Farmington Country Club – C-VILLE Weekly

Farmington feud

Farmington Country Club revoked Juan Manuel Granados’ membership following his spat with Tucker Carlson, who has admitted that his son threw wine in Granados’ face. Granados, represented by celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti, is now threatening legal action. It won’t be the first time: Granados reportedly successfully sued the Roanoke Athletic Club for revoking a family membership from him, his partner, and his daughter because it didn’t recognize gay couples with children as a family.

Quote of the week

“It took enormous self-control not to beat this man with a chair, which is what I wanted to do.”—Fox News host Tucker Carlson in a statement on an encounter with a man who allegedly called his daughter a “whore” at Farmington Country Club in October

Knock ’em all down

The two statues that grace West Main Street are of westward-looking explorers, men of the frontier. The Meriwether Lewis and William Clark sculpture at the Ridge-McIntire intersection features Albemarle-native Lewis, Clark and Sacajawea, the Shoshone woman who served as guide during the 1803-1806 expedition up the Missouri River to the Pacific. Another piece from the hands of Charles Keck, it was dedicated in 1921 and has been the source of controversy due to its depiction of Sacajawea crouching behind the men. A plaque commemorating her contributions was added to the monument in 2009. Photo: Rammelkamp Foto — Rammelkamp Foto

In case you haven’t had enough statue drama, Mayor Nikuyah Walker is now advocating for the removal of the Lewis and Clark monument on West Main Street. It shows the two explorers standing pompously over a cowering Sacagawea, though they actually have the Shoshone woman to thank for showing them the way. A plaque commemorating Sacagawea’s role was added about a decade ago after a previous effort to have the statue removed.

Haters want protection, too

Jason Kessler and white supremacist groups Identity Evropa, National Socialist Movement, and Traditionalist Worker Party are suing the city, former city police chief Al Thomas, and Virginia State Police Sergeant Becky Crannis-Curl for allegedly violating their First and Fourteenth amendment rights by failing to protect them during the first Unite the Right rally.

Human remains found on parkway

The John Warner Parkway trail was closed November 8 after human remains were found. The identity of the body, which is with the medical examiner’s office, is unknown.

Ready or not, here they come

City Council unanimously approved a “dockless mobility” pilot program last week, meaning people on electric scooters will soon be zooming around town. But similar programs haven’t worked out well for surrounding cities.

“Electronic scooters introduce a mode of transportation that address what many refer to as the ‘first mile’ and ‘last mile’ problem,” says Vice-Mayor Heather Hill, for short trips that don’t merit driving, but are beyond a short walk.

Scooter drivers will download an app onto their smartphones and unlock the two-wheeler by scanning its code with their phones. Most companies charge a $1 unlocking fee, and an additional 20 cents per minute, according to the proposal.

The city hasn’t announced which brand it’s contracting with yet, but popular scooter company Bird has already set up shop in Richmond and Harrisonburg.

In the former, the city’s Department of Public Works almost immediately impounded as many scooters as it could because they encroached on the public right of way, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. And in the latter, a student has started a petition to get them banned.

“As the ride-sharing company dumped hundreds of scooters in various locations across our city, they left us to decide where we leave them,” writes petitioner Nathan Childs. “The decent thing to think is, ‘Oh, a bike rack will do just fine,’ or ‘I definitely shouldn’t leave this in the middle of the sidewalk.’ However, these scooters have brought out the worst in us.”

Scooters are required to follow certain parking restrictions, but “they can be knocked over, moved, or just incorrectly parked,” according to the proposal presented to City Council.

Adds Childs, “I have stumbled over several littered Birds, dodged countless oblivious riders, and moved too many scooters out of the way. If anything, we don’t deserve Bird scooters because of how we treat property that anyone can use but for which no one is responsible.”

Says Hill about the new fleet of approximately 200 scooters coming to town this month, “What remains to be seen is if there is a strong enough need in a city of Charlottesville’s size, and the impact dockless scooters and bikes have on the quality of life along our city streets.”

By the numbers

Room for improvement

Nationwide, voter turnout in the 2018 election was the highest in a midterm election in half a century, according to the Associated Press. In Charlottesville and Albemarle, participation shot up by more than 20 points compared to the 2014 midterms. But that still lags behind turnout in a presidential election. In the end, more than 30 percent of voters didn’t cast a ballot for who is going to represent them in Congress.

Charlottesville turnout

2018 midterms 67%
2016 presidential election 78%
2014 midterms 41%

Albemarle

2018 midterms 68%
2016 presidential election 74%
2014 midterms 46%

About 50 people gathered in the woods beside the train tracks running west of Charlottesville early July 7. The morning was cool and birds could be heard chirping in the quiet—a scene nothing like the one 120 years ago, when a mob yanked John Henry James off a train there at Wood’s Crossing and strung him up on a locust tree.

