office of Diversity and Equity to include Virginia Humanities, Monticello, Charlottesville City Schools, and the Jefferson Theater.
Schmidt (and others) hope this momentum will continue, and will mean support not only for uncovering the past, but also for facing its legacy. As Charlene Green says: “Making invisible history visible is just a start. If there is sincerity about creating an equitable society, our policies and the way we do business has to change—or we’re just putting lipstick on a pig.”
Charlene Green, a multicultural educator who directed the city’s first Dialogue on Race, says she tries to “connect the dots” between Charlottesville’s black history and the issues the city faces today.
Recovering black history
Efforts to uncover and promote our African American history have picked up steam in recent years. Here are some of the steps the city, schools, and university have taken since 2007.
2007
Virginia General Assembly passes a resolution expressing regret for slavery.
UVA passes a similar resolution.
Montpelier’s descendants community challenges the site to recover and interpret the Madisons’ South Yard slave quarters.
2009
City launches first Dialogue on Race.
2010
UVA students begin effort to fund and build a Memorial to Enslaved Laborers
on Grounds.
2012
At a Virginia Festival of the Book event, Councilor Kristin Szakos raises the question of whether the city’s Confederate monuments should be removed, causing an uproar.
First Dialogue on Race releases report.
2013
Jefferson School City Center opens.
UVA launches President’s Commission on Slavery and the University.
2016
CCS rolls out revised K-3 social studies curriculum.
Press conference calling for removal of statues.
City convenes Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces, which releases its report in December asking City Council to either recontextualize or relocate the Lee and Jackson statues.
Highland begins formation of a Monroe slave descendant community.
2017
City Council votes to relocate Lee statue and redesign Lee and Jackson parks.
City’s Historic Resources Committee drafts plan to revise signage in Court Square.
White supremacists (led by UVA alum Richard Spencer) hold torch-lit rally at Lee Park.
Montpelier opens “The Mere Distinction of Colour” exhibit on slavery.
City Council renames Lee and Jackson Parks.
UVA Board of Visitors approves Memorial to Enslaved Laborers.
KKK holds rally in then-Jackson Park.
White supremacists march through UVA and hold Unite the Right rally.
City holds second Dialogue on Race and releases report.
2018
CCS unveils new Virginia Studies curriculum.
UVA forms President’s Commission on the University in the Age of Segregation.
Monticello opens exhibit on Sally Hemings.
UVA Commission on Slavery releases final report.
UVA breaks ground on the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers.
The 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook spread that torpedoed Governor Ralph Northam.
Eastern Virginia Medical School/TNS via ZUMA Wire
Ralph Northam’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week
Up until a week ago, Governor Ralph Northam had great approval ratings. Then last week hit, and with the fallout from a photo of a person in blackface beside someone in a KKK robe on his page in the Eastern Virginia Medical School 1984 yearbook, we’re not sure whether Northam will still be in office by the time this paper hits stands.
January 30: Northam, a pediatric neurologist, discusses on WTOP a bill that would have eased restrictions on late-term abortions, which he said are rare and occur when there are severe fetal abnormalities or the pregnancy is nonviable. His comments about how those cases are handled drew accusations that he was advocating “infanticide”—and may have enraged a medical school classmate, who tipped off far-right website Big League Politics, according to the Washington Post.
February 1: Big League Politics publishes a four-paragraph story about Northam’s yearbook photo. That’s followed by a report that while at VMI, Northam’s nickname in that yearbook was “Coonman.”
February 1, 6:10pm: Northam releases a statement apologizing for the photo. “I am deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now.”
11:15pm: Virginia House Democrats call for Northam’s resignation.
February 2, 9:58am: Delegate David Toscano, “with the heaviest of hearts,” says, “It is now clear that while the governor has done many good things in his career, and has been fighting for those most in need throughout his public life, he has lost the moral high ground at the core of his leadership.”
10:31am: The Democratic Party of Virginia says Northam should resign immediately.
12:20pm: City Councilor Wes Bellamy, who faced condemnation in 2016 for offensive tweets he’d made during his early 20s, says on Facebook he knows “firsthand what it feels like for something that you said in your younger years to come back and haunt you,” but he says Northam should resign.
2:30pm: Northam holds a press conference and says it wasn’t him in the photo—but that he did use shoe polish to appear as Michael Jackson in a dance contest in San Antonio in 1984, in which he moonwalked. He says he didn’t understand that blackface performances were offensive until a campaign staffer in 2017 told him they were, the Post reports.
3:30pm: Residents of historic African American community Union Hill denounce Northam’s commitment to racial justice, noting that he removed two members of the Air Pollution Control Board who had questioned Dominion’s plans to build a compressor station in their town. (The permit was later granted.)
6:44pm: Current U.S. senators and former Virginia governors Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, along with Congressman Bobby Scott, say it’s time for Northam to go.
February 3: Northam attends his Eastern Shore church, the predominantly black First Baptist Church Capeville. That evening, he meets with his cabinet.
February 3, late evening: Big League Politics turns its sights on Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, who would take over if Northam resigns, claiming he sexually assaulted a woman in 2004, an allegation Fairfax denies.
February 4: Protesters demand Northam resign.
