After the torch-lit white supremacist march through Grounds on August 11, thousands of members of the UVA and Charlottesville communities came together to reclaim the space with a candlelight vigil on the Lawn five days later. Photo by Eze Amos
With a turbulent start to the school year, the University of Virginia undoubtedly looks a little different than it did last spring. Although outgoing President Teresa Sullivan and the UVA administration were criticized for not doing more to protect members of the university community from last summer’s white supremacist torch-lit march, the events of August 11 and 12 have served as a catalyst for some policy changes, including requiring non-UVA-affiliated speakers to register before being allowed on Grounds.
Already in existence at UVA were several groups that serve as safe spaces for students, including the Sustained Dialogue Club and the expanding Brody Jewish Center. But Jefferson’s tenet that learning never stops has perhaps never been more clear, as the university continues to identify solutions for issues as they arise, such as constructing new student housing on Grounds to offset the number of students flooding the local market.
Some Lawn residents we spoke with, who saw their school make national headlines repeatedly in the last four years, say their time spent at UVA is impactful on many levels. The good that came out of tragic events, they say, includes meaningful conversations centered on creating change and an unbreakable bond. “[The events] taught me the value of student leadership and made me believe in the healing power of a community that comes together,” says fourth-year Maeve Curtin.
It's time to say goodbye to University Hall. Photo by: Skycladap
Hall of fame
It’s never the right time to say goodbye, but loyal patrons of the University of Virginia’s iconic, clamshell-roofed venue with notoriously bad sound quality don’t have much longer—the dumping of more than 40 years’ worth of stuff from University Hall has begun, with a complete demolition scheduled by 2020. To help you grieve, here’s a look back at some of the basketball stadium and concert hall’s greatest—and not-so-great—hits.
1965: It opens as the home court of the university’s men’s and women’s basketball teams.
1969: Janis Joplin rocks U-Hall, but trash talks some stage crashers in an after-performance interview with the Cavalier Daily. “That tonight wasn’t natural,” she says.
1971: The Faces grace the stage, fronted by Rod Stewart, who was then accompanied by guitarist Ron Wood—who later became a member of the Rolling Stones.
1973: Paul Simon plays U-Hall and uses portions of the show in his live album Paul Simon in Concert: Live Rhymin’.
1974: Sha Na Na takes the stage, and about an hour after the show, lead guitarist Vinny Taylor is found dead in his Holiday Inn hotel room, where he allegedly overdosed on heroin.
1975: Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie tells the Cavalier Daily in a post-concert interview that the U-Hall crowd was the worst she’d seen in a “long while.”
1982: The Grateful Dead trucks into its highly anticipated show, which sold out two weeks in advance.
1984: Elvis Costello plays a solo acoustic and piano set, though a WTJU DJ pranked the world earlier that year by saying the rock star had died—a hoax that even made it into the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post.
1986: R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck chases, punches, attempts to strangle and rips the shoes off a fan’s feet after he jumps on stage during “7 Chinese Brothers.”
1986: An attempt to break the ACC attendance record by offering free admission, hot dogs and sodas to attendees of a women’s basketball game brought about 13,000 fans, including the fire marshal, who kicked out a couple thousand, bringing the total down to 8,392. Former men’s coach Terry Holland said Hot Dog Night cost them about 1,800 seats for future years, which totaled about $10 million in lost revenue.—Compiled from the Hook
Regrets only
Jason Kessler, middle, arrives to the rally. Photo by Eze Amos
Newsweek reports that the white supremacist leaders who attended last year’s Unite the Right rally, such as Richard Spencer and Mike Enoch, are reluctant to return to Charlottesville for the anniversary event organizer Jason Kessler hopes to get off the ground.
Another chief vacancy
University Police Chief Michael Gibson says he’ll step down this summer from the force he’s led since 2005 and worked for since 1982. UVA has formed a task force to find his successor. Both Gibson and Al Thomas, former Charlottesville police chief, were criticized in Tim Heaphy’s independent review of the events of August 11 and 12.
Vacancy filled
RaShall Brackney. Contributed photo
RaShall Brackney, the former chief of the George Washington University Police Department and a 30-year veteran of the Pittsburgh police, will succeed interim Charlottesville police chief Thierry Dupuis. She resigned from GWU in January, after serving for fewer than three years, and was sued by a former student for allegedly violating Title IX policies, according to school newspaper The GW Hatchet. Brackney was also known at GWU for buying her department a fleet of Segways.
Another vacancy filled
Giles Morris, vice president for marketing and communications at Montpelier and former C-VILLE editor, has been named executive director of Charlottesville Tomorrow. His first day will be June 11. He succeeds CT founder Brian Wheeler, who took the city spokesperson job in January.
Sistah city
Charlottesville’s soulmate city in France gets an honorary street at Second and Market May 10: Rue de Besançon.
Oh, brother
Zachary Cruz, the 18-year-old brother of Parkland, Florida, shooter Nikolas Cruz, was given permission by a judge last week to move to Staunton. The man who’s currently on probation for trespassing at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School has been offered free housing for a year, and a job as a maintenance mechanic, both provided by Nexus Services.
Quote of the week:
Jalane Schmidt by Eze Amos
“What happens to all that hate?” —UVA professor Jalane Schmidt in describing the festive atmosphere often found at lynchings
RaShall Brackney, center, with Mayor Nikuyah Walker and City Manager Maurice Jones, will be the first woman to lead the Charlottesville Police Department.
