Tag: court square

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Guiding lights

Jalane Schmidt, director of UVA’s Memory Project, hopes a student research team can get through Albemarle County’s records for sales of enslaved people by summer’s end. Photo: Eze Amos

It’s been over two years since a local resident threw the Court Square slave auction marker into the James River, and Charlottesville is slowly—yet surely—moving toward erecting a new memorial. Since 2020, the city’s Historic Resources Committee has met with several dozen descendants, gathering their input on how to properly memorialize the thousands of enslaved people who were bought and sold downtown. 

On Tuesday, SUNY Binghamton history professor Anne Bailey, an expert on slavery in the United States, met with local descendants before giving a talk at the Central Library on memorializing the victims of slave auctions and healing from Charlottesville’s painful history. A recording of the event is available to watch on the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society Facebook page.

“[The descendants] are just going to meet with her and talk about commemorative events, and kind of explain what’s been going on here for the past several years in Charlottesville,” explained committee member Jalane Schmidt during an April 8 HRC meeting. “Dr. Bailey works with descendants of the Butler plantation sale [in Savannah, Georgia], and they’ve been gaining some traction with commemorative events in the last several years.”

Schmidt said she would ask participants to share notes from their meeting with Bailey, so the committee can use them to further guide descendant engagement. “It’s a balance between wanting to give them space, and also wanting that to inform the process.”

Last month, a small group of descendants also met with University of Virginia graduate students Jake Calhoun and MaDeja Leverett, who have been searching Albemarle County’s chancery records for sales of enslaved people for several months. So far, they have identified the names of over a dozen enslaved people who were sold on the courthouse steps. 

It’s been more than two years since the Court Square slave auction marker was stolen and thrown in the James River. Photo: City of Charlottesville

Schmidt, director of UVA’s Memory Project, said during the HRC meeting that she may add another student to the research team, so they can try to get through all of the sale records by the end of this summer. However, the time-consuming project may not be completed until next year.

In February, the committee sent a progress report to City Council, detailing the descendant engagement process and requesting up to $1 million for the new memorial, which could be erected at a variety of possible locations, including Court Square, Court Square Park, adjacent to Number Nothing, or in front of the Albemarle County Courthouse—either in place of the old Monticello sign, or where the Confederate Johnny Reb statue stood. It remains unclear when council will allocate funding for the long-anticipated project.

“There is an expectation that one of the future projects is a significant physical memorial, likely in Court Square,” reads the report. “The second desire is an educational component that interprets the chattel slavery system throughout antebellum Albemarle County.”

“We do not anticipate that only one action or construction will be created, but rather a collection of projects serving unique but related purposes,” the report continues. “We anticipate that these projects will cost from $500K to $1M, [covering] locations throughout Charlottesville and Albemarle.”

During last week’s meeting, the committee also briefly discussed the draft of the downtown walking tour map, which is still being edited. Since 2020, a city subcommittee, including HRC members, has been working to revamp the antiquated map.

Member Dede Smith explained that the new map will move away from “broad themes” and highlight about 14 sites in Court Square, on Water and Market streets, in Vinegar Hill, and on the Downtown Mall. “We’re still grappling with what content to include and how to be inclusive,” said Smith.

“I know there’s been continual concern over the progress of this, but we really are trying to do something that is very different,” added chair Phil Varner. “Once we get there, it will be something that is hopefully used for a very long time, that is useful for people, and more representative of the area.”

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News

In brief: Fire fighters fight the budget, Barracks bikers, and more

City Manager Tarron Richardson. Photo: Eze Amos

Money talks 

City Manager Tarron Richardson presented his proposed budget for fiscal year 2021 at the City Council meeting on March 2. If that sentence made you yawn, we understand—but the tail end of the hours-long council meeting represents the beginning of the end of the budget cycle, some of the more important city business of the year. Richardson’s office has been working with City Council on the budget since September, and will finalize the plan in April.

Around 20 firefighters attended the meeting in yellow T-shirts reading “staffing matters,” as a protest against Richardson’s decision not to fund nine new positions for the department. Richardson says the fire department’s hiring program was developed before he arrived, and that new hiring has to be done strategically.

