In June, two blocks of 16th Street in Washington, D.C., were renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza. PC: Wikipedia User BDWARD3
Want to take a walk down Black History Pathway? Or maybe Waneeshee Way? Or even Tony Bennett Drive? Soon, you might be able to. These are among the honorary street names that area residents have submitted to the city in recent months.
After debating the issue late into the night during several meetings, Charlottesville City Council decided in September to send nearly a dozen honorary street name proposals to the Historic Resources Committee, seeking guidance on the evaluation process.
During its November 13 virtual meeting, the committee decided to completely revamp the honorary street naming policy before tackling the applications.
Until recently, the city rarely received new street name proposals. But around the country, people and governments have sought to commemorate the year’s events by redesignating their physical environment. In Washington, D.C., for example, two blocks of 16th Street were transformed into Black Lives Matter Plaza, with huge yellow letters painted on the pavement.
Charlottesville currently has a dozen honorary street names. Recent designations include Heather Heyer Way, honoring the victim of the 2017 white supremacist attack, and Winneba Way, named for our sister city in Ghana.
“Up until now this process has been very ad hoc,” said committee member Phil Varner. “We’re really trying to nail down [how] exactly should we do this…what exactly are the policy criteria, and what does the application actually look like for it [and] mean?”
Under the current policy, proposals are limited to individuals, organizations, entities, events, or something of local significance. While the committee agreed to keep these broad categories, it suggested that some honorary streets could be temporary, while others could be permanent, depending on the will of the nominator.
“Especially in a small city like this, [rotating] can be beneficial if there are this many people that should be honored,” said member Sally Duncan.
Committee member Jalane Schmidt expressed concern over the sunset period, and how it may lead to individuals “who’ve been excluded from conventional historical narratives” to only be recognized for a few years, while many city streets have had the names of racists for over a century.
After member Dede Smith pointed out that the city’s current honorary markers offer no information about who or what they’re named after, committee chair Rachel Lloyd suggested the creation of a website with a detailed history about each street name, as well as including them on the updated historic walking tour.
Smith also stressed the importance of street names being near the geographic location of the person or thing they are honoring. For instance, a portion of Avon Street is currently named after the late Franklin Delano Gibson, a celebrated philanthropist who owned a grocery store on the street for more than 40 years.
That won’t always be possible, though. “Because one of the reasons we’re doing this is out of equity concerns, there may be people who aren’t permanently associated with a distinct geography,” said co-chair Genevieve Keller. “We would need to memorialize and honor them anyway [and] find the most appropriate place.”
While some preferred that the street proposals be submitted by city residents, people who live on the street, or family members of the individual being honored, the committee decided to leave the applications open to anyone in the larger Charlottesville area.
However, a public notice will be sent to residents living on the streets with name proposals, so they can provide input on the decision.
The committee also decided to scrap the 500-word essay on the current application, and replace it with a series of short, direct questions about the street proposal.
After deciding on the policy changes, the committee briefly discussed the applications submitted to the city over the summer. Several seek to honor notable Black figures, like activist Wyatt Johnson and enslaved laborer Henry Martin, and historical events, like the razing of Vinegar Hill, while other proposals cover a variety of categories, including two in honor of UVA men’s basketball coach Tony Bennett.
In September, before turning to the HRC, City Council approved two of the original 13 applications. One renames a section of Grady Avenue after the late Reverend C.H. Brown, who built 12th Street’s Holy Temple Church of God In Christ in 1947. Behind the church, Brown also constructed several homes, helping the area to become a thriving Black neighborhood.
The other approved request honors the ongoing movement against police violence and systemic racism, recognizing Market Street between First Street Northeast and Ninth Street Northeast as Black Lives Matter Boulevard. It was proposed by community activist Don Gathers.
At its next meeting, the committee will officially vote on the naming policy changes, and decide which of the remaining 11 applications it should recommend for council’s approval, using the newly established guidelines.
Court Square will be describe more accurately in the new brochure. Photo: Skyclad Aerial
For years, the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society and the city’s visitor’s center have been distributing a pamphlet that guides guests on a walking tour of downtown Charlottesville’s historic sites.
There’s one problem, though: the map hasn’t been updated in ages. Robert Watkins, the city’s assistant historic preservation and design planner, says the old map is full of “interpretive flaws.”
The current iteration of the guided tour still refers to Market Street Park as Lee Park. The Stonewall Jackson statue is noted as “one of the world’s finest equestrian statues,” rather than a monument to the Confederacy. The brochure takes visitors past the former Eagle Tavern without mentioning that it was the site of multiple sales of enslaved people.
When the city ran out of that version of the pamphlet, the Historic Resources Committee declined to print more, voting instead to establish a Historic Resources Walking Tour Map Subcommittee to create a new tour course. That subcommittee had its second meeting last week.
“We’ve been told that the walking tour map is very popular,” said committee member and former Charlottesville vice-mayor Dede Smith after the meeting. “As our narrative is expanding and becoming more inclusive, it’s vital that the document that most tourists see reflects our larger, more accurate story.”
That’s easier said than done. Local history often relies on scant sourcing; in this case, the subcommittee will be forced to build its story out of a sundry collection of oral histories, dubiously sourced guidebooks, and old newspaper advertisements.
Downtown Charlottesville has evolved over the centuries, through years of formal and informal segregation. For much of the area’s history, “you have two societies functioning side by side,” said committee member and local journalist Jordy Yager.
One pamphlet is a small space for all that history. “There’s no way you can be comprehensive in this,” Smith said during the meeting. “The balance problem we have is—it’s 250 years. It’s a lot of time.”
Each entry in the brochure is only a few sentences long, so every word has to be perfect. The subcommittee debated whether those sold in Court Square be referred to as “people,” “persons,” or “men, women, and children.” They pondered whether it was accurate to say that the Nelson House “was built by John A.G. Davis,” even though the wealthy professor likely never hammered a single nail.
Diligently asking these small questions is the only way to build an accurate large-scale narrative. “It’s better to tell good history, but delayed, than bad history promptly,” Yager said.
Efforts to re-contextualize Charlottesville’s downtown are ongoing. UVA professor Jalane Schmidt and Jefferson School head Andrea Douglas have led their own walking tours of local Confederate monuments since last year.
The old brochure has 36 locations. The subcommittee has identified an additional 20 or so that might be worthy of inclusion. Winnowing down that list is one of the biggest challenges ahead of the group in the next few weeks.
“One of the really wonderful things about Charlottesville is that people are interested in history here, both people that live here and people that come here as tourists,” Yager said. “It’s an opportunity to help set that historical record more holistically. For a variety of reasons, some of that history has not been told as enthusiastically. We have a great opportunity to popularize that and bring that into a more mainstream experience.”
The group hopes to have a new map ready for distribution by summer at the latest.
Despite maintaining that it won’t decide when to build the full pipeline until the results of a new study come in next year, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority plans to proceed in November with the $7 million, one-mile chunk of pipeline, which will stay empty.
At a meeting in late August, members of the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority’s board of directors voted to add $7 million to its budget to install part of a controversial water pipeline in Albemarle, even though just a month before, they said they had no plans to start building it.
Critics say the $7 million, one-mile pipeline is political and a “boondoggle.”
It’s part of an $82-million, nine-mile pipeline that will connect the South Fork Rivanna and Ragged Mountain reservoirs. The one-mile section that the RWSA now has the funds to build will run through the Birdwood Golf Course, which will be closed for reconstruction.
“I did say there was no plan [to build the pipeline], but that was really to the nine-mile section of pipe with exception to this one-mile section of pipe,” says RWSA Executive Director Bill Mawyer. “Maybe I should have put an asterisk in there [and said] except for the Birdwood section.”
Dede Smith, a former city councilor who has a long history of opposing the pipeline, says building at Birdwood now because it’s being renovated—and assuming it won’t be renovated again in the next 50 years—is “ludicrous.”
The pipeline was included in a community water supply plan created between 2002 and 2012, which deemed the project necessary to provide enough water for the community in the coming years. City Council has instructed that construction on the pipeline begin between 2027 and 2040 to meet those demands—but its necessity has been hotly debated.
“This isn’t about Birdwood, or the necessity of the pipeline, it’s political,” Smith said in an email to the board the day before it voted. “And the decision to spend $7 million turns to potentially illegal.”
