The Future Land Use Map will be a guiding document for the city as it figures out which neighborhoods are fit for denser housing. Photo: City of Charlottesville
Map moves ahead
The process of rewriting Charlottesville’s Comprehensive plan—and, subsequently, reevaluating the zoning for the entire city—took a major step forward last week, when the Planning Commission unanimously recommended that City Council approve the most recent draft of the Future Land Use Map.
The Future Land Use Map shows which areas of the city could be sites for denser housing. The map has been under discussion throughout the summer, drawing thousands of comments from residents who have ideas about how Charlottesville should grow.
The Planning Commission’s recommended map would allow for increased housing density in many neighborhoods. In the new map, much of the city is designated General Residential (bright yellow, right). General Residential areas allow four units per lot, on the condition that the fourth unit is affordable.
In some other corridors, plots that are currently zoned R-1—allowing for only one unit—will be designated Medium Intensity Residential (mustard yellow, right). On Medium Intensity Residential lots, builders will be able to construct buildings of up to 12 units, as well as detached accessory dwelling units and townhouses. If your street is colorful, it doesn’t mean the city is going to come seize your house and tear it down to build an apartment. The map is a loose guide to what could be allowed in the future.
In earlier drafts, some residential areas had Mixed-Use Nodes, which would have allowed for small chunks of commerce amidst the houses and apartments. Many of those nodes have been removed. Additionally, sensitive community designations have been added, meaning in some areas developers will have to build a higher percentage of affordable units.
City Council will decide whether or not to move forward with the map at its November 15 meeting. Watch this space for additional coverage of the Comprehensive Plan process throughout the fall.
Art from war
Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue was removed from Market Street Park on July 10. Photo: Eze Amos
Confederate statues, once removed from their pedestals, present a tricky problem. Where do you put the unsightly hunks of bronze? Do you leave them in storage forever? Do you donate them to a person or organization that wants them and might allow them to live another life as a rallying point for hate?
The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center has an innovative answer to these problems. It’s submitted a bid to take ownership of the recently removed Robert E. Lee statue. Then, it’ll melt the monument down.
The project, Swords into Plowshares, will call upon an artist-in-residence to repurpose the bronze material to create a new public art installation.
Dr. Andrea Douglas, executive director of JSAAHC, said in a press release that she views SIP as “Charlottes-ville’s opportunity to lead by creating a road map that can be followed by other communities that wish to impact history.”
The project will invite input from the descendants of enslaved persons who were disenfranchised by Virginia’s constitution, which entrenched Jim Crow rule. It will seek to represent the community’s desire for ”value-driven, socially-just objects in our public spaces,” Douglas says.
Swords into Plowshares has already raised over $500,000, and is supported by many local and national organizations, including Descendants of Enslaved Communities of the University of Virginia and the Equal Justice Initiative.
The city has received numerous offers from organizations that wish to claim the Lee and Jackson statues, which were taken down on July 10. City Council has until January 13 to make a decision.
In brief
Couric’s confessional
Katie Couric. Photo: Yahoo news
UVA’s prized alum Katie Couric found herself in hot water recently, when it was revealed that her new autobiography includes first-person accounts of multiple less-than-flattering moments. Couric confessed that she withheld inflammatory remarks from a 2016 interview she conducted with the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, concerning Black athletes’ decision to kneel during the National Anthem.
It was previously published that the justice called the gesture “dumb and disrespectful,” but Couric said this week that Ginsburg also said the athletes showed “contempt for a government that has made it possible for their parents and grandparents to live a decent life.” Couric admitted she intended to protect RBG, because the sitting Supreme Court justice was “elderly and probably didn’t fully understand the question.”
Back to the well(ness)
UVA’s new student health center on Brandon Avenue has received more than just a face lift: In fact, the building itself is said to have healing powers. According to Jamie Leonard, director of the Office of Health Promotion, the building was designed to “help physiologically change somebody” as they enter it. Natural wood, hues of blue, and plenty of sunlight offers “a significant mood-booster,” according to a UVA Today article about the space. The four-story building includes a revamped Department of Kinesiology and a pharmacy as well as a wellness suite, reflection rooms, and designated quiet spaces for introverted students. The space even features a state-of-the-art testing kitchen, where students can go to learn how to make healthy meals. Are you feeling better yet?
Following Charlottesville City Council’s decision to remove the statues of Confederate generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee from the downtown parks, many members of the community voiced their support for melting down the statues rather than relocating them. That got us wondering: What does it take, logistically, to melt a statue? C-VILLE spoke to several welders and metalworkers to determine how it would be done and what could be produced from the leftover material.
The consensus among these craftsmen was that no facility in Charlottesville would be able to handle such an operation. The statues would have to be transported to a location such as OK Foundry in Richmond, which can melt up to 8,000 pounds of metal per day—but only 2,000 per furnace. The statues each weigh around 6,000 pounds, meaning they would have to be cut into pieces first. According to Jason Dickerson of Quality Welding Inc, bronze is a “sticky” material that would require a wet saw rather than a dry saw in order to accomplish this.