The new budget includes significant appropriations for affordable housing, with $4.1 million for housing in FY21 and $31.2 million in the five-year capital improvement plan, though it doesn’t include the roughly $400,000 requested by the Charlottesville Housing Affordability Grant Program. Community activism around housing “elevated it as a priority for City Council,” Richardson told us in a rare interview February 28. “And as city manager, I try to follow through with their defined priorities.”

Richardson also defended his decision to give the school district a $2.1 million budget increase instead of the $3.8 million it requested. He says the $2.1 million is in accordance with the 40 percent of new property taxes that has historically been given to schools. The school board presented a breakdown of its request at the meeting, emphasizing teacher compensation as a critical component that could be jeopardized by lack of funding.

Then there’s the Market Street parking garage, a $10 million expenditure that Richardson has explained away as “basically signed off on with the county” before he arrived. Councilor Michael Payne criticized the garage at the meeting, saying “it could be very easy for us to spend 10 million on this to meet a need that’s not exactly there.”

C-VILLE asked Richardson if declining requests from citizens all day long takes a toll on him. “It takes a toll, yes,” he said. “Do I say no all the time? I would say no. But what I try to do is make sure that we take things and look at it from a holistic approach.”

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Quote of the Week

“I want teachers to be able to afford to live in our city.”

­—Charlottesville School Board chair Jennifer McKeever, addressing City Council about the school district’s unmet funding request

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In Brief

Bikers on Barracks?

On March 2, City Council voted unanimously to approve a state-funded project that will add a shared-use pedestrian and bike path to a stretch of Barracks Road. But some nearby residents objected—one speaker at the council meeting suggested that installing sidewalks and bike paths was unnecessary because there were never any walkers or bikers on the road. Perhaps that’s because there are no sidewalks or bike paths? Impossible to say for sure.

Baby steps

During the same meeting, council expressed support for a requested special use permit from developer Woodard Properties for a new apartment complex on Harris Street. The permit would allow Woodard to build 105 units; the developer indicated that 10 of those would be designated affordable housing. Without the permit, Woodard could build 50 units and wouldn’t have to keep any affordable. Mayor Nikuyah Walker wanted to push Woodard to include more cheap units, but Councilor Michael Payne backed the permit, saying blocking developments like these won’t address the deep-lying issues that have created the local housing crisis.

Honoring our ancestors

Dozens of people gathered in Court Square March 1 for a candlelight vigil in remembrance of the thousands of enslaved people, including children as young as 2, who were bought and sold there. The event, which included prayer, singing, and readings, kicked off the city’s Liberation and Freedom Day celebrations, which continue through March 9 and commemorate the arrival of Union troops in Charlottesville.

Still standing still 

Nothing has changed with the Dewberry/Laramore, our local eyesore on the Downtown Mall, but apparently that’s not for lack of trying. According to documents obtained recently by The Daily Progress, the city initiated a process to conduct a structural integrity study of the building last November, a potential step toward demolishing the long-neglected property under its blight ordinance. The catch? Dewberry Capital, whose Dewberry Group website declares the half-completed wreck is “poised to become the city’s premier luxury multi-use property,” hasn’t given the city permission to enter the site.

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News

In brief: New memorials, kayak commute, gaga for Wawa

The Court Square Historic Resources Subcommittee is considering inscribing enslaved woman Maria Perkins' letter on a new memorial.

Back to the drawing board

Three weeks after the Court Square slave auction plaque was stolen in the middle of the night, the hole left in the sidewalk has been bricked in, leaving little evidence that any memorial ever existed.

The city quickly removed unauthorized replacement plaques by local artist Richard Parks, but discussions are moving forward to install a temporary marker at the site, while a permanent memorial is being planned.  

 

The above plaque was stolen from Court Square on February 6.

The Court Square Markers Historic Resources Subcommittee has been guiding the city’s efforts to install more legible and accurate historic signs on the city-owned buildings around the square. The committee was not initially charged with addressing the slave auction block plaque.

A better memorial there “was on our work plan,” said committee member Genevieve Keller, but the theft of the plaque “has moved it up on the agenda.”

On Monday afternoon, the subcommittee invited local African American leaders and historians to give input on the new marker’s design. 

Everyone in the meeting agreed that the previous marker was woefully insufficient. “Everything else around there is big,” said Eddie Harris, parent educator at ReadyKids. “Just because [the history] is a little uncomfortable, it still has to be shown, in a big way.”