She asked board members to consider what the city and Albemarle County Service Authority could do with $7 million to upgrade their infrastructure and further reduce water demand—the reason, she says, there’s no need for the pipeline.
In-depth research by Rich Gullick—a former RWSA director of operations, who resigned from his job in protest in February—concludes that actual water demand has been far less than what the authority projected, and the pipeline won’t be needed until at least 2048—or 2062, if the Ragged Mountain Reservoir water level is raised an additional 12 feet first, which Mawyer says can’t happen unless demand increases significantly.
According to Mawyer, the current water demand in the local service area is about 9 million gallons per day, compared to a supply of 16 million gallons per day.
Citing another study, he says the community will need more water by 2040—compared to Gullick’s calculation of two decades later—and the RWSA has commissioned a new study to reevaluate the projected demand.
Despite it maintaining that it won’t decide when to build the full pipeline until those results come in next year, the board plans to proceed in November with the $7 million, one-mile chunk of pipeline, which will stay empty.
“We’ll plug the ends and leave it in that condition,” says Mawyer.
Gullick calls it a “boondoggle,” and says it’s clear why the RWSA is rushing to build the first mile of the water line.
“All this is is a ploy to get the pipe started so that they can use it as an excuse to finish it,” he says. “They’re showing their hand, and they clearly don’t care what the new data says.”
The RWSA has claimed the pipeline won’t degrade while it sits unused and unfilled, possibly for decades, but Gullick says he doesn’t buy it.
“Water in the soil will be more corrosive than the water in the pipe,” he says. “What doesn’t degrade over time? It’s metal.”
Gullick was unable to attend the August 28 meeting where the vote to build at Birdwood was held. So was Smith.
“To selectively tax urban water rate payers $7 million for a project that has been both discredited by current data and politically motivated (worse yet by those who will not pay) is scandalous at best,” Smith said in her letter.
Smith and Gullick say Liz Palmer, a board member and Albemarle County supervisor, has been a main advocate for the pipeline, though her constituents in the Samuel Miller district don’t pay urban water bills. County rate payers will pay 80 percent, and city ratepayers will pay the remaining 20 percent.
Palmer counters that she has many constituents on public water, particularly south of I-64 and west of Fifth Street in developments such as Redfields and the many apartment complexes in the area. Once the pipeline is built, the RWSA will close the nearly 100-year-old Sugar Hollow line, and the Moormans River will “return to a more natural flow,” as required by a Department of Environment Quality permit, she says in an email.
Smith also says the most surprising vote came from Gary O’Connell, the executive director of the Albemarle County Service Authority and former city manager, “whose only role on that board is to protect the interests of county water rate payers. …And it is the county water rate payer who will be hurt the most when their rates go up to pay 80 percent of the cost of this pipeline to nowhere.”
O’Connell says the ACSA board has consistently supported the water supply plan, and within the agreement, its customers are also allocated 80 percent of the capacity of the new pipeline.
He says the ACSA is very mindful of its rates, and the average residential bill is about 22 percent less than that of a comparable city customer. Adds O’Connell, “Our area is growing, so we need to be focused on a growing water system.”
Teacher Robyn Davis requested the city’s only trailer, aka learning cottage, for her preschoolers at Greenbrier Elementary, and says they can be a little louder and feel part of a smaller, age-appropriate community. Photo courtesy of Beth Cheuk
By Natalie Jacobsen
Recent Charlottesville City Schools data suggests a trend among its elementary schools: Non-resident students, typically from Albemarle County and colloquially referred to as “county kids,” are surpassing resident students in transfer rates across the school system. And that’s putting city kids in standalone modular classrooms to handle the excess capacity, says a former Charlottesville School Board chair.
Not so, says city schools spokesperson Beth Cheuk. “We have exactly one trailer.” Or “learning cottage,” as it’s known in educationese.
The enrollment of non-resident students is not new. “In 1983, enrollment for resident students was declining,” says Charlottesville City Schools Superintendent Rosa Atkins. School administrators calculated how a tuition-based program would boost the bottom line and the school board approved the enrollment of non-resident students.
For the 2016-2017 school year, of 292 transfer students, 210paid tuition: $1,337 a year for K-8 students and $1,701 for high school students (additional siblings get a price break). The 82 children of city employees don’t pay tuition.
“One of our goals is to keep expanding, and that means accepting non-resident students,” says School Board Chair Juandiego Wade. “If out-of-district kids want to come to our schools and pay tuition, we will welcome them.”
Within the city, students may transfer to another school—if that school’s principal agrees.
“Most of the time, [transfers are requested] for child care reasons,” says Atkins. “Maybe their babysitter or after-school care is located in another school zone, and the parents want their child to stay with the same sitter or facility.” Transportation can be another factor in granting a transfer, and non-resident students do not have a city bus option, she says.
Last year, Greenbrier Elementary reached capacity—a maximum of 24 students per classroom—and installed a $70,000 trailer-like classroom outside of the school at the request of a preschool teacher, says Cheuk.
“The modular classroom is very modern, clean and even has a better bathroom than the school,” says Wade. “We are one of the fastest-growing districts in Virginia, and using these modulars is not uncommon.”
Seven classrooms in elementary schools were added this school year.
Former school board chair and city councilor Dede Smith says that was to accommodate the incoming non-resident students.
Cheuk puts that number at two additional classes to accommodate non-resident students, whose enrollment is flat. She says the school system’s 3 percent growth is fueled by residents, not non-residents, whose numbers are declining.
Smith contends the learning cottage at Greenbrier houses city kids, and not a single “county kid.”
“The preschool classes are held there,” she says. “They are isolated from the rest of the school. Even the school doors automatically lock, so the students stand outside after class, waiting for someone inside to let them back in so they can go home.”
Smith also expresses concerns for the in-district student transfers who were rejected.
“Last year, of the 65 resident transfer requests, 33 were by white-identified students, and nearly 100 percent of requests were granted. Of the 27 black-identified students, that acceptance rate dropped to under 50 percent.” The other five “Asian” or “unidentified” students were accepted.
“That is unacceptable,” says Smith. The city “is blatantly telling resident kids that they are not a priority, especially black students.” Of all city students, 42 percent are white and 33 percent are black.
“For what it’s worth, we do not ask a student’s race on the transfer application,” says Atkins. However, information on a student is accessible by any principal. “Last year was an anomaly in the acceptance rates,” she says. “In some cases, some families applied more than once, so some numbers are repetitive.”
“Saying we prioritize by race is disrespectful in my eyes and goes against everything I stand for,” says Wade.
In 2013-2014, 100 percent of black students’ and 98 percent of white students’ transfer requests were granted, and more recently in the current 2017-2018 year, 100 percent of white students were allowed to transfer, while 89 percent of black students were, according to the city.
“When you make decisions like we do, not everyone is going to like it,” says Wade. “I’m willing to take the hit. We do our best to reach every student.”
A lot of a student’s success depends on parents, says Wade: “Some economically disadvantaged homes may not be able to provide a quiet space or materials or parental help with homework.”
“More and more pressure is put on families, even though they may not be able to provide,” says Smith. City schools need to take responsibility and provide more resources for those who do not have it at home, she says. “But first, they need to return to prioritizing the resident kids, as their application policy suggests. They need to spend their budget on helping these students excel, not buy trailers to make room for non-residents.”
By the numbers
Charlottesville City Schools
Budget: $78.5 million
Resident students: 4,313
Annual spending per student: $16,840
Non-resident transfer students: 292
Tuition: $1,337 for K-8 , $1,701 for high school students
It’s the time of year C-VILLE editorial staffers dread most: landing on the final names for our Power Issue, followed by the inevitable complaints that the list contains a bunch of white men. Sure, there are powerful women and people of color in
Charlottesville. But when it comes down to it, it’s still mostly white men who hold the reins—and a lot of them are developers. The good news: that’s changing. (And we welcome feedback about who we missed, sent to editor@c-ville.com.)
If you’re looking for a different take on power, skip over to our Arts section, where local creative-industry leaders share their most powerful moments (grab some Kleenex!) on page 46.
1. Robert E. Lee statue
More than 150 years after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, he continues to be a divisive figure—or at least his statue is. The sculpture has roiled Charlottesville since a March 2016 call (see No. 2 Wes Bellamy and Kristin Szakos) to remove the monument from the eponymously named park.