After cutting the statues into manageable chunks and melting them down (which would required heat between 1,600° and 1,800° F, depending on the ratio of components in the alloy), a new use could be found for the bronze. The statues are both very valuable from a raw materials standpoint, and multiple metalworkers emphasized how important it would be for the melted-down bronze to be repurposed.
Zack Worrell, founder of Monolith Knives, says it would be possible for an artist to create a new piece using the metal, though not a simple task. Like many who spoke at the June 7 meeting, Worrell says the city should find “acclaimed artists from around the country, some artists who are actually from Charlottesville, and maybe community members” to create a work of art that speaks to and serves Charlottesville.—Joseph Riley
Charlottesville's Confederate statues continue to attract nighttime activity.
Confederate monuments have toppled across the South since the slaying of George Floyd at the hands of police. In Charlottesville, statues of generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson still stand, and continue to attract nighttime patrols from both statue defenders and opponents.
In the wee hours of June 28—three days before a law went into effect allowing Virginia localities to determine the destinies of their own Confederate war memorials—Lee was once again splattered with red paint, and later that night, police responded to a call about a man with a gun at Court Square Park, where Jackson resides.
Statue defenders have been on alert for weeks: In Richmond, after the United Daughters of the Confederacy headquarters was set on fire May 31 and several Confederate monuments were graffitied, local statue supporters organized sign-up sheets to defend the generals.
Brian Lambert, a member of the Gordonsville Grays chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, called for monument guards on social media. “Here in Charlottesville, we were able to stop an assault on our local Memorials by Antifa, with the cooperation of CPD,” he wrote.
It’s the alleged cooperation with the Charlottesville Police Department that troubles anti-racist activists.
Activist Molly Conger tweeted on June 19 that when she went to check on the “confederate vigilantes,” one of them called 911, and seven police cars responded.
UVA prof Jalane Schmidt regularly leads tours of Confederate markers in the Court Square area. After a June 11 tour, “I was stopped by police because of suspicious behavior,” says Schmidt. “They called in about 30 officers,” and had paddy wagons and squad cars circling the parks while officers questioned tour participants. She says she pointed to the armed statue defenders as those who were suspicious.
A Facebook page called Save the Robert E. Lee Statue, which lists a link to the Monument Fund (one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the city for its vote to remove the Confederate generals), thanks the volunteer statue guards.
“Nightly, there are cars and people on foot casing the monuments, hoping for an opportunity to strike,” says the post. “Social media trolls have threatened to ‘dox’ the monument guards; and those standing guard have been verbally assaulted and had the Police called on them with fabricated stories of threats of harm.”
Attorney Buddy Weber, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and the group’s spokesperson, did not respond to phone calls from C-VILLE.
Lambert declined to comment when contacted by C-VILLE, and we didn’t get to ask whether he was the man with a gun reported to police June 28.
Schmidt says her neighbors are “so unnerved seeing these guys with guns that they stopped walking in the parks.”
Robert Klonoski lives across from Market Street Park and has observed the statue protectors almost every night. “I don’t like having people hanging around my neighborhood with guns,” he says.
Charlottesville Police spokesperson Tyler Hawn declined to comment on how many calls police have gotten about gun-toting statue defenders or about would-be vandals, and refused to provide any information on the June 28 call about an armed man at Court Square Park.
“The vandalism incidents in front of the police department and at Market Street Park are under investigation,” Hawn says.
According to the Emergency Communications Center, 30 calls were made in June about suspicious behavior in the two parks.
By June 29, Lee had been scrubbed clean, although a Black Lives Matter T-shirt hung from Traveller’s bridle. Jock Yellott, a plaintiff in the statue lawsuit against the city, sat on a bench in Market Street Park reading Aristotle in the early evening.
A stream of out-of-towners came through to inspect the statues. Rhode Islander Marlene Yang had already seen the graffitied Lee statue in Richmond. “It really opens a lot of discussion on what people think is important,” she says.
A visitor from New York, who declined to give his name, says, “For the record, we love the statues.” He had just been to Gettysburg. “We wanted to see them while they’re still here,” says his wife.
Even the Monument Fund, which won an injunction prohibiting removal, acknowledges the statues’ days in city parks are numbered. The plaintiffs, who are still seeking attorneys’ fees, filed a motion June 5 with Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Rick Moore to partially dissolve the injunction.
The city has appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court to entirely dissolve the injunction so it can proceed under the new state law.
A statue supporter, who spoke only on the condition he not be named, is concerned about the safety of the Confederate monuments, which have been repeatedly vandalized. “People of goodwill are looking for a place to put them,” he says. “We can’t do that if they’re destroyed. Whether you like them or not, vandalism isn’t a good idea.”
While Richmond hoisted Stonewall Jackson off his pedestal July 1, Charlottesville continues to wait for the legal process to unwind.
“The nice thing about here is there’s a clear exit ramp with the motion to the Virginia Supreme Court,” says Schmidt. “It’s slower, but at least I’m seeing steady progress.”