Installing a temporary marker is difficult—the marker has to be substantial enough to communicate serious emotional weight, but some at the meeting expressed concern that if the marker is too well-made, the city will be less likely to install a larger, more elaborate memorial down the road.

Security is a consideration, too. “I would urge this community to implore council that whatever structure is put up there be encased in some sort of glass,” said community activist Don Gathers. “Preferably bulletproof glass.”

The city’s initial suggestion, a waist-high obelisk with a plaque on the side, was rejected by subcommittee members and guests as not impressive enough. An idea that garnered more support was a six-foot-tall metal sign inscribed with the text from an 1852 letter written by Maria Perkins, an enslaved person whose family was splintered by sales in Charlottesville. 

The subcommittee hopes to consult a professional exhibit designer and solicit further community input before presenting a finalized proposal for a temporary memorial to City Council at its regular meeting on March 16.

The subcommittee is considering using the following text from the above letter as an inscription on a temporary replacement memorial:

“Dear Husband, I write you a letter to let you know of my distress. My master has sold Albert to a trader on monday court day and myself and other child for sale also…I want you to tell Dr Hamilton or your master if either will buy me they can attend to it now…I don’t want a trader to get me…A man by the name of Brady bought Albert and is gone I dont know where. They say he lives in Scottsville…Tell I am quite heart sick….I am and ever will be your kind wife, Maria Perkins.”

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Quote of the Week

“Crimes like the Tessa Majors killing test the limits of forgiveness and redemption. But charging adolescents as adults makes the state crueler, not safer.”

—The New York Times Editorial Board, on New York state’s decision to charge 14-year-old Rashaun Weaver as an adult for killing Tessa Majors

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In Brief

Trail trial

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will be allowed to cross the Appalachian Trail. A lower court’s ruling that the pipeline couldn’t pass under the trail was a setback for Dominion, but reports from the hearing in Washington suggest that the court’s five conservative justices, as well as Stephen Breyer, seem sympathetic to Dominion’s case. The court will deliver a final ruling in the summer. 

Sisterly love 

Ahead of its May trip to Winneba, Ghana, one of Charlottesville’s four sister cities, a local delegation is collecting backpacks, pens, pencils, markers, erasers, watercolor paints, notebooks, binders, sanitary pads, flip flops, and disposable diapers for the West African city’s schools. Donation can be left at Church of Our Savior on Rio Road.

F*ck cars

WillowTree is not waiting for Charlottesville Area Transit to expand its bus routes: The rapidly growing local tech company says it will provide its own 20-person buses for employees to get to work at its new headquarters in Woolen Mills, according to a report by the online news site Technical.ly. Employees will also have access to kayaks for those who want to commute via the Rivanna.

Gaga for Wawa

Watch out Sheetz: Convenience store chain Wawa, a cult favorite in Philly and south Jersey, will open its first Charlottesville-area location in September at Proffit Road and Route 29. The company is in the midst of an initiative to open 40 stores in northern Virginia over the next 15 years. 

Updated 2/25 to reflect that the Wawa will not technically be located within Charlottesville city limits, 2/27 to correct Mr. Harris’ job title (he is a parent educator for the Real Dads program at ReadyKids, not the organization’s leader), and 2/27 to clarify that the Court Square Markers Historic Resources Subcommittee only has jurisdiction over city-owned property in Court Square.

 

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Opinion

More to the story: Questions about slave auction marker go back years

The original plaque marking the spot of the auction block was removed from Court Square in February, leaving the city with an opportunity to re-imagine the location.

Richard Allan in 2013. Photo courtesy Crozet Gazette.

Editor’s note: Last Friday, before being turned in to police, Albemarle County resident Richard Allan came to C-VILLE’s office to tell the story of why he had taken Court Square’s slave auction block marker in the early morning hours of February 6. He asked that we print an article he had written about the issue back in 2014 that explained his concerns about the marker. Below is a condensed version of that story, which was published in the Albemarle County monthly The Echo in December 2014. He adds: “I extend apologies to any fellow citizen who feels I dishonored them or their heritage by my act.’ 