Staff photo
Today, Jones introduced his latest police chief pick: former George Washington University chief and Pittsburgh police commander RaShall Brackney. And with a petit protest by civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel in City Council chambers, Brackney got a small taste of the activities that have dominated much of local government over the past two years.
Brackney was chosen, says Jones, out of 169 applicants—more than twice the number the last time the job was open. And while City Council will confirm her appointment at its May 21 meeting, all the councilors were on hand to welcome the new chief.
Mayor Nikuyah Walker, who has criticized police profiling and mass incarceration, says she had difficulty “getting on the same page” as the rest of City Council when looking for a new chief, and was concerned about who would want the job after what happened last summer. She describes her interview with Brackney as “refreshing,” and says she’s “hopeful.”
Councilor Wes Bellamy notes that when he talked with Brackney, she said, “Community policing is somewhat of a buzzword,” and that she wants a “transformational style of policing.” He points out that Brackney will be the city’s first African-American female chief—although when talking to reporters afterward, she says she’s “multi-ethnic” and that she doesn’t think race or gender were reasons for her hiring, which “professionalism transcends.”
The need for a new style of police leadership was apparent from other councilors’ remarks. Kathy Galvin found “a marked difference” in Brackney’s delivery and wants to get back to “a feeling you can trust police.”
And Mike Signer says there are “increased demands for a new kind of policing” and protection of free speech in the face of the “dangers of extremism” that present challenges from “those who would terrorize us.”
Brackney stressed the “importance of setting a vision and tone for the community.” And she says she’d gotten tough questions from the community and from the police rank and file, who were “not shy” about saying what they wanted from a new chief. “Law enforcement is at a crossroads right now,” she says, and can “reshape the narrative on how we engage the community.”
The new chief currently lives in Arlington and asked for neighborhood recommendations from the attendees at her debut. She retired from GWU in January after fewer than three years heading the force, which, when she was hired, was “reeling from complaints of a hostile work environment after several former officers filed discrimination lawsuits against the department,” according to the GW Hatchet. She bought a fleet of Segways to encourage officers’ interaction with the community.
And she was named in a federal lawsuit by a former student, who alleged Brackney violated Title IX policies when the university rescinded the student’s enrollment after a domestic dispute with her boyfriend at an Elliott School of International Affairs welcome event in 2016, according to the Hatchet.
Brackney nearly rolled her eyes when asked about the suit, and said that had nothing to do with her decision to leave George Washington.
The new chief was not deterred from taking the job after Charlottesville’s national notoriety following the deadly August 12 Unite the Right rally, and says she is more concerned that the city be able to tell its own story and “have its own conversations about the upcoming anniversary in ways it might not have been able to before.”
And while she’s read all 250-plus pages of the Heaphy report, the city-commissioned independent review of its handling of last summer’s hate rallys, she declined to judge the actions of her predecessor. “We have to make sure we embrace the recommendations,” she said.
Brackney says her first priority would be to get to know the community. “If the first time I’m giving you my business card is during a crisis, then I’ve already failed.”
When she starts June 18, Brackney, 55, will earn $140,000. The salary of former chief Thomas was $134,509.
With more than 30 years of law enforcement experience, she sounds ready to tackle the new job. “I have stamina and grit. And I found the local organic juice bar.”
Fogel took the opportunity before the press conference to berate new city spokesperson Brian Wheeler for not providing notice that the special meeting was a press conference—”I sent out a notice this morning,” said Wheeler—and stood holding signs criticizing current police leadership.
staff photo
“Fire Gary ‘Damn right I gassed them’ Pleasants,” read one of Fogel’s signs, referring to Deputy Chief Pleasants’ order to fire tear gas at the July 8 KKK rally. “If he wouldn’t follow the leader then, why would he follow the leader now?” asked Fogel.
At another Fogel interjection, Bellamy put his fingers to his lips to shush the attorney.
Updated May 16 with Brackney’s age and salary, and Al Thomas’ salary.
Baltimore’s imperial wizard of the Confederate White Knights of the KKK did not appear in court wearing his shiny Klan robes. He didn’t wear the prison stripes from previous appearances, nor did he wear the bandana and tactical vest he sported August 12 when he was videoed firing a Ruger SR9 toward flamethrower-brandishing Corey Long.
Richard Wilson Preston wore a dark pinstriped suit and tie in Charlottesville Circuit Court May 8 when he told a judge that he was pleading no contest to a charge of discharging a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school, a class 4 felony that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years and fine up to $100,000.
Even though his plea was no contest, his mutton-chopped, boater-hat-wearing attorney from Blairs, Virginia,—Elmer Woodard—objected when Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania read a statement of facts of evidence the commonwealth would have presented had there been the three-day trial scheduled to begin May 9.
Judge Rick Moore had to remind Woodard, “You can’t object when you plead no contest.”
One of the witnesses would have been former Charlottesville mayor Frank Buck, whom Platania said saw Long ignite an aerosol spray can directed toward people leaving Emancipation Park after the Unite the Right rally was declared an unlawful assembly. Buck also saw Preston pull out a silver handgun and point it toward the ground beside Long, and he heard someone shout a racial slur at Long and then a gunshot, according to the prosecutor.
Moore found the evidence as summarized “substantial,” and corroborated by bullet fragments and Preston’s own admission to the FBI after his arrest August 26. He scheduled sentencing for May 9, but warned he still could order a pre-sentence report before sentencing Preston.
