Tag: eugene williams

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Bridge builders: Charlottesville’s unsung heroes

A new book tells the stories of the Bridge Builders who worked to change Charlottesville.

By Kay Slaughter

Each day, people cross the Drewary J. Brown Bridge on West Main Street oblivious of this memorial to Charlottesville’s history. Nothing announces the bridge over the railroad tracks as a special space.

It was rebuilt in 1998 and renamed by City Council for Brown, a civil rights leader who had recently died. A few years later, council began to recognize other “Bridge Builders” who, like Brown, had bridged racial, economic, or other differences to create a more equitable Charlottesville. Bronze plaques on the bridge now honor 36 residents recognized by the city for their “memorable contributions to our community life.”

Drewary Brown returned from World War II ready for change in his hometown. Although by day he maintained a fraternity house at UVA, his real vocation became social and political action. He joined the local NAACP, and over the years helped transform the previously all-white Democratic Party. He co-founded the Monticello Area Community Action Agency and created a summer teen jobs program, and other local job training programs. “The most underappreciated person in Charlottesville,” said former city manager Cole Hendrix, who served from the 1971 to 1996. “People just don’t realize how much Drewary did for the community.”

At the same time, other activists had moved to town. The Reverend Benjamin Bunn, pastor of First Baptist Church, co-founded with his wife, Imogene, the local chapter of the NAACP that Brown and others later joined. The Bunns took direct action: Bunn singlehandedly desegregated Charlottesville’s public library by refusing to remain relegated to the “colored room.” Similarly, Imogene, scheduled for elective surgery, informed UVA that she would take whatever steps necessary, including legal action, to get a private room in the all-white Barringer wing. She got the room. Imogene, a registered nurse, also integrated the Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Facility and Blue Ridge Sanatorium.               

Bunn invited into First Baptist’s Young Adult Fellowship several whites, including Francis Fife, to discuss race relations. Fife, who later became a City Council member and mayor, maintained a lifelong passion for open and affordable housing, helping to increase its local supply through the Charlottesville Housing Foundation and state agencies. Fife was recognized as a Bridge Builder in 2002 and the Bunns in 2003.

Well before the recent conversation about white privilege, A new book identifies the Bridge Builders who worked to change Charlottesville. A new book identifies the Bridge Builders who worked to change Charlottesville. Sarah Patton Boyle, a white southern daughter of privilege and a writer for The Saturday Evening Post, sought out T.J. Sellers, publisher of The Reflector, a local African-American newspaper. Through their conversations, Sellers became Boyle’s mentor, teaching her hard lessons about the underlying racism in her well-intended words. After challenging her own attitudes, Boyle reached out locally and statewide to build support among whites for desegregation. For her efforts, the KKK burned a cross in her yard.   

A leader in the NAACP, Eugene Williams and other plaintiffs sued the city schools to desegregate, and after seven years, they finally prevailed. Meanwhile, the University Cafeteria, operated by L.D. Cooley, had become one of the first eateries to open its doors to African Americans. Williams and Boyle, refused service by another restaurant, retreated to the friendly University Cafeteria.

Frances Brand, a staunch advocate for peace and justice, painted local portraits of “firsts,” like the first female mayor, Nancy O’Brien, and the first female African American school board member, Grace Tinsley. Booker Reaves, principal of Jefferson Elementary during segregation, played a crucial role in school desegregation, including persuading teachers like Teresa Jackson Walker-Price to teach in newly desegregated Lane High School.   

Mentored by Brown, Alicia Lugo, the first African American woman to chair the Charlottesville City School Board, developed a program called Teensight to help teen parents. William Washington, an ex-offender who created a job training program for former prisoners, was nominated as a Bridge Builder by a former circuit court judge.   

There are 22 more citizens so honored.

In 2016, the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces recommended that the Drewary Brown Bridge become more visible. More recently, several citizens, including this writer, have called on the city to treat the bridge as a monument by providing prominent signage, such as lamppost flags displaying Bridge Builders’ images and public art on the north- and south-facing bridge walls. The city’s current West Main Streetscape plan provides a means to direct these modest improvements that could significantly commemorate the bridge and the Bridge Builders, raising their profile in the community.