On June 10, 2014, the following letter appeared in The Daily Progress, from a notable civil rights activist and senior member of the city’s African American community:

It appears that to Charlottesville’s government, black history does not matter. I have not seen one letter or heard any concerns raised about the historic marker that was removed from 0 Court Square. The slate plaque, which marked the site of Charlottesville’s slave auction block, disappeared at some point—even though other plaques on buildings on Court Square remained.

Recently, the plaque—with white text in a large font that was easily visible from a distance—was replaced by an unobtrusive marker set into the sidewalk and a dark-brown marble plaque on the wall. The plaque is difficult to see, let alone read.

These questions come to mind:

When were the slate markers put on buildings on Court Square? Who decided to remove the “Site of Slave Block” slate, and why? When was it taken down? Were the City Council and city manager informed that the slate had been removed?

Slates on other buildings on Court Square can be read from a distance — but the replacement plaque, because it is nearly the same color as the surrounding brick, is almost invisible unless a person is already close to the building.

As for the marker in the sidewalk, I doubt that people walking past even notice it. Are any other historic markers in the city relegated to the sidewalk?

Finally, were any African-Americans or the University of Virginia history department consulted before a marker that documented slavery — such a shameful chapter in Charlottesville’s and Albemarle County’s history—was eliminated?

Eugene Williams—Charlottesville

As a writer/researcher concerned with issues surrounding enslavement of Native and African Americans in our region, the letter piqued my attention. I know that how we remember history directly affects how we live together today. I waited for journalistic follow-up on the questions Mr. Williams had raised. None occurred.

I interviewed Mr. Williams several times. He felt that the original grey sign should be restored, and was disturbed that it had been replaced by a marker on the sidewalk. “No one knows to look down and see that,” he said. “It is like our people’s history is still something to be ignored. To just to be walked on top of.”

Exactly what became of the antique grey plaque? Who decided to remove it? And why replace it with a tiny plaque easy to trample underfoot?

Civil rights activist Eugene Williams stands in front of Charlottesville’s former, more prominent, slave auction marker in the 1970s. Photo courtesy Richard Allan.

I contacted Mary Joy Scala, then the city’s preservation and design planner for the City of Charlottesville. She told me that the grey slate plaque reading “Site of Slave Block” was removed at some time before 2002, and that she didn’t know why it was removed or who removed it. “Since the plaque had been installed on private property, there would have been no need for the owner of #0 Park Street to notify city officials about its removal,” she wrote in her response to me.

“When a citizen expressed concern about the removal and asked that the sign be restored, we approached the property owner, who did not want it placed back on the building. Therefore, our department had a bronze sign installed in the City sidewalk near the building,” her response continued. “You are correct that the black granite plaques are hard to read. The City’s Historic Resources Committee is currently working on a new series of Court Square markers to replace the hard-to-read granite ones.”

Ms. Scala did not reply to my follow-up query about who was responsible for this project or what the timetable was for completion.

There is a small brass marker in the sidewalk, unnoticeable; it mocks enslavement by placing it underfoot. To this writer, this issue is an embarrassment to our community.

Court Square is still dominated by the 25-foot-tall column and statue commemorating a Confederate soldier, which reads: “Lest We Forget—Warriors, your valor, devotion to duty and fortitude under privations teach us how to suffer and grow strong.”

I found myself thinking of a new marker to replace the present, unnoticed ones. It would be erected at Charlottesville’s historic Court Square, on a monument equally as large as that memorial to rebel courage.  It would read almost the same:

“To Albemarle’s Enslaved and Original Builders—Lest We Forget—Warriors of Labor, your valor, devotion to duty and fortitude under terrible privations teach us today how to suffer and grow strong.”

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News

Staying downtown: Albemarle and Charlottesville finally resolve court’s future

The Levy Opera House Building, pictured here on the corner of Park and High streets, will be renovated, and a new $30 million courthouse complex will be built beside it. staff photo

After a couple of years of contention over Albemarle County’s threat to move its courts from downtown Charlottesville, elected officials in the two jurisdictions have finally decided to jointly locate their lower courts in a downtown building both localities purchased together in 2005.

“We have reached agreement on the expansion and renovation of the Albemarle County District Court and the Charlottesville General District Court to meet our future needs right here in Court Square,” said Ann Mallek, chair of the Albemarle Board of Supervisors.