Owner Chrissy Benninger holds up a tray of biscuits at Bluegrass Grill and Bakery. The breakfast spot will not reopen, she announced this week. Photo: Ashley Twiggs
Bluegrass blues
What gives a town its character? It’s a complicated question, but here are two easy answers: great food and local rituals. For years, Bluegrass Grill and Bakery has offered both. There’s the pre-meal ritual of waiting outside, rain or shine, for a chance to squeeze into a rickety wooden chair in a little diner with mandolins hanging from the rafters. Then there’s the whole wheat biscuits, groaning stacks of pancakes, and specials like the Hungry Norman—eggs Benedict and sausage links on an English muffin, with blackberry jam and goat cheese. (Often, too, there’s the post-meal ritual of running to the ATM, because you forgot that the place only takes cash.)
That’s all gone, now. This week, owner Chrissy Benninger announced that the coronavirus shutdown left no path forward for Bluegrass. After 19 years, the beloved spot has closed for good.
Benninger says the prospect of an indefinite period at partial capacity spelled doom for the restaurant. She was granted a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan, but she turned it down—the loan would’ve covered wages, but wouldn’t have been able to cover rent, insurance, or worker’s compensation. “The numbers did not even close to add up,” Benninger says. “My heart did not win this one.”
“I am extraordinarily proud of what Bluegrass has become,” she says. “I’m proud of my staff and what they gave to that place. Both my children worked there with me.”
Every day, Charlottesville becomes slicker and sleeker, home to more and more tech companies and luxury apartments. Now it’s down another weird, charming diner. Bluegrass “represented the flavor of the town,” Benninger says. “Charlottesville—it’s quirky. Every town needs one of those places. It’s somewhere to feel safe. It’s somewhere to feel like, it’s home.”
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Quote of the Week
“My message today is that we will reopen Virginia next Friday.”
—Governor Ralph Northam, speaking at a media briefing on Monday, May 4
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Opening up
With pressure mounting nationwide to “reopen” the country, Governor Ralph Northam announced Monday afternoon that Virginia could begin reopening as early as May 15.
COVID-19 tests performed last week showed a decline in positive cases in Virginia, indicating that social distancing efforts have slowed the spread of the virus here. Hospitalizations for coronavirus also remain below the state’s emergency capacity. But nationwide, a recent Trump administration report forecasts new coronavirus cases to hit 200,000 a day by month’s end.
Phase I of reopening, which could last two to four weeks (or longer), will continue to limit social gatherings to 10 people or less. People will still be advised to wear facemasks in public and stay home as much as possible, especially if they are vulnerable. Though teleworking will be encouraged, businesses—including restaurants, retail, fitness, personal care, and entertainment—will be allowed to reopen with industry-specific guidelines. All establishments will be required to use face masks, as well as implement physical distancing measures and enhanced cleaning practices.
If cases continue to decline, a second phase would ease additional restrictions on businesses, and limit social gatherings to 50 people for approximately two to four weeks. Vulnerable populations will still be “safer” at home. When there is no evidence of rebound cases, the state will enter its final phase of reopening, lifting all restrictions on social gatherings. However, it remains unclear as to when vulnerable populations will no longer be asked to stay home.
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In Brief
Guilty
On April 30, white supremacist Daniel McMahon of Florida pleaded guilty to charges of levying racially motivated threats of violence against local activist and community leader “D.G.,” a would-be candidate for Charlottesville City Council who subsequently dropped out of the race. McMahon faces an additional charge for cyberstalking, and could serve up to six years in prison.
Comeback kids?
UVA continues to ponder whether to bring students back to Charlottesville in the fall. This week, the school sent out a survey asking students for input on a handful of potential options, including mixing online and in-person classes, breaking the semester into chunks, and even holding classes on the weekends to thin out the crowds in academic buildings. The university says it will announce its final plans by mid-June.
Money moves
At its May 4 meeting, City Council agreed to add the roughly $250,000 it received under the CARES Act for coronavirus relief into its current Community Development Block Grant plan. The money will go toward public services, economic development, and administration/planning. An additional $500,000 the city received from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will be used for housing assistance and community and economic development.
Fresh paint
While it’s now legal to remove Confederate monuments, downtown’s Lee and Jackson statues are still up, and still getting vandalized. On Thursday, April 30, an unknown culprit likened the generals to COVID-19, scrawling “THE PANDEMIC” on the base of the Lee statue, with an arrow pointing upward. City employees removed the graffiti Friday morning, but the incident remains under police investigation.
Charlottesville's Confederate statues continue to attract nighttime activity.
On March 7, Virginia’s legislature passed the Conference Substitute to House Bill No. 1537, which will allow localities to control the placement of their war memorials. In other words, our city will soon be allowed to remove the statues of Confederate generals from our parks.
After the violence of Unite the Right in August 2017, cities like Durham and Baltimore took down Confederate statues almost immediately. But because of Virginia’s war memorials rule, Charlottesville has had to wait.