Legal expert David Heilberg says the no contest plea is unusual, but it’s the “functional equivalent of a guilty plea.” He also said that if a jury had convicted Preston, they would not have been able to give him fewer than two years.
In court today, Platania showed the judge videos taken earlier on August 12 in which the C-VILLE Weekly box was hurled and Preston is heard saying, “I will go out and shoot you. I’ll shoot you.” In another he says, “I’m pissed off. I’m going to shoot one of these motherfuckers,” to which Woodard objected that the video doesn’t show Preston making the latter comment.
“I saw him say it with his mouth moving,” said Moore.
Woodard, dressed in a seersucker suit and red tie, presented four witnesses who testified they felt endangered by Long. Jonathan Howe, a law clerk in Maryland who was here for the rally, said he’d gotten doused with “some kind of paint thinner” as he left the park.
“This was a very surreal moment,” he said. “I had a flammable substance on my hand and someone running around with a flamethrower.” He said he was apprehensive that he could become a “human torch.”
Woodard had subpoenaed DeAndre Harris, the man who was brutally beaten in the Market Street Parking Garage. It was after 10:30am when Woodard asked if Harris were present. “The time to ask that might have been 9:30,” observed the judge.
And although Platania stipulated that paint thinner is volatile and ignites quickly, Woodard showed the judge a clip of Harris and Long spraying a Confederate flag and lighting it, noting “the flame and puff.”
Witness David Fowler said “one little girl got me three times” with pepper spray. He says he was unable to see and being helped out of the park when he heard the whoosh of the aerosol can. “As far as I’m concerned, [Preston] is a hero,” said Fowler. “We shouldn’t be here.”
Gregory Scott “Woodsy” Woods from Glasgow, Virginia, also encountered Long as he left the park and described swinging his flagpole at Long and knocking the aerosol out of his hand after Long “kind of charges at me with the flamethrower.” Woods said he could feel the heat and was trapped on the steps leading to the park until Preston fired his gun.
Under cross examination, Woods denied he said Long was charging at him after Platania showed him a video, which was not visible to the rest of the courtroom. “Once he lights it, he takes a step forward,” said Woods.
Not all of the witnesses were present at the exit from Emancipation Park. Daryl Davis, a black musician who’s known for befriending Klansmen to understand why they hate him in hopes of dispelling that, testified he’s known Preston for five years and they both live in the Baltimore area.
Davis said he put up 50 percent of Preston’s bond and was going to take him to see the African American Museum of History in Washington, but Preston’s house arrest prevented that visit. And when shown apparently racist comments Preston posted on Facebook after August 12—those were not read in court—Davis said he regrets those sentiments.
“I’m testifying because he’s my friend,” said Davis. “He’s in trouble and I’m trying to help.”
After three hours in the courtroom, Moore, as he’d predicted, ordered a pre-sentence report and set August 21 for Preston’s sentencing.
Alex Michael Ramos, with arm raised, was convicted of the malicious wounding of DeAndre Harris.
In the second trial of the week for the brutal August 12 attack on DeAndre Harris, a jury deliberated 35 minutes before entering a second guilty verdict May 3 for an out-of-towner here for the Unite the Right rally.
Georgia resident Alex Michael Ramos, 34, sat expressionless through most of the two-day trial for his charge of malicious wounding. And in the sparsely filled courtroom, he did not appear to have family members or supporters present, although at closing arguments, Hannah Zarski, the woman whose offer to house Ramos a judge rebuffed during a bond hearing, showed up, and Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler sat in a back corner for most of the trial.
Even for those who have seen videos before of the beatdown in the Market Street Parking Garage, it was hard to watch, and a couple of the jurors glared at Ramos after they were shown footage of him, clad in a red Make America Great Again baseball cap and white wifebeater, run into the garage and throw a punch at Harris, who already was on the ground and being beaten by four other men.
For Harris, 20, his testimony May 2 made the third day in a row he took the stand. He previously testified April 30 and May 1 in the malicious wounding trial of Jacob Goodwin, 23, who came from Ward, Arkansas, to take part in the rally. A jury found Goodwin guilty, and two other men charged in the attack—Daniel Borden and Tyler “Boonie Hat” Davis—have trials this summer.
Harris, a teacher’s aide who worked last summer as a YMCA camp counselor, described going to the Unite the Right rally with his brother and several others that he didn’t really know, including Corey Long.
A girl dressed in black gave him a mask, and a man gave him a Maglite, he said.
After the rally in Emancipation Park was declared an unlawful assembly and the white supremacists and neo-Nazis were funneled on to Market Street where counterprotesters were massed, Harris and his party walked east on Market trading barbs with the ralliers.
Harris said he was in front of his group when he turned and saw what appeared to him to be “an alt-right guy driving his flag into Corey.”
What Harris didn’t see, said Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony, was Long run up to League of the South member Harry Crews and attempt to grab his flag.
He was immediately sprayed with a chemical substance, ran and fell down, he said. “I get up and try to run and I fall again,” he said as jurors watched a video of the incident. “I was just trying to get away.”
Nurse practitioner Evan Pryse treated Harris at Sentara Martha Jefferson after he’d taken a shower for chemical decontamination. Harris had eight staples for the gash in his scalp and had difficulty forming sentences, said Pryse, which he thought could be the result of a concussion.
Harris also suffered a fractured left forearm, which Pryse said is in the medical world is known as a “nightstick injury,” and typically occurs when one raises an arm to block a blow.