“Today’s agreement is the result of years of work by the City of Charlottesville and the County of Albemarle to co-locate their general district courts in the same facilities, and for the county courts to remain downtown,” said Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker.

The joint decision ends a nearly five-year period during which Albemarle supervisors explored the possibility of moving the county’s courts to a location outside of Court Square, which is technically the county seat. That would have required approval by voters in a referendum.

Mallek said county supervisors explored different possibilities to make certain the more than 100,000 residents of Albemarle were best served by a downtown location.

“We have studied as many as five different court locations and options over the last two years,” she said. “At the public hearing last December and in countless emails, we’ve heard strong support for the continued adjacency of city and county courts.”

The legal community fought hard against the proposal to move the courts out of downtown, with some arguing that splitting the courts would make it harder for poorer residents to access the justice system.

Palma Pustilnik with Central Virginia Legal Aid Society says, “I think it’s wonderful that we have finally managed to have an agreed upon situation that best serves all the members of the public.” She adds that the deal has the support of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Bar Association, both commonwealth’s attorney’s offices, and the legal community.

All five city councilors and six Albemarle County supervisors gathered at the corner of Park and East High streets on Monday in an impromptu joint session to announce the deal.

After the announcement, both elected bodies met to ratify the deal in public session. Supervisor Rick Randolph cast the only vote against the deal at a meeting at the county office building.

“The county had an opportunity with this court location decision to steer its own independent path towards its own strategic objectives,” Randolph said at that meeting.

Randolph said he believes the Board of Supervisors will one day vote to move the court. He also said there was a missed opportunity to use the negotiations over the courts to help change the revenue-sharing deal that has been in place for more than three decades.

One complaint from county residents advocating for courts outside of town has been the perceived difficulty of parking downtown. Part of the deal involves the creation of a new parking garage to be built by the city of Charlottesville at 701 E. Market St. That property has also been co-owned by the city and county since 2005, but the county will sell its portion to allow the city to build its third municipal parking garage.

“The city will then purchase the county’s interest in the parcel for one half of the appraised value,” Walker said.

As part of the deal, Charlottesville will provide 90 spaces in the new structure to Albemarle, as well as 15 on-street parking spaces reserved for county court patrons “in the area immediately surrounding the county court facilities,” according to Walker.

The need to update the court facilities stems from University of Virginia projections which forecast Albemarle will grow to a population of over 148,000 people in 2045, up from a 2017 population estimate of 108,000.

“Population growth has brought increased caseloads, and the existing court facilities do not meet contemporary standards for safety and security,” Mallek said.

These trends have long been anticipated. The city and county spent nearly $5.4 million in 2005 for the Levy Opera House property in Court Square, and that same transaction also included the surface lot that will become part of the future parking garage.

Charlottesville spent $2.85 million in November 2016 for the half-acre lot that now houses Lucky 7 and Guadalajara, and soon entered into a long-term lease with the businesses. At the time, the idea of housing the businesses in the retail portion of a new garage was floated, but that did not come up at the press conference.

The new $30-million general district courts will be built next to a renovated structure that dates back to 1852.

“The facility will be approximately 60,000 square feet, and the county will maintain three courts at the facility and the city will maintain one court,” Walker said. “The Levy Opera House building will also be renovated for the relocation of the Albemarle County commonwealth’s attorney office.”

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News

Legal question: Can supes order Albemarle court move?

Albemarle County officials want to move their courts out of Court Square. Staff photo

When the Albemarle Board of Supervisors passed a 4-2 resolution on November 2 directing county staff to explore options to relocate one or both of its houses of justice from downtown’s Court Square, Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci fired back with a letter questioning whether the supes even have the authority to make such a move.

The board “lacks any legal, institutional, substantive or practical basis” to make decisions about the administration of justice, wrote Tracci. “The board is a legislative body with limited executive power—it has no judicial or law enforcement authority whatsoever.”

The idea of moving Albemarle’s circuit and general district courts from Court Square has met wide opposition from those in the legal community, including both city and county prosecutors, sheriffs, clerks of court, Judge Cheryl Higgins, public defenders, Legal Aid Justice Center and the barristers who practice in city and county courts.