In the ongoing, contentious conversation around public monuments, the Drewary Brown Bridge remains the only marker honoring local Charlottesville citizens who contributed to civil rights, justice, and equality issues. The city has the opportunity and means to transform it into a more visible monument to Charlottesville’s Bridge Builders.

Kay Slaughter, a former mayor and retired Southern Environmental Law Center attorney, is the editor of Bridge Builders 2001- 2016 Charlottesville, VA, which will be launched at the Unity Day event.

Hear their stories

Several Bridge Builders will discuss their history during a Unity Day event at 7pm Thursday, July 25, at Vinegar Hill Theatre. The evening will include a screening of the documentary, Working for a Better Day: The Drewary Brown Story, and a panel discussion with Bridge Builders John Conover, Elizabeth “Betz” Gleason, Teresa Walker-Price, and Eugene Williams.

Correction July 29: Booker Reaves was principal of Jefferson Elementary during segregation, not Burley High.

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Gaston’s history: Idealism spurred civil rights activist

UVA history professor emeritus Paul Gaston both taught and made Southern history. Laura Branton

When Paul Gaston came to the University of Virginia in 1957, it was overwhelmingly white and male, and segregation was the order of the day. And that’s why the young history professor and early civil rights activist chose it for his life’s work.

He brought Martin Luther King Jr. to Old Cabell Hall in 1963, just weeks before King wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail. That same year, Gaston became UVA’s only professor to get punched and arrested during a sit-in at the staunchly segregated Buddy’s restaurant on Emmet Street.

Professor emeritus Paul Gaston died June 14 at age 91.

Daughter Chinta Gaston remembers her brother Blaise teasing her that “Daddy is in jail.”

She also recalls, “My dad was kicked out of Fry’s Spring [Beach Club] after Buddy’s.” A number of people threatened to leave the club in protest of his ouster, she says, “but Father decided it was wrong to belong to a segregated place. My recollection is we didn’t go back.”

As a white boy growing up in Jim Crow Alabama, Gaston might have seemed an unlikely leader of the civil rights charge. But he was raised in the utopian community of Fairhope, founded by his grandfather, an experience he wrote about in a 2009 memoir.  “I grew up in a community where equal rights and justice were grounding moral principles,” he once told this reporter.

Gaston’s Deep South roots also struck civil rights legend Eugene Williams, who was head of the local NAACP in the 1950s and met Gaston and his wife Mary at a meeting, where they became regulars. Williams says he was “very impressed” when he heard Gaston was at the Buddy’s sit-in.

“I am speaking of a white man, Paul Gaston, born in Alabama, professor at the University of Virginia, and a sure face at civil rights meetings,” says Williams, who also remembers Gaston’s charm during those days of segregation. “And at the end of meetings he would mingle with the attendees.”

Paul Gaston in 2009 at the site of the former Buddy’s, where he was punched and arrested at a sit-in. File photo Hawes Spencer

The ‘60s were cathartic for Gaston. “Life in the 1960s was the most rewarding era I’ve known,” he said in 2005. “I found a community of students who wanted to shake things up. We marched together, we had sit-ins, we had boycotts. I was their leader—I was 30.”

Gaston was offered jobs up north, but chose to stay at UVA, says his youngest son Gareth. “He wanted to teach white Southerners.” Gareth admires the way his father “combined scholarship and activism.”

Gaston taught the South’s history, and wrote The New South Creed: A Study in Southern Mythmaking in 1970. The book was republished in 2002 and his former student, Robert J. Norrell, wrote in the introduction that it had “stood the test of time as a historical interpretation.”

He helped establish the Carter G. Woodson Institute of African-American and African Studies in 1981. And he is credited with wooing civil rights leader Julian Bond to UVA’s faculty.

In the 1980s, he went to South Africa, met Desmond Tutu, and taught a class at the University of Cape Town, says Gareth.

University of Richmond president emeritus Ed Ayers, former UVA dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, recalls that Gaston was a “legend” when Ayers arrived at UVA in 1980.