Detective Declan Hickey was gathering intelligence from news and social media on the third floor of the Charlottesville Police Department August 12 and saw from a surveillance camera the attack on Harris. A former combat paramedic, Hickey found Harris “covered in blood” and looking confused.
Hickey testified that he started investigating the attack and identified Ramos from social media and working with local law enforcement in Georgia.
“We stomped some ass,” Ramos posted on Facebook. “Getting some was fucking fun.”
Ramos was arrested August 28. During cross examination from Ramos’ attorney, Jake Joyce, Hickey said Ramos seemed remorseful when the detective interviewed him.
Joyce did not call any witnesses, and Judge Rick Moore denied Joyce’s motion to strike the malicious wounding charge. Joyce argued that one punch is not sufficient to establish malice, but Moore said four people were beating Harris on the ground when Ramos joined in. “It really is malice to hit someone on the ground,” said the judge.
“Out in the fresh air and sunshine, he could just have walked away,” said Moore.
In his closing argument, Joyce tried to convince the jury Ramos, who goes by Michael, was not guilty of malicious wounding. “Michael threw one punch. He had no weapon. That is a classic assault and battery.”
But ultimately the jury believed Antony’s story of “a man who joined a violent attack on a defenseless, unarmed man.” She reminded the jurors, “We saw him sprinting toward the garage, so eager to get in, he catapults himself into the fray.”
The jury took a bit longer to come up with a sentence for Ramos than it did in finding him guilty, and returned with a recommendation of six years in prison. Ramos will be sentenced August 23.
At one point during closing arguments, Harris left as Antony was describing the attack and Ramos “winding up” his arm and hitting Harris at the same time white-helmeted Borden slams him with a two-by-four.
Afterward, Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania noted the “emotional toll” the trials and testimony are taking on Harris, but added, “He’s a resilient young man.”
Tyler Watkins Davis, 50, of Middleburg, Florida, was in Charlottesville General District Court April 12 for a preliminary hearing, and his attorney argued Davis had been “overcharged” and that the single blow he struck against Harris did not rise to the level of malicious wounding. However, Judge Bob Downer found enough evidence to certify the felony charge to the grand jury.
The moniker “Boonie Hat” debuted in that same court December 14, when Blairs attorney Elmer Woodard, who represents Jacob Goodwin, who’s also charged in the garage brawl, played video of the assault and asked why police had not arrested the then-unknown man wearing a brimmed hat who could be seen striking Harris.
Charlottesville police Detective Declan Hickey testified that he hadn’t noticed Boonie Hat until Woodard pointed him out in December, and he started looking for him. Davis was arrested January 24.
Davis, a member of the neo-Confederate group League of the South, came to Charlottesville to the Unite the Right rally to exercise his political opinions, said his attorney, Matthew Engle. “Opinions I find offensive,” added the attorney. “He had a right to do that.”
Engle portrayed Harris and Corey Long, known from video footage with his homemade flame thrower that he deployed at Emancipation Park, as much more violent and provocative than his client. He said that while Davis was peacefully protesting, Harris burned a Confederate flag earlier that day.
Engle played a video in which he said “two incredibly stupid things happened”: Long attempted to grab a flag belonging to Harold Crews, the head of the North Carolina League of the South, and Harris inserted himself into that. According to Engle, Harris pretty much provoked the vicious attack that left him with a broken wrist and stapled-together scalp. Harris was found not guilty of assaulting Crews March 16.
The attorney also said that “it was irresponsible” to send Unite the Right protesters out of the park and into the street with counterprotesters. Davis walked up Market Street as the two groups sparred. Once in the parking garage, when Harris stumbled in front of him and Davis hit him with what was variously described as a stick or club, “it was not self-defense” but it did lack malice, said Engle, who pointed that Davis only hit Harris once, unlike others involved in the attack.
“He was responding to a threat that he perceived,” said Engle.
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony disagreed. “Mr. Davis struck an individual who was unarmed and on the ground,” she said. “That in and of itself is malice.”
Before his ruling, Downer noted, “This court has viewed so many videos from so many angles,” and some shown April 12 had not been shown in other preliminary hearings. There was “horrible behavior” on the part of many people, he observed.
He said he didn’t think Davis was justified in striking Harris. “I think it was malicious,” and he said he found probable cause to certify the charge to the grand jury.
Downer allowed a bond hearing for Davis. Attorney Bernadette Donovan said her client was 50 years old with “absolutely no record.” Davis was raised in Lynchburg, where he met the woman to whom he’s been married 25 years, she said. Davis was a service technician for Comcast, had passed a background check for his job that had him going into people’s homes, and he was the family’s main breadwinner.
Holly Davis testified that her husband was funny and honest.
Over the prosecution’s objection, Downer agreed to a $5,000 bond on the condition that the commonwealth’s attorney could vet a home electronic monitoring system first. If approved, Davis could only leave his house for work, medical appointments for himself or his son, court or to meet with his attorneys.
“We requested he sign a waiver of extradition,” says Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania.
When Katie Couric came to town to talk to Zyahna Bryant, the CHS student who started
a petition to remove Confederate statues, she didn’t realize the August 12 events would end in death.
Photo: National Geographic/Tom Daly
During her 15-year tenure as NBC “Today Show” co-anchor, UVA alum and journalist Katie Couric was known as America’s Sweetheart. These days, she’s way past that chipper morning news persona, and having finished a six-part series delving into the most contentious issues facing the country today, she says she’s exhausted.