Don’t bust out the blow torches just yet, though. The bill lays out a few provisions for the removal of these monuments. Here are the steps the city will have to take:
1. Publish a notice in a local newspaper advertising the city’s desire to “remove, relocate, contextualize, or cover the monument.”
2. Hold a public hearing, at least 30 days after the newspaper advertisement, where “interested persons may present their views.”
3. Upon completion of that public hearing, at least three of five city councilors will have to vote to move the monument.
4. After the vote, the city will have to offer the monument to a “museum, historical society, government, or military battlefield” for 30 days.
5. Finally, the City Council will have “sole authority to determine the final disposition of the monument or memorial.”
A Senate version of the bill would have forced localities to jump through a number of additional hoops, but many of those requirements, like a historical review led by a state agency, were removed in the final version, which passed the House 52-43. In the Senate, Republicans Bryce Reeves (who represents parts of Charlottesville and Albemarle County) and Emmett Hanger joined the body’s 21 Democrats in voting in favor.
Governor Ralph Northam has expressed support for the bill. If he signs it, the new law will go into effect July 1, and the above process can begin. Market Street Park could look very different as soon as this fall.
That doesn’t mean we’ll be celebrating in the streets. On Saturday, members of the Blue Ribbon Commission, the group that produced a 2016 report highlighting the problems with the statues, convened at a Central Library panel to discuss next steps.
“In my opinion, it would be prudent to not schedule” the statue’s removal ahead of time, said Don Gathers, former chair of the commission. Gathers said he expects blowback, and thinks it would be safest to quietly take the statue down in the middle of the night, so that “when folks wake up in the morning, it’s a new skyline to the city.” (Baltimore and New Orleans successfully used this strategy in removing Confederate statues in 2017.)
UVA history professor John Mason, another commission member, said it’s important to consider where the statues go. “We don’t want these statues to become pilgrimage sites somewhere else,” he noted.
Delegate Sally Hudson joined the panel on a video call, and Gathers praised her efforts to push the bill along in Richmond. “We love you, and we thank you for all your hard work, and as a community we’re truly blessed to have you,” Gathers said.
Hudson, in turn, reminded the room of the commission’s work. “We all owe them so much,” she said.
“It is a, dare I say, monumental moment,” Gathers said. “It’s really important that we understand it doesn’t stop here.”
Sex, drugs, and voter ID laws
Statues aside, Virginia’s legislature passed dozens of transformative bills during this session, which wrapped up on March 8. The following selection of new laws will help the Old Dominion lurch into the present.
Virginians will once again be allowed to purchase only one handgun gun per month, a prohibition that was repealed in 2012. That’s just one of many new basic gun safety measures, such as mandatory background checks, which passed. (An assault weapons ban was defeated after four Senate Democrats, including local representative Creigh Deeds, broke ranks to block the bill from advancing out of committee.)
Insurance companies will be forced to charge patients no more than $50 per month for insulin, which people with Type 1 diabetes rely on to survive and which can cost as much as $1,200 per month. Virginia is the third state to pass such legislation, and the new price cap is the lowest in the country.
Sports gambling will soon be legal, and five cities, including Richmond, were given a green light to hold referendums on whether or not to build casinos. Betting on Virginia college sports teams will still be illegal.
Those convicted of a drug-related felony will become eligible to receive food stamps. Current law requires those with drug felonies to pass drug screenings in order to receive benefits.
Marijuana will be decriminalized, meaning possession of the drug will be treated like a traffic ticket, and result in a $25 fine, rather than an arrest.
The minimum wage will gradually increase, jumping from $7.25 to $9.50 an hour on January 1, and eventually reaching $12 an hour by 2023. The slow increase falls short of the $15 an hour that many advocacy groups have called for.
Virginians will no longer be required to show photo ID to vote, a restriction that was implemented in 2013. Any government document with the voter’s name and address will once again be sufficient identification.
The legislature also repealed old laws banning swearing and fornication that had long remained on the books, despite rarely being enforced. Fuck yeah!
Wes Bellamy speaks at the Monumental Justice Virginia Campaign press conference. Photo: John Robinson
The campaign to take down Charlottesville’s statues of Confederate generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee has taken on a new tenor with the election of a Democrat-majority government in Virginia.
The Monumental Justice Virginia Campaign, a new organization dedicated to removal of the statues, launched with a press conference at the Free Speech Wall on December 26. A larger rally will be held in Richmond on January 8.
At the press conference, activists once again stated the case against the statues. A collection of supporters stood behind the speakers, holding crisp blue posters with the slogan “Monumentally Wrong” and large red Xs over images of the Lee and Jackson statues.
“This is an opportunity for Virginia to get on the right side of history,” said Lisa Woolfork, an associate professor at UVA. “These statues are not neutral objects, they are racist relics forced upon communities who do not worship the white supremacy they maintain.”
“It is past time to correct these monumental lies with some monumental justice,” Woolfork said.
Advocates for removal of the statues see a legal path forward that seemed unlikely before: The passage of a bill that would give control over statues back to localities.