“The Board of Supervisors is totally ill-equipped to ascertain whether dismembering Court Square will undermine the quality of justice in our community,” says Tracci. “They are a quasi-legislative executive body with no judicial authority whatsoever and their overreach here is breathtaking.”

Bruce Williamson, chair of the Bench-Bar Relations Committee at the Charlottesville Albemarle Bar Association, says the members of the BOS are “not well-suited by their training and experience with the legal system to make decisions on the administration of justice and the people who are are the ones who signed that letter”—a missive dated November 2 that urges the board to keep county courts in Court Square.

“This has been couched as a matter of convenience for lawyers,” says Williamson. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Adding in travel time to the urban ring would increase costs, reduce the number of cases public defenders could take and keep more people incarcerated while they wait for a hearing,” he says.

Although the plan had long been to renovate the Levy Opera House across the street from the county courts, with the city pitching in $7 million, supervisors “were surprised” last summer to find the city had done nothing about parking, says Williamson, and they “were taken aback” when the city asked them to pony up $2.5 million for parking.

Earlier this year, the supes directed county staff to examine options for courts, including moving the general district court to the County Office Building on McIntire Road, as well as moving both general district and circuit court to a new county location in the urban ring, ideally with a private partnership.

“County staff is clearly in favor of tying economic development to moving the courts,” says Williamson. “For decades, [the county] has not attracted jobs. The courts should not be the engine of economic development.”

The county seat is where the circuit court is located, and to move the circuit court would require a referendum of Albemarle voters, according to code. As for moving the general district court, the answer varies, depending upon whom you ask.

A call to Supervisor Diantha McKeel resulted in a written response from County Attorney Greg Kamptner, who says Virginia code makes the Board of Supervisors responsible for providing courthouses—and for footing the bill of such facilities.

“The board will not decide whether the court facilities are to be relocated from their current location in Court Square in downtown Charlottesville,” writes Kamptner. That decision rests with the voters of Albemarle, he says. “The board’s role is to consider adopting a resolution asking the court to order that election.”

According to Williamson, to move the general district court, the BOS has to have the approval of the General Assembly.

Delegate Rob Bell refers that question to Dave Cotter in the General Assembly’s division of legal services, and Cotter gets into the weeds of murkily written legislation.

Cotter says, according to Virginia code, county supervisors don’t have the authority to move the general district court, which the law requires be located at the county seat. However, the chief judge or the presiding judge—the code lists both—can authorize an additional general district court, much as Richmond has done with additional general district courts.

Albemarle’s general district court webpage lists Judge Bob Downer as both the chief and presiding judge, and Judge William Barkley as the presiding judge. So does that mean one or both of them determine the fate of a lower court move?

“It’s not the Board of Supervisors’ decision to move the general district court,” says Cotter. “Only the chief judge can make the decision to meet somewhere in addition to the county seat.”

Confusing?

The last time this statute was interpreted by the attorney general was in 1973. Says Cotter, “A lot of this language has been sitting here and no one has been paying attention.”

Augusta County had a referendum to move its county seat from Staunton to Verona on the ballot November 8. Voters rejected that relocation.

 Correction 11/17/16: Bruce Williamson said the city wanted the county to contribute $2.5 million for parking, not $12.5 million.

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News

‘Lightning in a bottle:’ Statue commission chair disappointed by decision

Don Gathers (center), the commission’s chairman, is disappointed by the group’s recommendation to keep the Confederate statues in their original locations. Photo by Eze Amos

In a 6-3 vote, Blue Ribbon Commission members recommended that the city keep its General Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson statues in their current Lee Park and Court Square locations, though the committee’s chairman Don Gathers voted otherwise.

“We as a commission and as a city missed an opportunity here to show some real progress,” Gathers says.

Mayor Mike Signer created the commission on race, memorials and public spaces after Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy called for a rally to remove the Lee statue from Lee Park in March, because some members of the community have been offended by the celebration of Confederate heroes in a post-Civil War era.

“It is my sincere belief that for us to take no action, which in essence is what I personally feel that we’ve done, means that we have bowed down to a segment of society in our area that has no real relevance here anymore,” Gathers says about the November 1 vote to let the statues stay. His commission was elected to evaluate the presence of similar statutes in town and recommend to City Council what should be done with them.

He continues, “Unfortunately, the commission didn’t vote to capture the lightning in a bottle when we had the chance to do so.”