“I think Paul will be remembered for both writing and making Southern history,” he says.

Chinta notes her father’s optimism and idealism in his belief that he could dispel racism by talking truth. “He was not successful,” she says. Yet he continued to believe “there was a new dawn that would make these poor benighted white people understand.”

He had a great faith in people, says Chinta. He was “endlessly interested in his children and he was nonjudgmental.”

Mary Gaston died in 2013. Gaston is survived by his three children and two granddaughters. A memorial is planned for the fall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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West2nd smackdown: Council rejects permit despite meeting city requirements

Now we’ll never see more than a rendering of West2nd, the $50 million development of luxury condos and retail space that had been proposed at the current site of a Water Street parking lot since 2014. Rendering Keith Woodard

When Mayor Nikuyah Walker chaired her first City Council meeting February 5, citizens got to see how previously out-of-control meetings would be run under a new regime—and learned that  the heckling continues both for councilors and for the West2nd developer seeking a special use permit that was rejected for reasons that had little to do with city code.

When Keith Woodard won a bid in 2014 to build a mixed-use building on a city-owned Water Street parking lot that would house the City Market, parking, retail and residential, he had the blessings of City Council for his innovative design. Four years later, costs soared and he retooled the project, adding 28 luxury units and another floor, which required the special use permit. He also offered to build affordable housing units on Harris Street.

Of all developers in town, Woodard has the best track record on affordable housing. When he bought Dogwood Housing in 2007 from local mixed-income housing icon Eugene Williams, he promised to maintain the affordability of most of the units—and has done so.

So it was odd that Woodard would be the one to be asked to jump through higher hoops by Councilor Wes Bellamy and receive jeers from the Greek chorus in attendance as he sought approval to increase density for West2nd.

That Woodard offered to build affordable units on Harris Street instead of contributing to the Affordable Housing Fund, as most developers do, is unusual. And he said he’d exceed the city’s requirement of 16 units kept below market rate for 4.7 years. When councilors said they wanted a longer term, he said he’d make eight units affordable for 10 years.

Bellamy badgered him to up the number of affordable units. “Why couldn’t all 16 units be affordable for 20 years?” asked Bellamy.

“The project still has to be financially feasible,” explained Woodard, eliciting a big sigh from Bellamy.

Woodard pointed out that he could have put the amount required—$316,000—into the Affordable Housing Fund, “which maybe we should have stuck with that,” and that keeping eight units affordable for 10 years was already challenging at an estimated cost of $474,000.

Bellamy said he was perplexed that Woodard said it wouldn’t be financially feasible “when some would say you’ve made a lot of money in this city and because you’ve already made so much money maybe you can give some back.” That was greeted by whoops from some attendees.

And when Bellamy asked Woodard how much money he was going to make from West2nd, Deputy City Attorney Lisa Robertson advised councilors to “focus on the land use issues” for a zoning application and said that enabling legislation didn’t give council the ability to require more.

“That was a silly question,” says Eugene Williams. “[Bellamy] doesn’t have the facts and he doesn’t know how much [Woodard] had to spend.”

When councilors voted 3-2 to deny the permit, the hecklers applauded. “Those young people know nothing about investing,” says Williams. “That just bothers me to know we had three councilors who wanted to accommodate the audience more than actually trying to make this feasible for both sides.”

Bellamy, Walker and Heather Hill voted against the special use permit. ”It’s not all right to vote against it without explaining specifically what the developer needs to do,” says Williams. He opines that it would have been wiser to say what they wanted and table the vote.

Williams also criticizes Kathy Galvin and Mike Signer’s yes votes and says they seemed more concerned about downtown businesses than low-income residents.

However, Signer spent a fair amount of time during the meeting discussing whether revenue from the project could be directed exclusively to the affordable housing fund. He says he voted for the permit because it would allow the city to increase its current $3.5 million affordable housing annual budget by about 30 percent.

Others have concerns about the Monday night performance, and the word “extortion” has been bandied about.

“If I’m a developer and read those [news] accounts, a red flare has gone up,” says attorney Fred Payne, who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against City Council for its vote to remove Confederate statues. “Why would I want to invest in this town?”