Couric was in Charlottesville April 4 to screen at the Culbreth and Paramount theaters “Re-righting History,” the first episode of the National Geographic series she’s made called “America Inside Out.” The Virginia Film Festival sponsored the event.
She was already working on the legacy of Confederate monuments and names on public buildings before she came here for the August 12 weekend. A high school friend of her daughter’s was going to Yale, and Couric wondered what it was like for an African-American to live in a dorm called Calhoun College, named for a slavery-advocating U.S. vice president.
And then the Lawn where Couric lived as a student was flooded with tiki torch-carrying white supremacists and neo-Nazis chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”
“Little did we know what happened in Charlottesville would take a young woman’s life and change Charlottesville forever,” she said before the screening to a packed house at the Paramount.
Her documentary calls August 11 and 12 “one of the most savage displays of hate America has seen.”
Locals Zyahna Bryant, the then 15-year-old Charlottesville High student who started the petition to remove the Lee statue, activist Don Gathers and Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler, who says the rally’s purpose was to prevent the ethnic “cleansing of white people,” appear in the 47-minute episode that took Couric to New Orleans and Montgomery, Alabama, to explore how the Lost Cause rewriting of history came about and still impacts us today.
The August 12 clashes on the screen “look like the civil rights era all over again,” narrates Couric, and images of the July Ku Klux Klan rally here are interspersed with archival footage of the KKK in its heyday.
The Paramount audience, many of whom were present at the white supremacist invasions, booed when President Donald Trump came on the screen to denounce the hatred and bigotry “on many sides.”
Couric interviewed Confederate heritage defenders, descendants of slave owners now shamed by their ancestors and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who described how he came to remove the Big Easy’s monuments after his friend, Wynton Marsalis, told him what it was like to see them through his eyes.
Historians described how the spike in Confederate monuments came around the beginning of the 20th century as Jim Crowe and lynchings reasserted white supremacy, and the Lost Cause narrative sanitized slavery and the Civil War. “Gone with the Wind did more to shape the history than anything I’ve taught,” said UVA Civil War expert Gary Gallagher.
The landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision also led to a spike in naming schools after Confederate generals, a background of which many whites, like actress Julianne Moore, were unaware. Moore, who went to J.E.B. Stuart High School in Fairfax, led a petition to rename the school, whose moniker she now calls “shameful.”
“Why do we have such a hard time coming to grips with our past?” asked Couric.
After the screening, UVA’s Larry Sabato led a panel discussion with Couric, Bryant, Gathers, Gallagher, UVA historian John Mason and religious leader Seth Wispelwey.
Historian Gallagher doesn’t want a rush to remove statues, instead suggesting there’s more history that can be memorialized, such as the 250 black men from Albemarle who “put on blue uniforms” of the Union.
“People of color often have to put our trauma on the back-burner at the expense of teaching other people about white supremacy,” said Bryant.
And Gathers said, “If a monument to a slave owner is necessary to teach history, it’s time to change the curriculum.”
Thomas Jefferson came up as a prime example of America’s complicated past, and Mason suggested the TJ statue in front of the Rotunda be shrouded at least one week a year in recognition of the less-laudable aspects of the Declaration of Independence’s author, whom Mason called the “godfather of scientific racism.”
Mason also pointed out that many race-based issues, like stop and frisks, gentrification and education, were issues in Charlottesville before August 12. “We’re a very self-congratulatory city,”he said.
Other current events were part of the discussion. Wispelwey called out Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania for prosecuting the three black men charged August 12. He also mentioned City Council’s decision a few days earlier to approve West2nd and asserted that its nearly 100 luxury condos and the 16 affordable units will not help with wealth inequality, with West2nd developer Keith Woodard sitting a few feet away in the audience.
Couric had the last word, and she called for continuing the oft-difficult conversations in which she admitted, “I find myself feeling uncomfortable.” But she said the more she talks to people, the more she’s convinced “people want to do the right thing.”
When Sabato asked what she would change, she said, “I wish we were in a place where there would be a little less harsh judgment.” And she cited the wisdom of her mother, who said, “You get more flies with honey.”
The series premieres at 10pm Wednesday, April 11, on the National Geographic channel.
Clarification April 11: Zhayna Bryant’s comment about African American’s trauma being put on the back burner specifically addressed teaching others about white supremacy.
Dan Rather, whose six-decades-long journalism career included 24 years as anchor of "CBS Evening News," is serving as a keynote speaker at the Tom Tom Founders Festival on April 12. Photo by Lucas Jackson/Reuters/Newscom
Baby boomers grew up with news correspondent Dan Rather covering the civil rights movement, the assassination of President John Kennedy and the Vietnam War. They raised families while Rather anchored “CBS Evening News,” a coveted position he took in 1981 and held for 24 years. Now a whole new generation knows Rather from YouTube’s The Young Turks, cable television and his active Facebook page, which has 2.5 million fans.
Like the Energizer Bunny, Rather, 86, keeps on going.
Last year he published What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, and he’s headed to Charlottesville to serve as a keynote speaker for the Tom Tom Founders Festival on April 12.
He spoke to C-VILLE Weekly by phone from New York, and gave us the scoop on civil rights then and now, fake news—and the dirt on Walter Cronkite. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.—Lisa Provence
C-VILLE: What were you thinking when you were seeing what was going on with the Unite the Right rally here last summer?