As a result, in the past year we’ve seen out-of-control City Council meetings, a Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces, a City Council vote to remove the statue, a lawsuit and injunction to prevent the removal and the renaming of
the park to Emancipation.
The issue has turned Charlottesville into a national flashpoint and drawn Virginia
Flaggers, guv hopeful and former Trump campaign state chair Corey Stewart, and Richard Spencer’s tiki-torch-carrying white nationalists. Coming up next: the Loyal White Knights of the KKK July 8 rally and Jason Kessler’s “Unite the Right” March August 12.
You, General Lee, are Charlottesville’s most powerful symbol for evoking America’s unresolved conflict over its national shame of slavery and the racial inequity still present in the 21st century.
Spawn of the Lee statue
Jason Kessler
Before the statue debate—and election of Donald Trump—Charlottesville was blissfully unaware of its own, homegrown whites-righter Jason Kessler, who unearthed Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy’s offensive tweets from before he took office and launched an unsuccessful petition drive to remove Bellamy from office, calling him a “black supremacist.” Since then, Kessler has slugged a man, filed a false complaint against his victim and aligned himself with almost every white nationalist group in the country, while denying he’s a white nationalist. The blogger formed Unity and Security in America and plans a “march on Charlottesville.” Most recently, we were treated to video of him getting punched while naming cereals in an initiation into the matching-polo-shirt-wearing Proud Boys.
SURJ
The impetus for the local Showing Up for Racial Justice was the seemingly unrelenting shootings of black men by police—and white people wanting to do something about it. But the Lee statue issue has brought SURJ into its own militant niche. Pam and Joe Starsia, who say they can’t speak for the collective, are its most well-known faces. The group showed up at Lee Park with a bullhorn to shout down GOP gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart, interrupted U.S. Representative Tom Garrett’s town hall and surrounded Kessler at outdoor café appearances on the Downtown Mall, shouting, “Nazi go home!” and “Fuck white supremacy!”—perhaps unintentionally making some people actually feel sorry for Kessler.
2.City Council
Not all councilors are equally powerful, but together—or in alliances—they’ve kept the city fixated on issues other than the ones citizens normally care about: keeping traffic moving and good schools.
Mayor Mike Signer. Photo by Eze Amos
Mike Signer
Mayor Signer took office in January 2016 in what is widely seen as a step to higher office. He immediately riled citizens by changing the public comment procedure at City Council meetings. A judge determined part of the new rules were unconstitutional, but some council regulars say the meetings do move along much better—at least when they’re not out of control with irate citizens expressing their feelings on the Lee statue. Signer called a public rally, sans permit, to proclaim Charlottesville the capital of the resistance. And despite his vote against removing the statue, he’s not shied away from denouncing the white nationalists drawn to Charlottesville like bears to honey.
Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy. Photo by Eze Amos
Wes Bellamy
Most politicians would be undone by the trove of racist, misogynistic and homophobic tweets Bellamy made before he was elected to City Council. As it was, they cost him his job as an Albemarle County teacher (a post from which he resigned after being placed on administrative leave) and a position on the Virginia Board of Education. But he fell on the sword, apologized and acknowledged the “disrespectful and, quite frankly, ignorant” comments he posted on Twitter. Perhaps it helped that Bellamy, at age 30, is a black male leader, has real accomplishments and has dedicated himself to helping young African-Americans. Despite his missteps, he is the voice for a sizable portion of Charlottesville’s population.
City Councilor Kristen Szakos. Photo by Elli Williams
Kristin Szakos
Szakos raised the topic of removing the city’s Confederate monuments several years before she teamed up with Bellamy, and she was soundly harassed for her trouble. When she ran for office, she called for town halls in the community and bringing council to the people, and she’s always demonstrated a concern for those who can’t afford to live in the world-class city they call home. She announced in January she won’t be seeking a third term in the fall.
City Councilor Kathy Galvin. Photo by Christian Hommel
Kathy Galvin
Galvin, an architect, envisions a strategic investment area south of the Downtown Mall, and her job will be to convince residents it’s a good deal for them. Council’s moderate voice, she, along with Signer, were the two votes against removing the Lee statue.
City Councilor Bob Fenwick. Photo by Chiara Canzi
Bob Fenwick
Even before losing the Democratic nomination June 13 with a dismal 20 percent of the vote, Fenwick was always the odd man out on council. His moment in the sun came earlier this year when he abstained from a split vote on removing the Lee statue, lobbied for pet causes among his fellow councilors and then cast his vote in the “aye” side, joining Bellamy and Szakos. That vote did not yield the groundswell of support he might have imagined from the black community. And although he leaves council at the end of the year as a one-termer, there are those who have appreciated Fenwick’s refusal to join in lockstep with the rest of council, and his willingness to call out its penchant for hiring consultants without taking action.
Coran Capshaw. Photo by Ashley Twiggs
3. Coran Capshaw
Every year we try to figure out how to do the power list without including Capshaw. But with his fingers in pies like Red Light Management (Dave Matthews, Sam Hunt); venues (the Pavilion, Jefferson, Southern and, most recently, the Brooklyn Bowl); Starr Hill Presents concert promotion and festivals such as Bonnaroo; merchandise—earlier this year, he reacquired Musictoday, which he founded in 2000; restaurants (Mas, Five Guys, Mono Loco, Ten) and of course development, with Riverbend Management, we have to acknowledge this guy’s a mogul. There’s just no escaping it.
In local real estate alone, Capshaw is a major force. Here are just a few Riverbend projects: City Walk, 5th Street Station, C&O Row, the rehabbed Coca-Cola building on Preston and Brookhill.
True, he fell from No. 7 to 11 on this year’s Billboard Power 100, but in Charlottesville, his influence is undiminished. And now he’s getting awards for his philanthropy, including Billboard’s Humanitarian of the Year in 2011, and this year, Nashville’s City of Hope medical center’s Spirit of Life Award.
UVA’s Rotunda. Photo by Karen Blaha
4. UVA
In January, UVA President Teresa Sullivan announced her summer 2018 retirement, and directed the Board of Visitors to begin the search for a new leader to rule Thomas Jefferson’s roost, the top employer in Virginia with its state-of-the-art medical center, a near-Ivy League education system and a couple of research parks teeming with innovative spirit.
Charlottesville native venture capitalist James B. Murray Jr., a former Columbia Capital partner of Senator Mark Warner, was elected vice rector of the Board of Visitors, and will take the rector-in-waiting position July 1, when Frank M. “Rusty” Connor III begins a two-year term as rector.
And lest we forget, the UVA Foundation recently purchased the university a $9 million 2015 Cessna Citation XLS—an eight-seat, multi-engine jet—to haul around its highest rollers.
Jaffray Woodriff. Photo by Eze Amos
5. Jaffray Woodriff
As the founder of Quantitative Investment Management, a futures contract and stock trading firm with experience in plataforma trading, Woodriff has landed at No. 28 on Forbes’ list of the 40 highest-earning hedge fund managers in the nation, with total earnings of $90 million. His troupe of about 35 employees manage approximately $3.5 billion in assets through a data science approach to investing.
Woodriff, an angel investor who has funded more than 30 local startups, made headlines this year when he bought the Downtown Mall’s beloved ice skating rink and announced plans to turn Main Street Arena into the Charlottesville Technology Center, which, according to a press release, “will foster talented developers and energized entrepreneurs by creating office space conducive of collaboration, mentorship and the scalability of startups.”
Demolition of the ice rink is scheduled for 2018, so there’s time yet to lace up your skates before you trade them in for a thinking cap.
Keith Woodard. Photo by Amy Jackson
6. Keith Woodard
Some might argue that Woodard’s power stems from the unrelenting complaints of people who are towed from his two downtown parking lots. But it’s the real estate those lots sit on—and more. The owner of Woodard Properties has rentals for all needs, whether residential or commercial. The latter includes part of a Downtown Mall block and McIntire Plaza. He was already rich enough to invest in a Tesla, but Woodard is about to embark on the biggest project of his life—the $50 million West2nd, the former and future site of City Market. Ground will break any time now, and by 2019, the L-shaped, 10-story building with 65 condos, office and retail space (including a restaurant and bakery/café) and a plaza will dominate Water Street.