A brief history of local blackface
UVA Glee Club photo session, 1917. Ralph Holsinger albert and shirley small special collections library
Blackface has a long history in America, and especially in Virginia, as Rhae Lynn Barnes, a Princeton University professor of American cultural history, pointed out in the Washington Post this week. A sampling of our city’s not-so-proudest moments:
1886: University Minstrel Troupe donates proceeds of a minstrel show to build the UVA Chapel.
WWI: A university-sponsored minstrel show takes place on the steps of the Rotunda.
1924: A Charlottesville Elks minstrel show runs ads ridiculing black soldiers (the same year the Lee statue is erected).
1970s:A Charlottesville Lions Club minstrel show is so popular it is recommended in city guidebooks.
2002: UVA’s Zeta Psi and Kappa Alpha Order fraternity members co-host a Halloween party where at least three students show up in blackface.
Quote of the week
“For all the evils in the world, I think apathy is the most dangerous.”—St. Anne’s-Belfield and UVA alum/Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Chris Long upon receiving the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award for his charity work
In brief
A12 going forward
City Council approved a resolution to commemorate the tragic events of August 11-12, 2017, on the second weekend in August with Unity Days. Events will take place on the Downtown Mall, Market Street, Court Square, and McGuffey parks, and on Fourth Street (conveniently making it impossible for any other group to try to hold a rally in those places on the anniversary).
Parole denied
For the 14th time, convicted murderer Jens Soering learned last week that he’d been denied parole. He’s been locked up for nearly 30 years for the 1985 slayings of Derek and Nancy Haysom, though his supporters say recent DNA evidence proves he isn’t responsible. In a new episode of the podcast “Wrongful Convictions,” Jason Flom interviews John Grisham and Sheriff Chip Harding, who believe Soering is innocent.
Charlottesville 12 death
Regina Dixon, one of the first 12 children to integrate Charlottesville schools following Massive Resistance in 1958, died January 27 at age 66. Dixon was 7 years old when she started school in 1959 at Venable Elementary, where a historic marker commemorates the event. She died following a five-year battle with cancer, according to her obituary.
Preston Avenue deux
In December, City Councilor Wes Bellamy called for a new moniker for Preston Avenue, which was named after Confederate soldier and slave owner Thomas Lewis Preston, UVA’s first rector, who met with Union generals and kept Charlottesville from being torched. City Council unanimously voted February 4 to rename the street—to Preston Avenue—for Asalie Minor Preston, a black educator who taught in segregated schools in the early 1900s.
City Councilor Wes Bellamy spoke candidly about Confederate statues, the controversy over his old tweets, and the effect his career has had on his family. Photo by Mina Pirasteh
By Jonathan Haynes
City Councilor Wes Bellamy sat down for a revelatory interview at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center January 10 to promote his new book, Monumental: It Was Never About a Statue.
The title alludes to the former vice-mayor’s push to remove Confederate monuments from Charlottesville parks, and the racist backlash it inspired, which culminated in the August 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right rally. “If it’s just about the statues, people aren’t going to kill you,” he said. “People don’t drive a car into a group of people over the removal of a statue.”
Andrea Copeland-Whitsett, director of member education services for the Charlottesville Chamber of Commerce, conducted the interview. She began by addressing the derogatory remarks Bellamy had tweeted about women, white people, and the LGBTQ community between 2009 and 2014, and the outrage that erupted when the tweets resurfaced in November 2016.
Bellamy called the tweets “something evil-inspired,” and described his personal experience of the scandal for the first time. He was spending Thanksgiving in Atlanta with his wife when he got a call from a blocked number. According to Bellamy, the voice said, “Hey n—-r, we’re going to break you down. This is Trump’s country now.” Then he received another call from his office letting him know that his old tweets had been sent to City Council and local press.
He could hardly believe they were from his account. “I was so far past that [kind of attitude],” he said.
Come Monday, “a tsunami hit.” Friends and allies turned their backs on him. Then-governor Terry McAuliffe publicly denounced him. He was devastated. Though he remained on City Council, he resigned from his positions at Albemarle High School and on the Virginia Board of Education.
Ultimately, he said, the experience was humbling. “I used to walk around thinking I was a hero. It was a very necessary lesson to me that I am not.”
Bellamy’s tweets were dug up by Jason Kessler, who organized the Unite the Right rally the following year.
The movement to remove the city’s Confederate monuments is often presented as Bellamy’s idea. But he gives credit to Mayor Nikuyah Walker and local high school activist Zyahna Bryant, who drafted the original petition asking City Council to remove the statues and rename Lee Park.
Bryant contacted him after McAuliffe vetoed a bill that would protect Confederate monuments in March 2016. “You can remove the statue,” she told him.
He teamed up with then-councilor Kristin Szakos, who had been publicly questioning the presence of Confederate monuments, and calling on the city to end its celebration of Lee-Jackson Day.
When Bellamy and Szakos held a press conference, he began to fear for his safety. Staring down “a sea of individuals” bearing Confederate flags and shouting, “I was concerned someone was going to shoot me,” he said. Afterwards, Bellamy began receiving death threats on a daily basis, and “would hear loud beats on the back window” of his home after midnight.
It wasn’t about the statue, he said. “People believed we were going to change what was theirs, that this is their community.”
Though his tenure in office has been tumultuous, Bellamy professed an unremitting love for Charlottesville, praising local residents for coming together to confront racial inequities. There are other cities that have the same issues, he said, “but we’re really willing to talk about it.”