Rather: Obviously I was appalled by what happened when it became clear how it was developing organically, which is to say, neo-Nazis and others in protest against the protesters. So I wasn’t surprised what happened. I was surprised at the president’s incendiary remarks in the wake of it. That shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Obviously with a person being killed, it was a tragedy for the victim and her family; it was a tragedy for the community and a tragedy for the country.
In August 1963, Dan Rather was appointed chief of CBS’ Southern bureau in New Orleans, but he happened to be in Dallas the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Three days later, Rather described on-air what happened, but he came under fire for incorrectly reporting that Kennedy’s head fell forward after the second shot instead of backward, as seen on video footage. Nonetheless, Rather’s reporting during the mourning period for Kennedy earned him the CBS White House correspondent position in 1964. Photo courtesy of YouTube
You’ve done quite a bit of civil rights coverage during your career. How does what’s happening now differ from what you saw during the ’60s?
When I covered the civil rights movement on a day-to-day basis in 1962 and 1963, it was in not its earliest stages, but still in its early stages. That was a long time ago. Here we are near the end of the second decade of the 21st century. Different day, different time, different demographic makeup of the country, so one has to be a little careful in comparing eras, but there are some similarities.
And one is the vestiges of the Ku Klux Klan. What we’re dealing with as a country and a community, what people were dealing with in the events of August 12, this is the remnants of the old Klan. As an organization the Klan is not nearly as strong as it was in the early ’60s.
On the other hand, the neo-Nazi—I hate to call it a movement, which I don’t think it actually is—but neo-Nazism is much more public now and has more people who are willing to identify as neo-Nazis publicly show their face than was the case in the ’60s.
One of the things I was thinking about when this all happened last summer: Sometime in the late ’70s there was an incident in Skokie, Illinois, in which a group of neo-Nazis paraded in the streets. The president [Jimmy Carter] or certainly members of his administration roundly denounced them. They were dealt with swiftly and roundly condemned by practically all aspects of decent society. Now you contrast that with what’s different now. In the case of Charlottesville, the president, unfortunately, and I think it’s very unfortunate, tried to do some false equivalence between the neo-Nazis and the peaceful protesters who were there. So it’s a big difference.
I would say the biggest difference between now and the 1960s, number one, there’s been a dramatic change in the demographics of the country. Immigration laws changed in 1965 with immigration reform and since that time there’s been considerably more immigration and it’s much more diverse. The other difference is the Klan was much stronger in the 1960s throughout the South.
If you were watching the news coverage of the rally here, did anything stand out to you about how the event was covered or did it seem like familiar times?
One thing is, there was a lot more of it. In the post-digital age, the internet age, there are many more television channels, not to mention other reporters on scene. When I was covering the civil rights movement, CBS News was the only television news organization that was regularly covering it.
That doesn’t tell you much because in those days there were only two other national news organizations, and that was NBC and ABC, and NBC was a little slow off the mark in covering civil rights. In the early ’60s there was no such thing as a television channel with all news all the time. Whereas when this event happened last year, the cable channels were all hours, day and night, around-the-clock coverage. That did not exist in the early 1960s.
The other thing that struck me was that there’s a lot more analysis and commentary than there was in the 1960s. When the evening news expanded to a half hour, which I think was in 1963, an event like this may have gotten four, five, six minutes, but that didn’t allow for very much, if any, analysis and commentary, whereas when this event happened last year, in addition to straight ahead, on-scene, just showing the pictures, you had analysis and commentary.
While we’re touching on newscasts in the early ’60s, is there anything you can tell us about Walter Cronkite that people would be surprised to know? Do you have any dirt on Walter Cronkite that you can reveal now?
[Laughs.] Well of course I do. I knew him very well. They might be surprised to know he had a tremendous sense of humor, which he rarely, if ever, showed on the air. He liked to tell stories, some a little too long and not as funny as he thought they were, but he was a good storyteller and yarn spinner. He loved a good joke, most of them clean but not all of them. He was a very good dancer. Loved to dance. He went to a party and probably danced with every woman in the same area code.
CBS’ Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite cover the 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York City. The Democratic candidates were future president Jimmy Carter and vice president Walter Mondale. Photo by Dennis Brack
Given the often-cited “print is dead” mentality, why should anyone consider embarking on a career in journalism at this point?
There’s a whole list of reasons not to go into journalism, not the least of which is its notoriously low pay, particularly in the lower ranks of journalism. I recognize that a lot of people, including myself, have eventually gotten in positions where it pays well and, in some cases, very well. But your question was why should anyone go into journalism.
One, when it’s done well, journalism matters. It counts. It can make a difference. In journalism one can have a sense of being part of something bigger than yourself and that can be quite satisfying.
Also, journalism is kind of a constant graduate school of learning. You can’t do journalism and try to do it well without a sense of feeling you’re in a constant graduate school—you’re learning all the time. You learn what happens at the police station after midnight. You learn what happens at the charity hospital. You learn what happens at the zoning hearings at city council. You’re just constantly learning. This is broadening and deepening for one as a person.
Three, if you have a passion for it, even if you’re a local reporter, much less a globe-trotting reporter, there’s a sense of adventure with journalism. You’re learning all the time, you’re broadening and deepening yourself. You have experiences most people don’t have, access to places a lot of people don’t have, so there is the sense of adventure with it.
Journalism is also an ideal place for anyone who is idealistic, and so for all those reasons it can be a great career. However, I say that it can only be a good career for someone who has a real passion going. Journalism is one of those crafts or professions where you have to burn with a hot, hard flame if you’re going to do it well.