“Soon I will be done with the troubles of the world.” The Reverend Brenda Brown-Grooms sang the Mahalia Jackson spiritual as participants contemplated the violence that had taken place on the site.

The occasion was to gather soil from property now owned by Farmington Country Club, the first step of a pilgrimage in which approximately 100 Charlottesville citizens will transport it to the recently opened lynching memorial in Montgomery, Alabama—the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial to Peace and Justice.

“We are embarking on an important journey,” said Andrea Douglas, executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center and one of the pilgrimage organizers. “Today we recognize a murder. We, in doing so, are returning humanity to a dehumanizing act.”

The journey is a way to “commemorate, understand and recognize this act and incorporate it into our DNA and bodies as wrong,” said Douglas.

City and county officials were present for the ceremony, including Mayor Nikuyah Walker, Vice Mayor Heather Hill, councilors Wes Bellamy and Kathy Galvin and police Chief RaShall Brackney, as well Albemarle supervisors Diantha McKeel, Ned Gallaway, Norman Dill, Rick Randolph and Chair Ann Mallek.

UVA professor and pilgrimage organizer Jalane Schmidt recounted the details of James’ slaying. He’d been accused of assaulting a white woman, arrested and taken to spend the night in jail in Staunton because of fears of a lynching. On the train ride back, accompanied by the Albemarle sheriff, a group of around 150 unmasked men boarded the train.

After James was hanged, his body was riddled with 75 bullets, according to the Shenandoah Herald. “Hundreds of people visited the scene with many snatching souvenirs, such as pieces of his clothing,” said Schmidt. No arrests were made.

Walker and Charlottesville High student Zyahna Bryant dug up dirt from the site, and Walker asked all the black people there to come closer, to close their eyes and “yell out a name you’d like to share this moment with.”

Said Walker, “There is no explanation for the violence black bodies have endured in this country. There are no amount of sorry that can make up for the amount of turmoil black people and black families have endured in this country.”

She pointed out the volume of the violence inflicted on James with 75 shots into his body. “Somebody’s son, somebody’s brother, maybe somebody’s father.” She said those same injustices and hate happen every day in this country and in Charlottesville.

“We take this journey to gamble on the ancient notion that the truth will set us free,” said the Reverend Susan Minasian, who is one of three clergy going on the pilgrimage.

Schmidt concluded the ceremony by pouring “a libation for the dead”—Virginia distilled whiskey from a flask—onto the ground where James is believed to have perished.

The mood of participants afterward was somber, with some relief.

“It’s rehumanizing,” says April Burns, whose mother, Joan Burton, grew up across the street at Ednam Farm and had played around the “hanging tree.”

“This was for somebody who never had a funeral,” said Burns.

“In my opinion, slavery was this country’s original sin and we can’t get past it,” said Supervisor McKeel. “It’s haunting us to this day.”

Chief Brackney acknowledged being torn between her race and her job as a cop. “I’m saddened my profession is still part of that,” she said. “I’m also feeling hope that we’re standing on rich soil that allows us to plant our findings forward.”

She added, “We start to own and change the narrative.”

“It was very emotional, being able to be in the spot as a black man,” said Bellamy, who has family members who have been lynched. “I was thinking about the mob and what [James’] feelings must have been to feel the train slow down, and the state of shock and fear he must have felt.”

The murderers took 20 minutes for prayer, “making a ritual of hanging and shooting this man,” said Bellamy.

And he thought of two years ago, when he created a firestorm by saying the city’s Confederate statues should come down. “I wonder if [people] knew this story,” he said.

Being at the lynching site couldn’t help but feel very close to home. “I get letters all the time about how they want to hang me on a tree,” said Bellamy. “My daughters—they send letters to my daughters and want to hang them on a tree.”

One thing Bellamy said he’s seen is the “evolution” of white people. “A lot of white people just didn’t understand how painful this was for us.”

He said, “People’s minds are a lot more open from March 2016 until now.”

Following the Farmington ceremony, the heritage center held a community conversation on lynching and screened “An Outrage,” a documentary by Lance Walker and Charlottesville native Hannah Ayers, who didn’t have Charlottesville on her radar when they started work on a film about lynching. Like a lot of people, Ayers was unaware of James’ murder.

But lynching was much more a part of history than “what we’d been taught,” said Walker.

Supervisor Randolph got a standing ovation for his talk on race—”truly America’s disgrace”—and declared July 12, the day of the lynching, John Henry James Day. “Here we repudiate the vile murder of John Henry James.”

Many of the 100 people who will be leaving on the July 8 pilgrimage were present in the historic African American Jefferson School.

Said Douglas, “I believe this is nothing short of monumental. We’re taking hold of history. We’re examining it critically and rewriting the narrative that’s been incomplete.”