Delegate-elect Sally Hudson has promised to introduce such a bill when the General Assembly session begins on January 8. Former delegate David Toscano proposed similar bills in the last two General Assembly sessions, but neither made it out of committee.
Though the movement’s hopes rest on Hudson and her legislation, the new delegate made sure to emphasize the broad coalition that has formed in opposition to the monuments.
“Movements like Monumental Justice change the world. Politicians just cut the ribbon,” Hudson said. “We wouldn’t be here today without the activists and artists and educators and all of the elected leaders who have elevated this issue.”
“Thank you to every member of our community who has done the very ordinary yet essential work of correcting our public memory,” Hudson said, “Of sharing a fuller understanding of our history neighbor to neighbor and friend to friend.”
Woolfork read a statement from Zyahna Bryant, the student activist whose 2016 petition helped start the statue fervor. “Our public spaces should reflect the principles we strive for, one of them being freedom,” Bryant wrote.
In her statement, Bryant made sure to underscore that removing the statues will not fix the larger systemic inequalities in the area. “We must also focus on the structural and situational change that must come along with removals as a package deal,” she wrote.
Hudson acknowledged Bryant’s point. “In the days ahead, my colleagues and I will be introducing substantive legislation to confront white supremacy in all of its modern incarnations,” Hudson said. “Whether that is mass incarceration or segregation or the persistent inequity in our every institution.”
Former councilor Wes Bellamy spoke with his young daughter in his arms.
“If our General Assembly cannot act now to remove these beacons of hate, I don’t know when we will have the courage to do so,” he said.
For Bellamy, structural change and statue removal aren’t mutually exclusive.
“People ask me, ‘Why can’t we focus on affordable housing? Why can’t we focus on schools?’” Bellamy said. “We can walk and chew gum simultaneously. In fact, we have an obligation to walk and chew gum simultaneously.”
“The time for those statues to move was yesteryear,” Bellamy said. “It’s time to put up or shut up.”
Making space: City Council approves land purchase for downtown parking lot
Late Monday evening, City Council voted unanimously to purchase Albemarle County’s portion of the 701 E. Market St. lot, where it plans to build a new, 300-car parking garage.
The $1.28 million purchase—half of the land’s appraised value—is part of an agreement between the city and county to keep the county courts downtown and construct a new General District Court. The Albemarle Board of Supervisors threatened to move its courts to the county if council did not create more parking spaces for county employees.
Stretching from Seventh to Ninth streets, the proposed structure would include roughly 12,000 square feet of retail space, and 90 parking spaces would be set aside for county use.
The city estimates the structure will cost $8.5 million. Almost $5 million is included in the proposed capital improvement budget for fiscal year 2021.
To build the garage, the city plans to combine the land with another property it owns at 801 E. Market St., currently home to Guadalajara restaurant and Lucky 7 convenience store—the only 24-hour food spot downtown.
At Monday’s meeting, several community members urged council to rethink its plans.
Estimating that the costs of construction would be approximately $51,000 per parking space, Rory Stolzenberg said the garage would be “a poor use of this city’s scarce funds” and that the 300-space structure is not necessary to fulfill the city’s agreement with the county. He also noted that the garage would result in the tearing down of two local businesses, including “one of the most affordable places to eat downtown.”
Josh Carpe echoed Stolzenberg’s concerns, asking council to look for other ways to manage the parking demand downtown before “we build parking we don’t need.” He also criticized the city’s capital improvement budget for cutting funding for affordable housing in order to pay for the garage, and encouraged council to give the Planning Commission and incoming councilors a chance to weigh in on the proposal.
The conversation surrounding the garage is expected to continue into next month, when the new councilors will be sworn in.
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Quote of the Week
“That tree just ain’t a hit. You could have gotten an artificial tree that looks better than that tree. The tree ain’t gotta look like the state of the city!” —Tanesha Hudson, county resident, on the Downtown Mall Christmas tree
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In Brief
Courtesy Nic McCarthy
Re-re-contextualized
Over the weekend, an anonymous commenter spray painted “This is racist” across the base of Charlottesville’s much-maligned Robert E. Lee statue. Someone hoping to cover up that recontextualization then hung a tarp over the paint. Undeterred, the vandal returned, and spray painted “Still racist” across the tarp.
Sticking to their guns
Louisa County is the latest to join more than a dozen Virginia counties in declaring itself a gun rights “sanctuary.” The growing movement comes on the heels of the November 5 election, which secured a Democratic majority in both chambers of the General Assembly for the first time since 1995. Anticipating imminent gun-control legislation, the self-proclaimed sanctuaries have passed informal, extra-legal resolutions expressing intent to honor gun rights.
Stepping it up
UVA announced that it plans to partner with the College of William & Mary, in a joint goal to be carbon neutral by 2030. This is a significantly more ambitious benchmark than was set by the city and county, which are aiming for carbon neutrality by 2050. The partnership will help both schools meet their pledge through information sharing and the creation of a new climate research institute.