Now, there are other professions in which that’s true, but there are many professions that you can go into, you go to work at 9 and leave at 5 and you don’t carry it with you. Therefore you don’t have to have a particularly deep passion for it. Journalism you have to really want to do it. You have to be consumed by a desire to do it, almost something close to, if not an outright obsession.
What advice would you give aspiring young journalists?
I’m not sure I’m the person to give advice to anybody, having made every mistake in the book at least two or three times.
If pressed to do so, I would say, number one, if you’re interested, by all means get into it but understand you have to have a passion to do it. Number two, commit and keep saying to yourself that you are not going to lose your idealism. Number three is you have to learn to write and write well, and in most circumstances, write pretty quickly.
Writing is the bedrock of the press, whether one is going into electronic journalism, television, radio or whatever. You have to commit yourself to a lifetime of being ever-improving as a writer. Writing is the absolutely essential core to becoming a journalist.
One of the reasons is in order to write even reasonably well, you have to think, and writing encourages analytical thinking, challenging almost everything, skeptical—never cynical. For example, you’re covering the city council meeting. You have to say, this is what the mayor says and this is what council man or woman so-and-so says. Now let me get busy and telephone and wear out some shoe leather and find out what’s really going on.
Journalists are being called out for fake news. How do you respond to that when it’s being widely fired out at mainstream news organizations?
First of all, I recognize—and I hope that enough other people recognize—that this accusation is most often put forth by people who seek their own partisan, political or ideological advantage. They’re trying to do two things. One, they’re trying to undermine responsible journalism and the second thing they’re trying to do is exploit it. There’s always been fake news around. But this slogan of “fake news,” much of it is calling anything with which you disagree, no matter how factual it is, fake news.
My general reaction to these accusations of fake news is A), not to worry too much about it and just do the work. Just do the damn work and let it speak for itself.
And the second is that, as a journalist, as the football coaches say, you are what your record is. For good and bad and in between, you are what your record is and you have a record, and to anybody who says what you’re doing is fake news, just put the record out and that’s probably the best you can do.
In my own case, I am what my record is, and my record is not unblemished. It’s not perfect. Nobody can do journalism perfectly and we do make mistakes and it is important when you’ve made a mistake to acknowledge it and pull yourself up and try to go on. But when it isn’t true you also have to stand and face the furnace and stand up for your work.
In 1996, Dan Rather traveled to Cuba to interview Fidel Castro, the infamous dictator who ruled the island nation for more than three decades, for an hour-long CBS report. Photo by Alpha/Zuma Press/Newscom
I will say this about all these accusations of fake news: I think that most people, overwhelmingly most people—and this has been my experience with audiences—most people have pretty good common sense. Most Americans are very good at separating brass tacks from bullshine.
I tend not to be all that worried about these accusations of fake news. Because of the internet and how dissemination of news has changed, there’s so many more opportunities for people to scream fake news to undercut traditional journalism. I don’t like the phrase mainstream journalism. What the hell does that mean?
But traditional journalism can be practiced very responsibly in the four main areas, which are straight news, which is you gather the facts, and then analysis, that’s number two. You can know all the facts and still not know the truth because you have to connect the dots. So analysis is taking the facts and trying to connect the facts, and analyze them.
Then you have commentary. Commentary is not necessarily analysis. It might include it, but commentary is sort of, this is what I’m thinking. And then the fourth area is editorial. Editorial is different from the others. An editorial recommends a course of action: Vote for Mary and not for Jim. Or vote for the bond issue. When you recommend a course of action, that’s an editorial.
I think the public could use a little refresher course so that when they watch something or read something, they can say to themselves, now is this straight news reporting or is it analysis or is it a combination of straight news reporting and analysis? Or is it just commentary or does it recommend a course of action and is therefore an editorial?
If news consumers think of it in those terms, then while there’s certainly something to worry about with these charges of fake news, I’m not going to worry about it very much. What I’m going to do is go out and try to do the work and let the work stand for itself.
How has Facebook changed your life?
Frankly it gave me a whole new lease on journalistic life. I’m very grateful for that. I’m 86 years old, in my 87th year, and to be able to work full-time and then some and to have found an audience, including an audience that is made up of people much younger than myself, is sort of stunning and satisfying. I’m enjoying myself. I can’t remember a time when I enjoyed work any more than I do now.
It continues to amaze me that I came to social media, including Facebook, very late. Frankly, I thought that I was probably past the point I could engage in it, so I didn’t take to it right away. At my company News and Guts, which is a small news operation, younger members of my staff came to me and said, look, if you want to stay anywhere close to relevant, if you’re going to have a voice, it’s not a choice, it’s imperative. You just have to go to social media.
And I said, well, I don’t think that’s true, but to hell with it, if you think so, well, we’ll try it. And that’s how it came to be and we fairly quickly found an audience, which amazed me and still amazes me. Thank God and whatever other forces are responsible that it happened because I’m just having a terrific time. I get up every morning and can’t wait to get out of bed and find out what’s happening and where there’s a story and chase it.
Last week an attorney defending an alt-right client subpoenaed a reporter as a witness. This week the same lawyer called a city councilor to court to support his motion that Daniel Borden, charged with malicious wounding, cannot get a fair trial in Charlottesville
Mike Hallahan represents Borden, an Ohio man who was 18 years old and known for his high school swastika drawings and Nazi salutes when he came to Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally, according to Cincinnati’s local NBC affiliate WLWT and the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Borden is one of four men charged in the Market Street Parking Garage beatdown of DeAndre Harris, who also was charged with malicious wounding, and who was acquitted in Charlottesville General District Court March 16.