Will Richey. Photo by Amy Jackson
7. Will Richey
When you talk about Charlottesville’s ever-growing restaurant scene, one name that seems to be on everyone’s tongue is Will Richey. The restaurateur-turned-farmer (his Red Row Farm supplies much of the produce in the summer for the two Revolutionary Soup locations) owns a fair chunk of where you eat and drink in this town: Rev Soup, The Bebedero, The Whiskey Jar, The Alley Light, The Pie Chest and the newest addition, Brasserie Saison, which he opened in March with Hunter Smith (owner of Champion Brewery, which is also on the expansion train, see. No. 9). Richey’s restaurant empire seems to know no bounds, and we’re excited to see what else he’ll add to his plate—and ours—in the coming years.
Rosa Atkins. Photo by Eze Amos
8. Rosa Atkins/Pam Moran
The superintendents for city and county schools have a long list of achievements to their names, with each division winning a number of awards under their tenures.
This month, Atkins—the city school system’s leader since 2006—was named to the State Council of Higher Education, but she’s perhaps most notably the School Superintendents Association’s 2017 runner-up for national female superintendent of the year.
Pam Moran. Photo by Amy Jackson
Moran, who has ruled county schools since 2005, held a similar title in late 2015, when the Virginia Association of School Superintendents named her State Superintendent of the Year, which placed her in the running for the American Association of School Administrators’ National Superintendent of the Year award, for which she was one of four finalists. This year, she requested the School Board continue to fund enrollment increases for at-risk students, making closing learning opportunity gaps a high priority.
Hunter Smith. Photo by Amy Jackson
9. Local beer
Throw a rock in this area and you’ll hit a brewery. For one thing, the Brew Ridge Trail is continually dotted with more stops. And new breweries in the city just keep popping up: Reason Brewery, founded by Charlottesville natives and set to open next month on Route 29 near Costco, is the latest. Other local additions include Random Row Brewery, which opened last fall on Preston Avenue, and Hardywood, based out of Richmond, which opened a pilot brewery and taproom on West Main Street in April.
And local breweries are not just opening but they’re expanding: Three Notch’d and Champion both opened Richmond satellite locations within the last year (that marks Three Notch’d’s third location, with another in Harrisonburg). And what pairs better with good drinks than good eats? Champion is adding food to its Charlottesville menu, and its brewers are enjoying a Belgian-focused playground at the joint restaurant venture Brasserie Saison.
Another sure sign that craft beer is thriving is the Virginia Craft Brewers Guild’s annual beer competition, the Virginia Craft Beer Cup Awards, which is the largest state competition of its kind; this year, 356 beers in 24 categories were entered. And Charlottesville is the new home of the organization’s annual beer showcase, the Virginia Craft Brewers Fest, which is moving from Devils Backbone Brewing Company to the IX Art Park in August. Host of the event, featuring more than 100 Virginia breweries, will be Three Notch’d Brewing Company, which is expanding its brewing operations from Grady Avenue into a space at IX, set to open in 2018.
Amy Laufer. Publicity photo
10. Amy Laufer
With 46 percent of the vote in this month’s City Council Democratic primary and nearly $20,000 in donations, Laufer also had a lengthy list of endorsements, including governor hopeful Tom Perriello and former 5th District congressman L.F. Payne.
Laufer, a current school board member and former chair and vice chair of the board, is also the founder of Virginia’s List, a PAC that supports Democratic women running for state office. If she takes a seat on City Council, keep an eye out for the progress she makes on her top issues: workforce development, affordable housing and the environment.
Khizr Khan. Photo by Eze Amos
11. Khizr Khan
Khan launched the city into the international spotlight when he, accompanied by his wife, Ghazala, took the stage on the final day of the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and harshly criticized several of then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s policies, including his proposed ban on Muslim immigration.
“Donald Trump, you’re asking Americans to trust you with their future,” Khan said. “Let me ask you, have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy. In this document, look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of the law.’”
Khan could be seen shaking a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution at the camera—his face splayed across every major news network for days thereafter. At the convention, he discussed the death of his son, Humayun, a UVA graduate and former U.S. Army captain during the Iraq War, who died in an explosion in Baqubah, Iraq.
Khan also spoke before hundreds at Mayor Mike Signer’s January rally to declare Charlottesville a “capital of the resistance,” and Khan and his wife recently announced a Bicentennial Scholarship in memory of their son, which will award $10,000 annually to a student enrolled in ROTC or majoring in a field that studies the U.S. Constitution.
John Dewberry. Photo by Eze Amos
12. John Dewberry
Even though he doesn’t live around here, he’s from around here, if you stretch here to include Waynesboro. Dewberry continues to hold downtown hostage with the Landmark Hotel, although we have seen some movement since he was on last year’s power list. After buying the property in 2012, he said he’d get to work on the Landmark, the city’s most prominent eyesore since 2009, once he finished his luxury hotel in Charleston, South Carolina. That took a few years longer than anticipated—these things always do—but earlier this year Dewberry wrangled some tax incentives from City Council, which has threatened to condemn the structure, and on June 20, the Board of Architectural Review took a look at his new and improved plans. One of these days, Dewberry promises, Charlottesville will have a five-star hotel on the Downtown Mall.
13. Andrea Douglas
The Ph.D. in art history, who formerly worked at what’s now UVA’s Fralin Museum of Art, always seemed like the only real choice to head the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, and since it opened in 2012, she’s made it an integral part of the community. The heritage center is far from self-sustaining, but a $950,000 city grant, a fundraising campaign and Douglas’ steely determination keep the historic school—and its place in the city’s history—firmly in the heart of Charlottesville. And Douglas can get a seat at Bizou anytime she wants—she’s married to co-owner Vincent Derquenne.
Paul Beyer. Photo by Ryan Jones
14. Paul Beyer
Innovation wunderkind Beyer ups the stakes on his Tom Tom Founders Festival every year. The event began six years ago as a music-only festival, but has morphed into a twice-a-year celebration of creativity and entrepreneurism. The fall is dedicated to locals who have founded successful businesses/organizations, while the week-long spring event continues to draw some of the world’s biggest names in the fields of technology, art, music and more. This year’s spring fest, which added a featured Hometown Summit that drew hundreds of civic leaders and innovators from around the country to share their successes and brainstorm solutions to struggles, was the biggest yet: 44,925 program attendees, 334 speakers and 110 events.
Lynn Easton and Dean Porter Andrews. Photo by Jen Fariello
15. Easton Porter Group
We know them as local leaders in the weddings and hospitality industry (Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyards is often the site of well-to-do weddings, with some totaling in
the $200,000s, we hear), but now the Easton Porter Group has its sights set on a much bigger portfolio: Its goal is to secure 15 luxury properties in high-end destinations in the next 10 years. In 2016, the group, owned by husband-and-wife team Dean Porter Andrews and Lynn Easton, landed on Inc. magazine’s list of the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the nation.
Their latest project is to our north, with the renovation of the Blackthorne Inn outside of Washington, D.C., in Upperville, Virginia. The historic hunt-country estate, which is being transformed into a boutique inn featuring luxury-rustic accommodations, fine dining and wine, is projected to open in spring 2018.
The Easton Porter Group’s other businesses include Red Pump Kitchen on the Downtown Mall, as well as Cannon Green restaurant and the Zero George Hotel Restaurant + Bar in Charleston, South Carolina.
16. EPIC
Equity and Progress in Charlottesville made a poignant debut earlier this year, shortly after the death of former vice-mayor Holly Edwards, who was one of the founders of the group dedicated to involving those who usually aren’t part of the political process. It includes a few Democrats no longer satisfied with the party’s stranglehold on City Council, like former mayor Dave Norris and former councilor Dede Smith. The group has drawn a lot of interest in the post-Trump-election activist era, but its first two endorsements in the June 13 primary, Fenwick and commonwealth’s attorney candidate Jeff Fogel, did not fare well. The group still holds high hopes for Nikuyah Walker as an independent City Council candidate, and despite the primary setback, says Norris, “We may not have won this election, but we certainly influenced the debate.”
Dr. Neal Kassell. Courtesy photo
17. Dr. Neal Kassell
UVA’s Focused Ultrasound Center, the flagship center of its kind in the U.S., has had a banner year. The use of magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound technology to treat tremors has moved from the research stage to becoming more commercialized for patient treatment. And we can thank Kassell, founder and chairman of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, for placing our city in the neurological pioneering sphere.