Common scents
In Dinwiddie, residents are in high dudgeon about the smell of a local hemp farm, reports the Petersburg Progress-Index. The smell has permeated clothes and air-conditioning units, leaving residents feeling skunked. The plant is legal to grow and doesn’t contain THC, but it looks and smells just like marijuana.
The story Charlottesville tells through its most prominent public monuments was largely written by one man: Paul Goodloe McIntire.
“C’ville is awash with monuments. Why no statues to women besides a cowering Sacajawea (who happened to be pregnant but still led the white guys through the wilderness)?” – Donna Lucey
“We do have three statues of women, you know,” says former mayor Virginia Daugherty, her soft Southern voice a bit sly. She’s referring to Sacagawea, crouching at the foot of Lewis and Clark on West Main Street; an angel at the foot of the Jackson statue; and the head of an anonymous woman that appears, along with a man’s, on an abstract statue called “Family” in front of the old jail.
That’s what passes for female representation in Charlottesville’s dozens of monuments, from Homer and multiple likenesses of Thomas Jefferson scattered across Grounds at the University of Virginia, past explorers George Rogers Clark on University Avenue and Lewis and Clark on West Main, and over to the most prominent statues in town: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Johnny Reb.
“When you look around, you just think it’s not right, the way that it is,” says Daugherty.
So why hasn’t the city, which is 51.6 percent female, honored any women?
In part, this is a national problem. “Statues of women never get names,” notes journalist Kriston Capps in a CityLab story called “The Gender Gap in Public Sculpture.” “They’re archetypes, symbols, muses, forces.” Of the hundreds of statues in New York City and Washington, D.C., he writes, each city has just five statues that depict historic women. “There are 22 statues of men in Central Park alone, but not one (non-fictional) woman.”
The explanation has to do with who, historically, has commissioned the building of monuments, and for what reasons.
In Charlottesville, the story we tell through our most prominent public monuments was largely written by one man: Paul Goodloe McIntire. As a 5-year-old boy, McIntire reputedly shook his fist at Union troops as they marched past his house in 1865, marking the end of the Confederacy. Decades later, McIntire got his revenge by gifting the city a series of segregated parks and installing the now-infamous statue of Lee, along with Stonewall Jackson, Lewis and Clark, and George Rogers Clark. (McIntire himself is memorialized in a bust behind the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society).
On a recent chilly Saturday morning, roughly 50 people turned out for a Confederate monument tour led by Dr. Andrea Douglas, director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, and Dr. Jalane Schmidt, associate professor of religion at UVA.
Beginning at the barely legible plaque commemorating black history at the site where slaves were bought and sold, and ending at the graceful, imposing statue of Lee on his pedestal, Schmidt noted that our monuments show “whose history matters in the community.”
Defenders of our current Confederate monuments often express the desire to “preserve history.” But much of our local history is buried, Schmidt and Douglas said. Court Square Park, for instance, was once the site of a multiracial community called McKee’s Row. Fifty years before the more famous destruction of Vinegar Hill, McKee’s Row was demolished to make way for McIntire’s whites-only park, anchored by the statue of Stonewall Jackson. “You’d never know it,” Schmidt said. “You’re not supposed to know it.”
The Jackson statue, she also pointed out, was erected in 1921, the same year the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan was founded.
The Johnny Reb statue, one of hundreds of similar statues planted in front of courthouses throughout the South after the end of Reconstruction, was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy but paid for in part by city and county funds. Among those on the statue committee, said Schmidt, was the prosecutor who declined to charge anyone in the lynching of John Henry James, which was attended by 150 unmasked white men.
“These are monuments to Jim Crow,” she said.
Other Southern cities have found ways to broadcast new values through their choice of monuments. “What they’ve done in Richmond is really great,” Daugherty says, referring to the way that city has balanced its boulevard of white male Confederate leaders with more recent monuments to female African American heroes like Maggie Walker, a teacher and the first African American woman to charter a bank, and Barbara Johns, who, as a high school student in Farmville, led a student strike to protest separate and unequal schools. Here in Charlottesville, she suggests, the city could recognize a local writer, like Amélie Rives or Julia Magruder, or an activist like Grace Tinsley or Otelia Love Jackson.
“There’s lots of good ideas,” Daugherty concludes. “I think it just takes a little organization.”
Some local women have been recognized in other ways—for instance, Jackson-Via Elementary in the city and Greer Elementary in the county are both named for female educators (Nannie Cox Jackson, Betty Davis Via, and Mary Carr Greer). And in 2011, UVA dedicated a memorial to Kitty Foster, a free black woman who worked as a laundress at the university. (A metal “shadow catcher” sculpture now demarcates the family’s graveyard.)
In 2009, after several protests, the city added a plaque to the Lewis and Clark statue commemorating Sacagawea’s contributions. Performance artist Jennifer Hoyt Tidwell, who organized a “theatrical protest” there in 2007 and started a petition that garnered 500 signatures, says the plaque was “a very minor concession to our protest,” and that she had hoped the city would make a bigger gesture.
As for new monuments to women, she says, “I would say I’m ignorant, like a lot of people, about what that would look like.”
But she’s not so sure about statues.