With the vote to deny the permit, “You can see the degree to which City Council is out of control,” says Payne. “I have a feeling if this were litigated, the city would probably lose.”

He adds, “I don’t think this City Council understands there are limits on what they can do.”

Part of the problem Woodard faces is that four councilors were not around when the city bid out the project in 2014. Galvin was, and at the meeting she said—after a five-minute recess to calm the interruptions from the crowd—“The demand was that the City Market be downtown on that city parking lot. It was not affordable housing.” The project has moved along “based on criteria the city gave this developer.”

Galvin also said the special use permit meets the comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance, and the project would add 80 people living on the mall and 100 jobs in the face of increasing competition to downtown businesses, as well as increase city revenue from the parking lot from $6,500 a year to $945,000 a year. “That’s huge,” she said.

For Bellamy, the message to developers is, “This council will prioritize affordable housing.” He says he appreciates Woodard’s efforts and understands that he met city requirements. “We still have discretion,” says Bellamy. “I hope we can still work together.”

Hill was more concerned about the City Market. “I’m not convinced the market will thrive there,” she said.

She says she’s not “anti development” and suggests looking at the project through a “new lens” and “recognize we ultimately may not be able to accommodate the market on this specific site if we are to meet the needs of the vendors while also competing with other community priorities.”

Woodard says he doesn’t think City Council’s vote to deny the permit was about increased density. “I think this project should be part of [affordable housing] but not all of it,” he says.

Litigation is not an option at this point, he says. “We’re looking at alternate paths to go forward.”

He says he does need a decision soon because people have reserved condos in West2nd. And he’s put $2 million into underground utilities, as well as four years of effort.

“We’re trying to work things out,” he says. “I’m trying to be positive.”

Updated 3:53pm to clarify Mike Signer’s reasons for his vote for the special use permit.

 

 

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In brief: ‘Hit piece,’ the unshrouder and more

Nikuyah Walker admits she doesn’t follow the rules very well. Staff photo

But her emails

Independent City Council candidate Nikuyah Walker was the target of a November 4 story in the Daily Progress that she and her supporters called a “hit piece”—three days before the election—in which an anonymous source in City Hall questions her ability to “work collaboratively with city officials.” The story described her emails to officials as “aggressive” and “often confrontational.”

“Advocates for social justice don’t always behave politely.”—Joy Johnson to City Council on the topic of protesters arrested at their August 21 meeting

Blank slate

Dillwyn’s entire town council is up for re-election, but when the longtime clerk retired, no one reminded the councilors to register as candidates to be on the ballot. The ballot will be blank, and Dillwyn’s 244 registered voters must write in the names of the seven councilors they want to elect, according to the Progress.

Fogel files again

Civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel is suing Charlottesville, City Manager Maurice Jones and law firm Hunton & Williams on behalf of five plaintiffs, contending that Jones had no authority to hire the firm’s partner Tim Heaphy to do an independent review of the city’s response to the events of August 12.

Jeff Fogel, with plaintiffs Joy Johnson, Tanesha Hudson and Walt Heinecke, wants the city to fire Tim Heaphy. Staff photo

An end to Democracy

Nelson County’s Democracy Vineyards, which opened in 2007, announced it will close after Thanksgiving this year.

Another attempt

Around 1am November 5, city police arrested Brian Lambert in Emancipation Park and charged him with vandalism, trespassing and being drunk in public for allegedly cutting the orange fencing surrounding the Robert E. Lee statue. Lambert, arrested for being drunk at UVA on September 12, when students shrouded their Thomas Jefferson statue, is also one of three people who attempted to uncover General Lee on September 16.

Best BACON

Charlottesville High’s code-writing wunderkinds in Best All-Around Club of Nerds win first place in the first round of NASA and  MIT’s Zero Robotics competition.

Keep ’em at home

Signs at Water Street Garage, Rapture and UVA lawn. Photos staff and Emily Bagdasarian

While another tragic mass shooting made headlines over the weekend, some Charlottesville institutions are putting forth their best effort to make this city bulletproof.