Two months ago, the Clinical Research Forum named the center’s use of focused sound waves to treat essential tremor (the most common movement disorder) instead of requiring invasive incisions, as one of the top 10 clinical research achievements of 2016. And it can’t hurt to have someone as well-known as John Grisham in your corner. He wrote The Tumor, and the foundation, which works as a trusted third party between donors, doctors and research, distributed 800,000 copies.
Kassell is the author of more than 500 scientific papers and book chapters, and his research has been supported by more than $30 million in National Institutes of Health grants. In April 2016, he was named to the Blue Ribbon Panel of former vice president Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative.
18. Jody Kielbasa
Since Kielbasa came to town in 2009, he has continued to steer the Virginia Film Festival toward an ever-expanding arts presence in not only our community, but statewide as well. Last year’s festival featured more than 120 films and attracted big-name stars, including director Werner Herzog and Virginia’s own Shirley MacLaine. And Kielbasa expanded his own presence locally, as he was appointed UVA’s second vice provost for the arts in 2013, which places him squarely in the university’s arts fundraising initiatives. Last year there was talk of a group of arts sector powerhouses forming to lobby the city in an official capacity to gain more funding for local arts initiatives—no surprise that Kielbasa was among those mentioned.
There are 218 known individuals buried at the Daughters of Zion Cemetery, founded in 1873, though hundreds more are likely interred there as well. Photo by Natalie Jacobsen
A single pink rose lies at a diagonal across the quartz headstone that has become two-toned with age in the last 125 years. The rose covers part of the inscription on Carrie Brown’s headstone, which is different from others from that time period. The Buckner family’s clustering of graves, which lies to the west of Brown’s—all have the same phrase: “Gone but not forgotten.” Brown’s last message to the world, written in a delicate cursive font, reads, “Left my home but not my heart.”
That home is the Daughters of Zion Cemetery, officially founded in 1873 by the “charitable association of colored women in Charlottesville,” according to the cemetery deed. When the society founded the cemetery, there was only one burial option for African-Americans in Charlottesville—the “colored” section of Oakwood Cemetery, the strictly segregated graveyard on Oak Street adjacent to the two-acre Zion property. Today, it is one of three public cemeteries owned by the city of Charlottesville (the city bought the title to the land in 1970) and it is one of 34 historic African-American cemeteries, both public and private, in the county. But just a few years ago, the hallowed ground was trashed, vandalized, had several broken, discolored and displaced grave markers, and was marred with overgrown vegetation and erosion.
In 2015, Charlottesville’s Dialogue on Race sponsored a public forum focused on improving the conditions of this historic African-American cemetery. Subsequently, the Preservers of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery, a group that would devise a plan of action to guide the care and improvement of the cemetery, was formed. The group submitted its preservation plan to City Council and received $80,000 to put its proposal into action.
The official preservation team, working to detect, document and preserve the graves of those buried in the cemetery, includes Edwina St. Rose and Bernadette Whitsett-Hammond.
Bernadette Whitsett-Hammond and Edwina St. Rose began preservation efforts at the Daughters of Zion Cemetery, the historic African-American cemetery off Oak Street, two years ago. Photo by Natalie Jacobsen
St. Rose is a descendant of Burkley Bullock, who was enslaved with his family in Earlysville by merchant and banker Colonel John Jones. Bullock had learned to read from former Monticello slave Peter Fossett, and after being emancipated in 1865 he purchased a 35-acre tract of land between the properties of Hugh Carr and Jesse Scott Sammons in the Hydraulic Mills area. Bullock founded the Piedmont Industrial Land and Improvement Company, which helped African-Americans own homes by providing credit to prospective homeowners. He also owned a restaurant near Union Railroad Station, which served as a communal space for the African-American community, and was a founding member of Union Ridge Baptist Church, which still stands on Hydraulic Road.
While St. Rose considers herself lucky to have learned about the slave history of her ancestor because her family continued to reside in the same city as he did, she doesn’t think many descendants of the enslaved know of this history.
For this reason, she believes that preserving these cemeteries is one of the few remaining measures to honor the dead. “The homes that they lived in are oftentimes no longer in existence, the neighborhoods are no longer in existence, so you have this one last place that you can come to, to remember the people who once lived.”
To Whitsett-Hammond, who has spent every year since her childhood coming to the ruined Daughter of Zion cemetery on Memorial Day and paying respects to her ancestors, protecting and preserving these cemeteries is only natural.
“I think that if you know the type of people that you have originated from, it helps you in finding your way as you live your life day-to-day, and I’ve just been amazed by the dedication, and the fortitude of the people who went before me,” says Whitsett-Hammond.
Discovering ties to the past
A sizable section of land with a copious number of towering trees, generous foliage and dead leaves and twigs that make crunching sounds beneath your feet, the plot surrounded by student dorms at the University of Virginia looks like any other dense thicket of land on Grounds. Small steps lead to a wooden bridge over a creek, and upon looking closely, one may notice a few stones scattered amid the leaves.
In the past two centuries, these stones have been disturbed and displaced, the plot of land is unrecognizable for what it actually is—a cemetery of the enslaved.
The cemetery is surrounded by the Stadium Road Residence Area, where thousands of students reside, but hardly any of them realize they’re living next to a gravesite, let alone a slave cemetery, says Lynn Rainville, an anthropological archaeologist who specializes in the study of African-American burial grounds. When she first visited the cemetery, it took her two hours to locate it—the signage was in an odd spot near a staircase and was almost camouflaged by the wall that it was on. With construction underway, the previously incorrectly placed sign is now completely covered, making the cemetery practically unidentifiable.
This area was originally part of the Piedmont plantation that belonged to the Maury family, and among all the people the family enslaved, more than 70 are buried in this plot, which is now called Maury Cemetery.
Although the University of Virginia has made an effort to preserve the ground that was first discovered in the 1980s, the plot looks much different than it did in the period of enslavement. Over the years, trees have been cut down and headstones have been removed or defaced, says Rainville.
The problems with identifying slave cemeteries isn’t unusual in the United States. If you take the example of a single state like Virginia, Rainville estimates that 60 percent or more slave cemeteries are unidentified, damaged, built over and, even when preserved, very few people know about them.
The reasons for this range from vandalism, to natural deterioration, the lack of local history documentation and not having proper historical records of the enslaved.
“The homes that they lived in are oftentimes no longer in existence, the neighborhoods are no longer in existence, so you have this one last place that you can come to, to remember the people who once lived.” Edwina St. Rose
It was much more difficult for African-Americans to preserve their legacies than it was for white Americans. “White communities have tended to have greater resources at their disposal to preserve and maintain their cemeteries,” says Adam Rothman, a history professor at Georgetown University.
Jesse Scott Sammons, born a free black man in 1853, was a descendant of Monticello slave Mary Hemings, sister of Sally. Sammons attended what is now Charlottesville’s Jefferson School and went on to become principal of the first high school for African-American students in Albemarle County. Sammons ran for a position in the Virginia General Assembly in 1880 and held a state-level office in the Baptist church. The respected community leader and educator died in 1901 and was buried on land he owned near the south fork of Ivy Creek. In 2012, it was discovered that Sammons’ gravesite, as well as that of three others, including his daughter’s husband, George Ferguson, the first African-American doctor to have a practice in Albemarle County, lay in the path of the controversial proposed Western Bypass. The 6.2-mile road, plans for which were first suggested in 1979 and resurrected in 2011, would skirt the commercial corridor on U.S. 29.
The Virginia Department of Transportation proposed moving the graves because it was determined the plot “lacked historical significance” either with “significant historical events or association with a person of great importance,” but Sammons’ descendants asked the state to reconsider. In 2014 the project was put on hold after a federal agency would not grant environmental clearance, and the headstones remain untouched, just outside city limits.
In February, the state of Virginia passed House Bill 1547, which directs funds to organizations that preserve African-American gravesites. Previously, the state only subsidized the preservation of cemeteries that contain graves of Confederate soldiers. This preferential treatment to preserving and honoring white heritage is another manifestation of racial inequality in the United States, Rothman says.