“I think a living way where you have artists who are paid to keep these things alive,” she suggests. For instance, she and other female artists were commissioned by UVA last spring to perform pieces at the Lee and George Rogers Clark statues, in response to August 12.
“In terms of countering a lot of the male statues I guess it’s important,” she says of the idea of women monuments. “But putting a lot of land into memorializing people…I don’t know if that’s the way to go.”
While Jackson and Lee never set foot in Charlottesville, there are plenty of notable women who actually lived here whose stories are largely unknown. Here are just a few:
Nancy Astor
1. Nancy Astor Nancy Witcher Langhorne was born in Danville and moved, at age 13, to an estate in Albemarle County. After an early, unhappy marriage to socialite Robert Gould Shaw II, Nancy moved to England, married fellow expat Waldorf Astor, and became the first woman to serve in Parliament.
Sarah Patton Boyle
2. Sarah Patton BoyleBoyle was born on a former plantation in Albemarle County, the granddaughter of Confederate veterans. She attended the Corcoran School of Art, married, and raised two sons. As she got older, she began questioning the views she was raised with and became an outspoken advocate for desegregation, writing hundreds of articles and speeches for the cause, and drawing attention from both Martin Luther King, Jr., who mentioned her by name in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, and the Ku Klux Klan, which burned a cross on her yard. The first white person to serve on the board of Charlottesville’s NAACP, Boyle was later recognized by the city as a “Bridge Builder,” with her name on the Drewary Brown Bridge.
Frances Brand
3. Frances Brand An artist and activist once known around town as “the purple lady,” Brand was born at West Point and attained the rank of Army major, doing liaison and intelligence work. In later life she became an activist for peace, women’s rights, civil rights, and other causes. Her “First” series of paintings commemorate more than 150 notable but under-recognized local citizens, many of them women or African Americans. (The paintings were bought by the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, but are not currently displayed, and were removed from the organization’s website after a recent redesign).
Queen Charlotte
4. Queen Charlotte There are two statues of Queen Charlotte in one of her other namesake cities, Charlotte, North Carolina, but none here in Charlottesville. Legend has it that the German monarch, who married the British “mad King George,” wrote a widely circulated anti-war letter to Prussian king Frederick the Great, and was committed to social welfare. But in recent years, especially after Meghan Markle’s wedding to Prince Harry, Queen Charlotte is perhaps best known for being (possibly) the first black British monarch.
Isabella Gibbons
5. Isabella Gibbons Born into slavery, Gibbons managed to learn to read and write, and taught her children to do so as well. After the Civil War, she established a school for freed blacks, earned her own diploma, and then taught in the newly established (segregated) public school system for more than 15 years.
Alice Carlotta Jackson
6. Alice Carlotta Jackson Jackson was the first African American to apply to UVA, in 1935. After earning a BA in English and taking additional courses at Smith College, Jackson applied to UVA for a master’s in French, which was not offered at any of the black colleges and universities in Virginia. The Board of Visitors denied her application, but it set off a series of public arguments, and the threat of a future lawsuit led the Virginia General Assembly to pass the Dovell Act, which paid qualified black students the additional money required to attend schools out of state. Jackson used her grant money to earn a master’s degree from Columbia University, and taught at a Florida college for 45 years.
Grace Tinsley
7. Grace Tinsley Tinsely was the first African American woman elected to the Charlottesville School Board. “[She] used her voice on the board to make sure that people were treated fairly,” her daughter told Charlottesville Tomorrow. She was also the first nurse to work at Charlottesville High School. After her retirement, Tinsley successfully lobbied to establish a public defender’s office in Charlottesville. The Charlottesville Democratic Party named a scholarship in her honor, which is awarded to Charlottesville High School seniors from low- or middle-income households, and her name is on the Drewary Brown Memorial Bridge.
Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy
8. Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy The goddaughter of Robert E. Lee, Rives was born in Richmond and grew up at Castle Hill, in Albemarle County. She began writing as a young girl, and her bestselling first novel scandalized many for its portrayal of a woman who experienced sexual feelings. She went on to write more novels and, later, Broadway plays. After divorcing her first husband, she married Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy, an artist and aristocrat, and the couple moved back to Rives’ childhood home.
Statue plaintiff Buddy Weber says city councilors have a duty to know what the law is.
Staff photo
So far, Judge Rick Moore has accumulated six files pertaining to the lawsuit filed a year ago against Charlottesville and its city councilors for voting to remove the statue of General Robert E. Lee—and that doesn’t include the transcripts, he told lawyers in Charlottesville Circuit Court April 11.
At the latest hearing, the city again attempted to get the suit thrown out. Before arguing its plea in bar, which maintains the individual city councilors should not be defendants in the case, Moore reversed himself on an earlier decision and said the plaintiffs could seek attorneys fees.
He previously ruled the plaintiffs could not seek damages because no damages to the statues had occurred—and he said that ruling still stands.
But upon a closer reading of the statute, which says damages may be awarded for the “rebuilding, repairing, preserving and restoring” memorials, he reconsidered. “What was planned by City Council encroached” upon the monuments, he said. “The statute allows [the plaintiffs] to recover the cost of preservation.”