In Charlottesville Circuit Court March 29, Hallahan said the city has shown an “absolute sheer bias” against rally participants by pursuing charges against them but not prosecuting people for jaywalking or blocking Fourth Street at the time of the car attack in which a white supremacist rammed his car into a crowd of people, killing local woman Heather Heyer and injuring many others.
Hallahan, who subpoenaed this reporter in a different case, called City Councilor Wes Bellamy, who was vice-mayor in August, to the witness stand to testify about the community’s perception of rally goers.
Bellamy said Charlottesville residents have routinely called Unite the Right participants “white supremacists” and “Nazis,” but when asked if all locals feel that way, the councilman replied that he can’t speak for more than 40,000 people.
As Bellamy hobbled away from the witness box on crutches from a basketball injury, he stopped to whisper something in Borden’s ear and patted him on his right pectoral. Borden nodded his head.
The defense attorney had planned to call former councilor Kristin Szakos to the stand, but reported that she’s out of the country. He entered into evidence a Facebook post she wrote several months ago, when she said it’s interesting that “Nazis” want to move their trials out of the city where they committed their alleged crimes.
“We are not their people,” she wrote.
Hallahan also said the local media coverage of Unite the Right has been biased and not a single positive article has been written about it.
“These are not opinion pieces,” said Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina-Alice Antony. “They are fact-based.”
She argued that the judge should not grant Borden’s motion to move his trial, but take it under advisement until the prosecutor and defense attempt to seat an impartial jury in June. Average jury pools include about 40-60 individuals, but 150 are being summoned for this one, she said.
Just as the attorney for Jacob Goodwin, another accused Harris assailant, did yesterday, Hallahan alluded to “sleeper activists” who would intentionally try to sit on the jury to convict Borden. The defendant’s dad shook his head vigorously.
Borden has been in jail since August, and Hallahan also asked for a bond hearing, which Judge Rick Moore denied because it was not on the docket. A separate date will be set for that, but Borden’s father, a retired commanding officer and combat pilot in the U.S. Air Force, testified that he’s willing to take his son home to Ohio until the trial.
A woman later identified as Borden’s father’s lifelong companion could be heard whispering that Harris didn’t spend a night in jail because he’s black.
Moore took the change of venue motion under advisement until after the court has attempted to seat an unbiased jury.
Jacob Goodwin, one of four men charged in the beating of DeAndre Harris August 12, was found guilty of malicious wounding.
Charlottesville police
An attorney for an Arkansas man who can be seen kicking DeAndre Harris in the face in videos of the August 12 Market Street Parking Garage brawl at the summer’s Unite the Right rally is now asking for a change of venue for his client’s upcoming trial.
Elmer Woodard—the lawyer from Blairs who represents Jacob Goodwin, as well as “Crying Nazi” Chris Cantwell and KKK leader Richard Preston—says Goodwin can’t get a fair trial in Charlottesville.
For one, because jurors are likely to park in the closest garage, which also happens to be the scene of the crime.
And if a judge bars them from parking there, their second choice could lead them to Charlottesville Circuit Court up Heather Heyer Way—the street recently renamed in honor of the 32-year-old woman who was killed on the day of Goodwin’s alleged offense.
“I think that’s a huge problem in seating a jury,” Woodard told the judge. Jurors are not legally allowed to visit a crime scene outside of the court’s control, he added.
But a parking problem isn’t the only reason he said his client can’t be tried here.
Woodard noted that media coverage of Goodwin often mentions Heyer’s death, “inflating” that the man who came to court in a gray and white-striped jail jumpsuit, with a brown beard and long, braided ponytail, was involved. Charlottesville residents aren’t able to be impartial about whether he should be found guilty of malicious wounding, said the attorney.
There’s also the potential for “sleeper activists,” he said—a phrase that Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler’s attorney, Mike Hallahan, said in a motion to change the venue of Kessler’s perjury trial. These people, the lawyers say, would intentionally try to be seated on the jury to convict unfavorable defendants.
Woodard said he no longer pays attention to what’s reported in local media about his clients.
“I had to stop reading [it] because my eyes crossed,” he said.
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina-Alice Antony agreed with Woodard that jurors parking in the garage on Market Street could be problematic, but said the defense’s argument that seating a jury would be difficult is irrelevant.
“It’s not whether seating the jury will be difficult, it’s whether the court can seat an impartial jury,” she said. During the voir dire portion of the trial, Woodard will have the opportunity to examine and interview potential jurors, and motion to strike individuals he deems unfit from the jury pool.
Judge Rick Moore agreed that he could seat an impartial jury, but took the motion under advisement to consider the parking dilemma. He also denied a defense motion to exclude evidence.
The evidence in question was a surveillance video of the attack, which plays at 15 frames per second, while all other known videos that will be admitted during the trial are 30 frames per second.
Woodard opened his argument on that motion in an unusual way. In his initial statement, he only actually voiced every other word to the judge, or half the sentence.
He said a video that plays at 15 frames per second shows only half of what happened and would be misleading to a jury, as it was misleading to the judge when he spoke every other word of a sentence.
“You didn’t mislead me,” said Moore. “I just didn’t know what you were saying.”
Goodwin’s two-day jury trial is scheduled to begin April 30.