Rainville, who has created a database of African-American cemeteries in Amherst and Albemarle counties, believes this inconsistency is a problem. On the eve of the Civil War, the population of African-Americans and white Americans in Virginia (and in many other states) was almost equally proportionate. “For every white burial, there is a black burial somewhere,” she says. “But today, there are many more preserved white cemeteries than there are black cemeteries, especially slave cemeteries.”
For Rothman, preserving these cemeteries and fighting for equality in their treatment is crucial to preserving the memory of the people who have made profound contributions to the growth of the country. “Recognizing where these burial grounds are and doing something to restore, preserve and maintain them is a way of repudiating, rejecting and overcoming the legacy of racism. It’s saying that these people should be honored as well.”
Lynn Rainville, an anthropological archaeologist who specializes in the study of African-American burial grounds, created an online database of historic black cemeteries in Amherst and Albemarle counties. She lists 34 cemeteries in Albemarle, with eight public hallowed grounds shown above.
Preservation efforts
On Sunday, May 28, “Decoration Day,” St. Rose and Whitsett-Hammond shared with a crowd at CitySpace the history of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery and a recap of improvements that have been made there in the last year, followed by a ceremony at the cemetery. Among one of the biggest changes is the use of ground-penetrating radar to determine if there are more people buried there than the 218 currently recorded.
Steve Thompson, principal investigator with the Rivanna Archaeological Services, began working with St. Rose and Whitsett-Hammond last fall, when he helped bring in local company Naeva Geophysics to do the radar detection work, first on a 50-by-125-foot patch of land on the hillside and later on an area four times that size. Thompson overlaid a grid that divided the cemetery into average burial size plots on top of the radar results from 4.5 feet below ground. The concentration of mass shows a pattern that lines up with the grid: Currently headstones mark only eight graves out of a possible 250 to 300 in that one area of the cemetery. According to Thompson’s map, the graveyard has the capacity for 2,000 graves.
“The cemetery is almost certainly far fuller than we’d be led to believe by the stones that are visible on the surface,” he said.
Although the total number of burials will never be known, the radar will be used again this summer along the western edge of the cemetery where the preservers hope to erect a fence. The radar will determine where the exact edge of the cemetery lies, and will be used to stake fence posts so no existing plots are disturbed. Going forward, when the group applies for money from the state as part of the new House bill, it could receive more funds based on the higher number of people projected to be buried there.
“The Daughters of Zion Cemetery represents an important aspect of Charlottesville’s history,” Thompson says. “Preserving the landscape and making sure what it is is understood by residents of the city is important.”
Lola Flash, a photographer and teacher, flew in from New York for the Decoration Day ceremony. Flash’s great-grandparents lived on Sixth Street Northwest, and her mother, Jean James Green Henderson, visited them every summer. Over the years, Flash had visited the Daughters of Zion Cemetery with her mother and heard stories of her mom’s visits to Charlottesville. When her mother decided to write down their family’s legacy in a book titled Our Charlottesville Roots, Flash helped transcribe her mother’s words (Henderson was blind at the time and spoke into a tape recorder). Flash learned more about the Bullock family legacy and how her mom’s grandfather, Charles Bullock, started a lot of the YMCAs when they were still called the “YMCA for Colored Men.” Burkley Bullock is a shared ancestor with St. Rose.
When Flash returned to the cemetery last month, this time with her camera and 91- year-old Teresa Jackson, one of her mother’s childhood friends from her Charlottesville visits, she discovered something new—the gravestones of her Bullock ancestors.
Flash knelt down beside one of the gravestones, and extended her left arm out in front of her. At first she smiled at the camera but then changed her expression to a more somber one. She captured a moment of quiet reflection on a day when those championing the preservation of the cemetery have come together to lay roses on every grave marker.
Says Flash, “A lot of African-American families don’t want to talk about the history because it’s so sad and because of a lot of the language that was used around it, but my mom has a quote—I hope I don’t mess it up. She says ‘finding her Charlottesville roots was like walking through a rose garden, thorns and all, but at the end of it there’s a bouquet.’”
A bouquet that on this day has been divided into single pink, white and yellow roses, each a tribute to the known 218 men and women who are buried at the Daughters of Zion Cemetery, and whose legacy and impact on Charlottesville live on, as well as that of the unknown, whose quiet influence is not forgotten.—Text by Ifath Sayed and Jessica Luck
A version of this story originally appeared on Sojourners’ website, sojo.net.
The Tonsler family plot. Photo by Natalie Jacobsen
Virtual reality
Former City Councilor Dede Smith worked with Edwina St. Rose and Bernadette Whitsett-Hammond to create an audio walking tour of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery through an app called izi.TRAVEL. The app uses GPS to determine your location, and nearby audio tours automatically pop up. For the cemetery tour, start at cemetery’s sign on Oak Street, where you’ll then be guided to one of 14 stops to learn more about some of the men and women who made huge impacts on our city.
At Decoration Day, Smith told the audience that the Goochland Historical Society recently contacted her after learning about the Daughters of Zion tour, and she’ll be working with them to create a driving African-American historic tour.
Benjamin Tonsler
Tonsler was a well-known civic leader who fought for the education of African-American children. He was born April 2, 1854, though it’s not known whether he was born to an enslaved or free family. His descendants were believed to have been employed by a University of Virginia professor, who may have taught Tonsler to read and write.
Tonsler graduated from the Hampton Institute and returned to Charlottesville as a teacher at the Jefferson Graded School, the only school for African-American students in the city at the time. After a few years, Tonsler became principal of the school, a role which he held for almost 30 years. At the time it was illegal for African-American students to study past the eighth grade, and Tonsler held classes for older students in secret after the school day was over.
Today, Tonsler Park on Cherry Avenue is named in his honor. His gravestone at Daughters of Zion reads “Erected by the Alumni of the Jefferson Graded School and Friends.” He’s buried alongside his wife, Fannie Gildersleeve Tonsler, and other relatives of the Tonsler, Heiskell and Buckner families.
Reverend M.T. Lewis
Lewis came to Charlottesville in 1873 to serve as pastor of the Delevan Baptist Church, which was later renamed First Baptist Church. Delevan Baptist was founded in 1863 as the first independent black church in Charlottesville after African-Americans broke away from the segregated First Baptist Church. The parishioners originally worshiped at the Delevan Hotel on West Main Street, which was torn down and replaced by the First Baptist Church building. Lewis died at the age of 40 before he could deliver a sermon in the new building.
Lewis’ burial site at the Daughters of Zion Cemetery is surrounded by Victorian piping decoration (look for the image of the Masonic emblem on the back of his tombstone). His wife, Mary Lewis Kelser, and her second husband, George Kelser, both teachers in the community, were laid to rest next to him.
The Goodloe family
The Goodloe family plot of 15 graves resides in a fenced area in the northern section of the cemetery bordering Dice Street. The Goodloes were instrumental in helping to build and bury the African-American community at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century. Charles Goodloe and his sons built many of the African-American homes and businesses in the area for four decades; Goodloe also served on the board of directors for the Piedmont Industrial and Land Improvement Company, which provided credit to African-American homebuyers. Other Goodloe family members worked as embalmers and undertakers.
Goodloe’s daughter, Willie, married Jackson P. Burley, a well-respected educator in the city and for whom Burley High School (now middle school) was named when it was built in 1951. In 1935, after the Daughters of Zion Society disbanded, Courtney Goodloe bought Zion Hall on Fourth Street Northwest in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood to keep the legacy alive (the site was razed in 1964 and it’s now the location of the Residence Inn by Marriott Charlottesville Downtown). One of the organizations housed there over the years was the Janie Porter Barrett Day Nursery, now named the Barrett Early Learning Center and located up the road on Ridge Street.
Segregation in death
Like Edwina St. Rose and Bernadette Whitsett-Hammond, others have begun participating in the cemetery preservation effort. Students at Georgetown University started the Tombstone Restoration Initiative to restore the graves of the 272 slaves that were sold by the Jesuit order connected to the university when it was suffering from debt in the 1830s.
Apart from honoring the dead, slave cemeteries are also significant because they were so meaningful to the enslaved. “[A funeral] was a place for shared grief and collective expression of their own values,” says Adam Rothman, a principal curator of the Georgetown Slavery Archive, a project that involves uncovering Georgetown’s history with slavery and making the information available to the public.