The controversy has been fueled by passion, he says, and members of the public at each meeting have spoken strongly about either keeping the memorials in place, further contextualizing them or moving them out of their public parks and into private areas.

And each idea, either presented by the public or the commission, has been heavily criticized. But Gathers says he hasn’t taken the scrutiny to heart—“I’ve refereed high school and college basketball for over 20 years,” he says, laughing. “I’m used to criticism.”

One of his ideas, which he says most of the commission members seemed interested in at one point, was moving the statues to McIntire Park because Paul Goodloe McIntire gave them to the city in the early 1900s.

“I couldn’t think of a better place for them to reside than in the park named after him,” Gathers says.

From 6-9pm on November 10 at Walker Upper Elementary School, the Blue Ribbon Commission will present to the public a portion of the final recommendation it will make to City Council on December 19. Time will be set aside for public comment.

Gathers says commissioners will further explain the recommendation to contextualize the memorials in their respective parks with a more expanded version of the history the statues represent.

“There are some who don’t know for certain that that particular [task] can be accomplished,” Gathers says. “That was a real concern throughout the discussions.”

And what will those contextualizations look like? It’s up in the air.

“I think the plan was to pretty much leave that up to Council,” he says.

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News

Sign of the times: Supes don’t take kindly to city plaque

Charlottesville wants to put a new sign up at the Albemarle County Circuit Court in Court Square. File photo

An item on the Albemarle Board of Supervisors consent agenda August 3 was to allow the city to put up a historic plaque in Court Square in front of the county’s courthouses. Only instead of rubberstamping the request, one supervisor took issue with the content, and others complained it was yet another missed opportunity for the city and county to work together.

Supervisor Rick Randolph asked for the resolution to be pulled from the agenda because he objected to a statement that the residents of Court Square often owned one or two slaves.

“Many moved to the outskirts of Charlottesville to Albemarle County,” he said at the meeting. “I felt like the narrative ended with slaves being slaves in the antebellum period, but where did they go after the Civil War? That’s a story that needs to be told.”

Some of the former slaves moved in the 1870s to communities just being discovered, like Hydraulic Mills or Lambs Road, Supervisor Ann Mallek pointed out.

Another wondered why a historical marker would go up while the city has a blue ribbon commission looking at race in memorials and public spaces.

And Supervisor Diantha McKeel wanted to know the backstory on whether any county staff had been involved with the text and if the city had even asked if it was okay to put the sign on county property. “I’m a little frustrated,” she said, “because time after time we have these missed opportunities when we ought to be working together instead of being blindsided.”

Note to city: The supes were also miffed they weren’t invited to the Hillsdale Drive meeting, according to a recording of the BOS meeting.

On the county side, assistant county exec Lee Catlin and deputy county exec Bill Letteri didn’t know how the issue got on the board’s agenda.

City preservation planner Mary Joy Scala shines light on the project and says at least one county staffer was involved from the county attorney’s office.

The Charlottesville Historic Resources Committee designed nine new markers to create a walking tour of Court Square to tell a more complete story of the history there, she says in an e-mail.

The markers will replace granite ones currently there with faded gold text, but the older slate markers “that everyone seems to like” will remain, she says. All the new signs will be 11″ x 17″, except for the one the city wants to plant on county property, which will be roughly 4′ x 5′.

The big sign replaces one that was put in front of the courthouses when Court Square was renovated in 2003, says Scala, and that marker replaced a large wooden one that was moved to the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society.

Because there’s no legal agreement between the city and county about such signage, that’s why it was on the county’s agenda, says Scala, a veteran of many City Council meetings, who did not attend the county meeting.

The city will pick up the tab for the new walking tour markers, which will likely exceed $5,000, Scala estimates.

Another controversial Court Square plaque is the one at the site of the slave auction block, which has come under fire for being on the ground and not terribly visible. The city’s historic resources committee was asked to replace an older slate one that had gone missing in 2013. “I know the Blue Ribbon Commission has been discussing the interpretation of this location as part of their agenda,” says Scala.

Meanwhile, the county still wants to have a say in how the history of Albemarle is told.

Says Letteri, “It may have been simply an oversight on the city’s part. They may not have thought about the county being involved.”