Twelve days before a man who was booted out of the Air Force for domestic violence dressed in all-black tactical gear and shot up a First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, killing 26 and injuring 20 others, about a dozen signs prohibiting all weapons appeared at every entry point on the University of Virginia Lawn.

UVA spokesperson Anthony de Bruyn did not respond to multiple interview requests about the warnings, but other local entities that ban firearms were willing to discuss their decisions.

Charlottesville Parking Center officials posted “No Guns” signs in the Water Street Parking Garage in the immediate aftermath of the August 12 Unite the Right rally, according to general manager and former mayor Dave Norris.

“We were concerned when we saw dozens of heavily-armed neo-Nazis using the garage as a staging area on the morning of August 12 and had no grounds to ask them to leave, and received no response from law enforcement when we reported this activity to them,” says Norris. “Now that the signs are in place, we are better equipped to manage situations like this in the future.”

As for the sticker on Rapture’s door that bans firearms, owner Mike Rodi says it was largely in response to the summer’s “hate rallies,” when KKK and Unite the Right protesters “made it clear that they would take advantage of Virginia’s open carry laws and come armed.”

The owner of the Downtown Mall restaurant says businesses near the epicenter of the deadly rally “used every tool at their disposal to keep racist troublemakers out,” and signage was part of that. On August 12, many businesses also posted dress code signs banning hate symbols.

Rapture has long had a no-gun policy, says Rodi. “Guns and booze don’t mix.”

Other businesses posted no-gun signs before this summer. In late 2015, shoppers in Whole Foods became upset when they spotted a man packing heat in the produce section. Though Virginia is an open-carry state, Whole Foods’ corporate policy bans all weapons, and a sign declaring so was posted on its door by January 2016.

Eugene Williams Day

Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy presents Eugene Williams with a proclamation on his 90th birthday. Staff photo

Charlottesville’s legendary civil rights leader Eugene Williams turned 90 November 6, and Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy presented him with a proclamation declaring the day Eugene Williams Day at a birthday celebration November 4 at the Boar’s Head Inn.

As president of the local NAACP chapter in the 1950s, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that separate but equal schools didn’t cut it, Williams recruited plaintiffs to sue the Charlottesville School Board.

In 1980, Williams convinced his wife, Lorraine, brother Albert and sister-in-law Emma to sink their life savings into Dogwood Housing to provide
affordable housing to families throughout the city, bucking the trend of housing the poor in projects.

And the proclamation declares, “Eugene Williams has served as a symbolic conscience of Charlottesville for what is right and fair for all people and for bridging the diverse parts of the Charlottesville community.”

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It’s Eugene Williams Day

On his own birthday, Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy presented a proclamation to honor Eugene Williams on his 90th. Staff photo

Charlottesville’s legendary civil rights leader turned 90 November 6, and Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy presented him with a proclamation declaring the day Eugene Williams Day at a birthday celebration November 4 at Boar’s Head Inn.

Williams grew up on Dice Street in a house with no plumbing, unlike the white-owned abodes on nearby Ridge Street. He went to college, served in the military and came back to Charlottesville as a sales exec for a black-owned insurance company, which gave him the freedom to question the segregation of the 1950s.

As president of the local NAACP chapter, its membership was at a peak, Bellamy says Williams reminds him. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that separate but equal schools didn’t cut it in Brown v. Board of Education, Williams recruited plaintiffs to sue the Charlottesville School Board. And when they prevailed in court, Governor Lindsay Almond ordered Venable Elementary and Lane High schools closed rather than admit black children in 1958’s notorious massive resistance.

In 1980, Williams convinced his wife, Lorraine, brother Albert and sister-in-law Emma to sink their life savings into Dogwood Housing to provide affordable housing to families throughout the city, bucking the trend of housing the poor in projects.

Bellamy says Williams “always tells me to push to do more” and advised him that nothing gets done without being a troublemaker, which Williams denies, but says, “I had to be a troublemaker.”

And the proclamation declares, “Eugene Williams has served as a symbolic conscience of Charlottesville for what is right and fair for all people and for bridging the diverse parts of the Charlottesville community.”