Slaves did not just attend funerals to honor and mourn the dead, but also for their practicality.
Because this was one of the few times family members who had been separated or sold could reunite, the enslaved would also use funerals to find marriage partners or as a time to meet their wives and children, says Lynn Rainville, African-American cemetery historian.
In the United States, not many slave cemeteries are recognizable; most of them have no markers to identify the dead. They’re in ruins, trashed, vandalized and don’t even look like cemeteries.
Monticello’s Park Cemetery is an anomaly. The plantation was home to nearly 400 slaves in Thomas Jefferson’s lifetime, some of whom are buried in this cemetery.
Right beside the David M. Rubenstein Visitor’s Center parking lot at Monticello, a signboard displays the significance of the bare plot of fenced land. Another board has a list of the names of the enslaved people who died at Monticello. Together, these give context to the lives of those buried here.
Inside the fenced plot, two stones of different sizes lie in close proximity to each other. According to Niya Bates, public historian of slavery and African American life at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, these stones are the headstones and footstones of the person buried, and the small distance between the stones signifies that this is the grave of a child.
When graves were first discovered here as part of archaeological fieldwork in 2001, temporary signage was put up and the area was fenced so it could remain undisturbed. However, Rainville doubts that all the graves are inside the fenced area. According to her, the fact that many of these graves were unmarked indicates that unidentified graves may have been overlooked and may have been covered by what is now the parking lot.
Apart from difficulty in identifying graves, locations of slave cemeteries are also worth notice. The Jefferson family graveyard is higher up the hill, closer to the main house, while the slave cemetery is at the bottom, which is similar to the location of burial grounds of the enslaved on other plantations.
“Very few slave owners were willing to give slave communities a valuable piece of land to bury their dead,” says Rainville. The transfer of unsuitable land to the enslaved means slave cemeteries are often in the center of an old field, usually a rocky one, or one with a huge tree that made it difficult to plow, or a field that was undesirable for any other reason.
While a court injunction currently prevents the statue of Robert E. Lee from being moved, the city is moving full speed ahead in an effort to change the names of local parks named for Confederate heroes.
After fielding suggestions from almost all committee members, the Charlottesville Historic Resources Committee decided on four names each for both Lee Park and Jackson Park to recommend to City Council.
For Lee Park, the committee recommended Community Park, Central Park, Market Street Park and Festival Park. For Jackson Park, it suggested Court Square Park, Courthouse Park, The Commons and Memory Park.
Most committee members agreed it was important to suggest names that had conceptual or geographical connotations to promote inclusivity rather than names referring to a single person or historical figure.
Committee member Margaret O’Bryant, who served on the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Monuments and Public Spaces, suggested names such as Community Park and Central Park, saying that each “expresses a centrality of our community” and in their neutrality apply to all facets of the Charlottesville population.
Committee co-chair Edwina St. Rose abstained from each vote, however, and said at the beginning of the meeting that she thought the committee should not make a recommendation.
“I believe the council has already seen quite a number of recommendations,” St. Rose said.
City Council recently received more than 2,000 suggestions through an online survey, which showed the top results as Lee Park and Jackson Park, although the survey allowed more than one submission per person and some suggest it was loaded with those who oppose any kind of name change.
Committee member Dede Smith said any future survey effort would have to be formulated in a way to allow one vote per person, calling the City Council survey a “good idea” but “flawed.”
“I don’t think we can put a lot of weight on what actually we saw,” Smith said.
St. Rose also called for a more “democratic” selection process that would be powered by Charlottesville residents, such as a referendum. “I don’t understand this process,” she said.
While the meeting was open to the public, the committee did not field any public comments because that will take place at an upcoming City Council meeting.
After the meeting, some attendees said they were disappointed by the lack of opportunity to comment. Karenne Wood, a member of the Monacan Nation, said she attended because she heard that Monacan Park—one of the more popular suggestions from the online survey—would be one of the names discussed, but she was unable to offer the tribe’s support of the name during the meeting.
Charlottesville resident Jalane Schmidt also wanted public comment and said she thought the suggestions offered at the meeting did not confront the history of each park.
“The recommendation of the [Blue Ribbon Commission], which the City Council did affirm, was that these parks were to be transformed,” Schmidt said, “and the full history…of how these spaces bolstered white supremacy was supposed to be revealed.”
Lisa Woolfork, another attendee, similarly called the selection process “tepid” and said it did nothing to recontextualize or challenge each park’s history.
“If all we might get is a renamed park, that name should be potent,” she said. “It should not be vague. It should not be general. I found this entire process frustrating and only in effect reinforcing the power dynamics that brought this problem to a head in the first place.”
Even with this process moving forward, there are those who still disagree with renaming the park. Historian and Charlottesville resident Arthur Herman says remembering the history of why the Confederate generals were commemorated in the first place is important.
“The sense of duty, the sense of honor, the courage, the sacrifice that they and other Confederate soldiers and veterans served were important virtues irrespective of the nature of the cause they served,” Herman says. “These men were not men who donned white sheets and marched with the KKK. These are not monuments dedicated to men like that.”
City Council will decide on the renaming of both parks at its June 5 meeting.
No, this is not a new brewery. These 8,900-gallon tanks in Crozet at the water treatment plant provide carbon filtration to the water from Beaver Creek Reservoir, and they’re going in throughout the entire Rivanna water system. Rammelkamp Foto
Summer of 2012, Charlottesville was rocked by two events that were ultimately reversed because of intense public opposition: the firing of UVA President Teresa Sullivan and a plan to add chloramines to the water supply.
On the latter, in a rare show of unanimity, City Council and the Albemarle Board of Supervisors, along with the area’s two water authorities, voted to halt a previously approved plan to add chloramines to the water supply, and instead opted for granular activated carbon filtration to meet more stringent EPA mandates.
Five years later, giant carbon filtration tanks—they’re called contactors—are being installed in all Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority and Albemarle County Service Authority water treatment plants, and work should be completed by the end of the year.
The chloramine controversy erupted nearly a year after the water authorities had approved the addition of the chlorine/ammonia combo, which was blamed for the off-the-charts elevated lead levels in the early aughts in D.C. homes—and children.
However, chloramines are cheaper and safely used in 76 percent of Virginia’s public water supplies, according to RWSA’s former executive director, and are used in Henrico County, where its current director, Bill Mawyer, previously worked.
Carbon filtration “helps remove organic products from water so when we add chlorine, it doesn’t create disinfectant byproducts,” says Mawyer. It was the byproducts that the EPA was tightening up on, and by filtering, “there’s an incentive to try not to let them form in the first place.”
Rivanna’s largest water treatment plant, South Rivanna, is getting eight of the granular activated carbon contactors, says Mawyer, while Crozet, North Rivanna, Observatory and Scottsville are each getting two, a project that is “close to $30 million,” he says.
Even after the capital investment, filtration will continue to cost an estimated $1 million a year to replace the carbon in the contactors, says Mawyer.
And what about that nine-mile pipeline?
As controversial as chloramines were, that wasn’t the biggest water drama to roil the community. That would be the Ragged Mountain Reservoir mega-dam, which split the community for years into dam supporters and those who favored dredging the silting South Fork Rivanna Reservoir.
Part of the dam plan, which was approved in 2011, included a nine-mile pipeline from the Rivanna reservoir to fill Ragged Mountain, which is now 96 percent full, according to Mawyer, using water piped instead from Sugar Hollow Reservoir.
The nine-mile pipeline plan languished, and Mawyer says the water authority will turn its attention to determining a route and obtaining easements in the next few months. The pipeline will transport water both to and from Ragged Mountain, “uphill both ways,” says Mawyer, and require pump stations at both ends. In 2009, it was estimated to cost $62 million.
Some, like former city councilor Dede Smith, who opposed the Ragged Mountain dam, are dubious. “As for the pipeline, I have contended for a long time now, that it will never be built,” she writes in an email. “The irony is that what we have now is RWSA’s original plan for the Community Water Plan, and that is an expanded Ragged Mountain Reservoir using the clean Moormans River as its source. While the introduction of a South Fork Rivanna pipeline may have brought majority approval to the plan, the pipeline was always unrealistic both in logistics and cost. And in truth, now that the expanded RMR is filled, the original plan is working pretty well…at least for now.”