Acting City Attorney Lisa Robertson again argued that those on council last year—Wes Bellamy, Bob Fenwick, Kathy Galvin, Mike Signer and Kristin Szakos—were immune from litigation because of sovereign and legislative immunity.
None of the councilors individually can enact legislation, said Robertson. “Not until it’s an aggregation of votes” as a body are resolutions made.
Plaintiffs attorney Braxton Puryear said immunity does not apply in cases of willful misconduct. The councilors had rulings from both Attorney General Mark Herring and then city attorney Craig Brown that the state statute prohibited removal of war memorials, he said. “City Council was intentional and willful in its misconduct.”
Moore pondered the issue of immunity. “The question for me is, does that apply when they’re engaged in unauthorized activity?” he asked. “If they decide to do something unlawful, does it still apply?” He called the issue a “gray area.”
Ralph Main, another plaintiffs attorney, said councilors made an “unauthorized appropriation of funds” when council passed a resolution authorizing up to $1 million to reconfigure the parks, including the removal of the Lee statue.
“The act itself is unlawful,” he said. “They had a duty to follow the law.” Councilors were aware of the criminal penalties in the state’s war memorials statute, he said.
And they were aware they were facing litigation when they voted to remove the Lee statue, asserted Main. Despite Moore issuing a temporary injunction prohibiting the removal of Lee, “they still voted to remove Jackson,” said the attorney.
City Council made that vote after the violent Unite the Right rally protesting the city’s decision to take down Lee.
Individual councilors did not receive any money from their appropriation to reconfigure the park, said Robertson.
And Moore seemed to agree with her that elected officials have immunity so they can make decisions that may be unpopular without fear of getting sued every time they anger a constituent.
The judge said there are a lot of moving parts in the case and that he wanted to read more cases on immunity. He also asked the attorneys to send him a letter outlining the issues they want him to decide in the plea in bar, the body of facts and what court cases he should consider in making his decision.
“This is not an easy case from a legal point of view,” said Moore. “I’ve never dealt with individual liability.”
A further hearing will be scheduled April 16 because the city’s attorney, Richard Milnor, said an order prepared by the plaintiffs attorneys “does not accurately reflect the ruling” on the court’s decision that the shrouds on the statues had to go.
A judge will decide by February 27 if the tarps that shroud statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson should be removed.
Photo by Eze Amos
Over the weekend, unknown persons three times did what plaintiffs in a lawsuit against City Council want done: removed the tarps covering statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
City Council voted to shroud the statues August 21 in mourning for the deaths of Heather Heyer and Virginia State Police Lieutenant Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke Bates following the deadly August 12 Unite the Right rally. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit—11 individuals, the Monument Fund and the Sons of Confederate Veterans—contend that the city used mourning as a “pretext” and intends to permanently cover the statues with “trash bags,” according to attorney Braxton Puryear.
He cited a November 6 City Council resolution to create a new master plan for Emancipation and Justice parks that included screening to more elegantly conceal the statues. “There’s no fixed time for removal,” said Puryear. “They’re not temporary but permanent.”
The plaintiffs called a funeral director as an expert witness on mourning periods, despite Deputy City Attorney Lisa Robertson’s objection that he wasn’t an expert for dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic community event.
Hill & Wood’s John Mathis testified about various religious mourning practices, which Moore said were not relevant, as well as public mourning practices for deceased police officers or firefighters: mourning badges, bunting, flags at half mast, wreaths and processions.
Robertson asked about the significance of the first anniversary of a death, and Mathis said it was a milestone “for family, but not for the people who came to the funeral.”
“There’s no mourning period that goes on five months,” said Puryear.
He also argued that the city did not get approval from the Board of Architectural Review to cover the statues with “trash bags.”
Plaintiffs’ attorney Ralph Main called City Manager Maurice Jones as an “adversarial witness.” Jones said the tarps cost $3,000 each and City Council had discussed when the tarps would come off and that August 12, 2018, was a possibility.
The tarps unlawfully interfere with the statues and prevent citizen enjoyment of them, said Main. “We have them to see them,” he said, comparing the draping with going to Paris to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa, only to find it covered because “someone may not like Leonardo’s views.”
Robertson said it made sense to look at the first anniversary to end the mourning period because the event is now “referred to by the date it happened.”
That’s what gave Moore pause.
He said he needed more time before making a decision. His biggest concern is that since the decision to shroud August 21, “Council has had plenty of time to say how long” the statues should remain covered and then the city comes to court and says it should be one year, he said. “That’s what I’m struggling with.”
Moore says he’ll have a decision on the tarps by February 27 when he hears the city’s demurrer on the lawsuit. He also set a couple of trial dates for the lawsuit against City Council: January 31-February 1, 2019, for a two-day trial, and October 26 if the parties decide they can do it in one day.
After the hearing, statue-supporting attorney Lewis Martin is confronted by a woman who opposes the Confederate monuments. Staff photo