Albemarle County has an ordinance that prohibits bike riding at Ragged Mountain, but the natural area is located in Charlottesville where City Councilors have voted to allow it. Staff photo
Albemarle Board of Supervisors Chair Diantha McKeel said in February that an accelerated opening of Hedgerow Park could be an alternative to allowing biking at Ragged Mountain Natural Area, a controversial city-owned and county-located property on which both governing bodies are at odds about whether cycling should be permitted.
In an April 12 work session, the supervisors discussed the feasibility of opening the new park and all agreed to authorize an immediate conceptual engineering study for the space, which consists of 340 acres just south and west of the Interstate 64 and Route 29 interchange. It abuts Ragged Mountain Natural Area. If all goes well, the park’s construction would take place next year between May and November.
“To get to this park, you’re going to have to drive,” said Trevor Henry, the county director of facilities and environmental services. This has been a negative for cyclists looking for a location they can bike to.
Gauging the use at Preddy Creek Trail Park, which is the most similar county space to the proposed park, Henry estimates that 40 parking spaces will be necessary at Hedgerow. He also wants to allow space for about six horse trailers.
“The terrain here is incredibly steep in many places,” said Supervisor Ann Mallek, and it’s not ideal for horseback riding. “Not everything has to be available at every place.”
Each county park allows its own recreational activities, granting the estimated 800,000 people who visited them last year the opportunity to choose their destinations based on the activities they plan to do, Mallek said. And prohibiting horseback riding at Hedgerow would allow for a smaller parking lot.
But Supervisor Liz Palmer noted that when the late Jane Heyward gave the land to the county, she was adamant it be used for different kinds of recreation, including horseback riding. As for parking, on a recent Sunday afternoon at Crozet’s Sugar Hollow and Mint Springs Valley Park, she said she counted more than 50 cars in each lot.
“It’s interesting to me that it seemed a lot safer with people getting out [of their cars] with picnic bags and dogs and kids and everything to have a little bit bigger parking lot,” Palmer said.
Henry told supervisors the existing entrance into Hedgerow would first need widening, and potentially paving. He listed a number of possible issues that have design and cost implications, including the current parking lot’s location in a 100-year floodplain and proximity to a stream buffer, which could result in stream mitigation work.
The price? Henry estimates it at an initial $1.5 million; adding a pavilion and running electricity to it would cost an extra $450,000.
“I see lots of Eagle Scout projects,” said Mallek. Supervisor Rick Randolph said they’d be happy to accept any donations.
At Ragged Mountain, Charlottesville and Albemarle County officials are still at odds over who should have ultimate authority over the property.
Virginia code says localities may make rules for parks they operate in other jurisdictions, but “no ordinances in conflict with an ordinance of the jurisdiction wherein the property is located shall be enacted.”
When the Ivy Creek Foundation handed Ragged Mountain Natural Area over to the city in 2014, former foundation director and city councilor Dede Smith—not involved with either group at the time—says she doubts the city knew about the county’s ordinance that disallows biking.
“They certainly did not know about the history of the reservoir as the only clean raw water we have in the community,” Smith says. “I very much regret that the Ivy Creek Foundation gave up management, but I wasn’t there anymore at that point, so I am not privy to the decision. ICF protected the land back in the 1990s for a reason, but that was lost in the transfer.”
Adds Smith, “An important point to make in the disagreement about governmental rights of the use of the land is that the Ivy Creek Foundation had to get the approval of the county to establish the natural area. For the city to say [the county has] no rights now is simply wrong.”
A price to pay
The accelerated opening of Hedgerow Park won’t be cheap. Here’s how Trevor Henry, the county’s director of facilities and environmental services, breaks it down.
Jefferson School African American Heritage Center director Andrea Douglas has a board that’s determined to make the center financially sustainable.
Photo by Eze Amos
When Charlottesville decided to keep the historic Jefferson School and its prime real estate as a community center rather than selling it for condos, a complicated financial structure was required to make the $18 million rehab of the 1926 high school possible.
Four years after the renovated school reopened in 2012, fundraising that was supposed to pay off the loans hasn’t happened, and the city has pledged a $950,000 grant to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center to cover its rent for the next few years.
The city sold the school for $100,000 in 2011 to the private Jefferson School Community Partnership LLLP, a move needed to procure the tax credits and loans to make the renovation possible. The plan envisioned was that the nonprofit Jefferson School Foundation would raise enough money to pay off the loans and support the African American Heritage Center.
It hasn’t quite happened that way.
The partnership is working on refinancing a nearly $6 million loan, and the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center spun off to be its own nonprofit last year.
Heritage center board secretary Elizabeth Breeden feels the original plan to go from raising “zero to $5 million in five years was setting someone up for failure,” she says. “You’ve got to establish a track record, which the building has done.”
The whole idea of a museum and cultural center to tell the story of African-Americans in Charlottesville is “a new concept,” says Breeden, one that potential contributors were waiting to see prove itself. When the center was under the umbrella of the Jefferson School Foundation, it had some difficulty raising money, says Breeden. “You can’t ask donors for rent.”
The heritage center likely wouldn’t have been able to pay its $210,000 rent without the proposed $950,000 grant from the city. That, says executive director Andrea Douglas, was a recommendation from the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces.
Douglas says the heritage center is facing the same challenges as every other nonprofit in Charlottesville. “We’re trying to raise $254,000 to pay for programming, common area fees and staff,” she says. “The board understands its fundraising job.”
The African American Heritage Center is getting ready to roll out a fundraising campaign that is “aspirational and worthy of what’s been asked of it by the Blue Ribbon Commission,” says Breeden.
Rent for tenants in the building could go down if the Jefferson School Community Partnership succeeds in refinancing a nearly $6 million loan, says partnership president Steve Blaine. “We’ve already got a commitment from the bank for better terms than we have now,” he says. “We don’t know where interest rates will be when the loan is due in another year.”
He says the $500,000 the city chips in to rent Carver Recreation Center helps make it possible to pay back the loan from rent. Other tenants like Sentara, Piedmont Virginia Community College and the Jefferson Area Board for Aging have five-year leases, and most plan to stay at the school, says Blaine.
Some tenants had feared rents would increase, but with the new loan, organizations like Literacy Volunteers could end up saving $15,000 a year, according to executive director Ellen Osborne. “It really is a privilege to be here,” she says.
Osborne believes the city should pay the heritage center’s rent. “This is their building anyway,” she says. “That would be the moral thing to do. They cover rent for McGuffey and the Discovery Museum.” That way, the heritage center could focus on its programs, she says. “It’s to everyone in the building’s benefit if the heritage center flourishes.”
And some, like former city councilor Dede Smith, who is on the African American Heritage Center Board, would like to see the city buy the building, as it did with McGuffey Art Center, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards for now.
Her hope is the city will do a cost-benefit analysis, and weigh howmuch it already has spent on the building, including the $6 million CEDA loan, the $500,000 annual rent for Carver Recreation Center and the grants like the $950,000 it plans to make to the heritage center. Over the past four years, the city has budgeted $120,000 to the heritage center and $30,000 to the Jefferson School Foundation.
“The building is undisputedly the most important African-American monument in the city,” says Smith.
“Why wouldn’t we survive?” asks Douglas, at a time when the city is confronting its racial history with Civil War monuments. “If you look at the present climate,” she says, “it’s important.”
KEY PLAYERS
Jefferson School City Center: The building that was once the only educational option for black students in Charlottesville and Albemarle now houses nonprofits and is anchored by Carver Recreation Center and the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.
Jefferson School Community Partnership LLLP: The limited liability partnership owns the building, which it bought for $100,000 in 2011 to take advantage of tax credits, because the city or nonprofits aren’t eligible for the credits. A $6 million bank loan, a $6 million CEDA loan and $6 million in tax credits made the $18 million renovation possible.
Jefferson School Foundation: This nonprofit’s mission was to fundraise to pay off the center’s loans and support the African American Heritage Center. Repeated phone calls to its president, Martin Burks, yielded no response about what the foundation is up to these days.
Jefferson School African American Heritage Center: The historical and cultural anchor of the project faced doubts from the beginning about its viability. But now as its own nonprofit and with a board ready to kick off a fundraising campaign, “We have every intention of being in the Jefferson School,” says director Andrea Douglas.
