Protesters march through Charlottesville in July. PC: Eze Amos
While the coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately impacted communities of color this year, Black people have been dealing with “a pandemic of racism” in the United States for centuries, as Black mental health advocate Myra Anderson told C-VILLE over the summer.
When Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes on May 25, ultimately killing him, these deep wounds of systemic violence and oppression were once again ripped open, sparking protests across the globe—and here in Charlottesville—in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
From June to September, local activists led a string of demonstrations demanding an end to police brutality, and calling for justice for Black people who’ve been murdered at the hands of cops. The events drew large crowds of all races and ages.
“The killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery…they woke people up,” says activist Zaneyah Bryant, a member of the Charlottesville Black Youth Action Committee and a ninth grader at Charlottesville High School. “It put a spark on people, like wow this is happening to our people. This could happen to anybody—this could happen in Charlottesville.”
While protests against police brutality continue in places like Portland, Oregon, it’s been several months since people in Charlottesville have taken to the streets. Though there haven’t been any drastic changes made in the city—CPD’s $18 million budget has not been touched, for example—some activists believe progress has been made toward racial justice.
“These are tough and difficult conversations. Up until at least recently, people were reluctant to begin to initiate them, but now [they] are actually being had,” says community activist Don Gathers. “We’ve reached the point in the…racist history of this country where people are willing to have these conversations.”
“[The protests] really just opened up more conversation surrounding how the police interact with the community, and allowed for us to envision a police-free society,” adds Ang Conn, an organizer with Defund CPD. “We have community members looking at budgets, policies, things that never prompted their attention before. And when you have a lot of eyes on things, there is bound to be change.”
With the support of the community, Charlottesville City Schools was able to end its school resource officer program with CPD in June, another step in the right direction, says Bryant.
Other activists like Rosia Parker say they have yet to see any progress in the city.
“[My protests] were peaceful, decent, in order, and orchestrated with Captain Mooney. For them to deny me my march, I don’t feel it was right,” says Parker, referring to the city’s threat to fine her and other activists in August, and its denial of her event permit in September. “Other protests, no they didn’t help Charlottesville. A lot of people came out and supported Black Lives Matter, but at the end of the day, [it] didn’t do anything.”
“There’s been no change in the governmental structure—it has gotten worse,” she adds, citing the resignation of City Manager Dr. Tarron Richardson in September as an example of the city’s pattern of staffing instability.
Pointing to the police assault of a Black houseless man on the Corner last month, Bryant also fears that, despite the months of protests, Charlottesville police “have gone right back to their old ways—harassing Black people.”
In the new year, the fight against police violence and systemic racism must continue, the activists emphasize.
Though it may be a few months before protesters hit the city streets again, there are plenty of ways to remain involved in the fight, says Bryant. She encourages allies to participate in city government meetings and mutual aid programs, especially for people experiencing homelessness or food insecurity.
“If you are white and you see someone of color or Black being harassed, stand up and use your voice,” she says. “When you say something to those officers, you have power to stop them.”
The city government must also strengthen its relationship with Black communities, especially in light of multiple recent shootings in town, says Bryant.
“Those people in those communities are asking for more police presence. [They] feel unsafe,” she says. “But we can’t use [that] as a reason to say, ‘Oh they’re asking, so we have to keep harassing them.’ We need people to help them understand what they are asking for, and what they mean by wanting more police presence.”
For Parker, ensuring police and government accountability is a priority for next year, as the Police Civilian Review Board works to update its bylaws and ordinance, per the new criminal justice legislation passed in the General Assembly this fall.
“If that means the mayor and police chief have to go, then so be it,” she says.
In addition to advocating for the CRB, Parker plans to offer programs for Black youth through her community organization, Empowering Generations XYZ, with a huge focus on mental health.
“If we can educate our own, become peer-support recovery specialists, become more trauma informed, we can be around for our community, and won’t have to be overpoliced or underpoliced,” she says. “We won’t even need the police—we can do what we need to do ourselves in our own communities. It’s just about getting the resources and education.”
Finally, Gathers and Conn say they will keep on pushing City Council to slash CPD’s $18 million budget, and reallocate those funds to various social services and programs within the next year.
“That’s a lot of money, and people are really struggling out here with a lot of things,” says Conn. “We must continue to work towards hacking away at that police budget until it’s zero.”
This spring, just as people were grappling with the new normal of living in a pandemic, George Floyd’s homicide threw a Molotov cocktail of anger, frustration, and heartbreak onto an already stressful situation. After Rodney and Eric, Trayvon and Sandra, Breonna and Elijah, and countless other African American lives were taken by aggressive policing, Floyd’s killing became a galvanizing moment. People took to the streets, here and around the world, to say these lives—taken so casually and so cruelly—mattered.
In Charlottesville and Richmond, protesters turned their ire to Virginia’s Civil War monuments, those unmistakable symbols of white supremacy. The activists’ desire to remove these monuments is not about erasing history, but rectifying it. The statues were installed long after the war ended, deep in the era of Jim Crow, with the express purpose of intimidation. They are indeed heroic monuments. But it is a misplaced heroism, glorifying a history that didn’t exist, and a cause that was contemptible.
“Bearing Witness” at Second Street Gallery is an ambitious show that presents the Black Lives Matter protests from an artist’s perspective. Eze Amos, Ty Hilton, Marley Nichelle, Derrick J. Waller, Sandy Williams, IV, and Jack Doerner were given significant control over the substance and scope of the exhibition by Second Street’s Executive Director Kristen Chiacchia.
“I wanted to do a show that not only reflected on the protests against systemic racism happening in the community and around the country this summer,” says Chiacchia. “I wanted to look at it not as an historical exhibition of events that occurred, but to present it as an ongoing conversation.”
The photographs have a you-are-there immediacy. This is particularly evident in Eze Amos’ tight compositions, where you feel like you’re in that crowd. Amos deftly conveys the raw emotion of the protests by training his lens on the protesters’ faces. There’s a timelessness about his photographs; they could have been taken during the civil rights or anti-war protests of the 1960s, but for the masks. These evocations of the past drive home the fact that we are still dealing with the same issues and fighting the same battles years later. Amos has a great eye for composition, and revels in the black-and-white medium, manipulating contrasts of dark and light to add drama and visual richness.
There’s a special power to Derrick J. Waller’s photographs of the protests that happened just a few blocks from Second Street Gallery. And his “Skating the Revolution,” taken in front of Richmond’s Robert E. Lee monument during the euphoric time following the June 4 announcement of the statue’s removal, is a wonderfully animated image. The mask and the graffiti adorning the pedestal root it in these tumultuous times, adding a sense of unease to the carefree young man captured in midair. The skater seems in control, but we can’t miss the fact that, as a Black male, he’s also vulnerable. Waller’s photograph “Value the Work of Black Women” shows signs held by protesters in Charlottesville, and some of the signs, made by the Black Youth Action Committee, are also on display in the exhibit. Looking at the signs, we are reminded never to forget that these individuals went out into the streets during a deadly pandemic to stand up for social justice.
Ty Hilton doesn’t focus on the protests, but turns his gaze to inanimate objects transformed by the BLM activists. His aerial photograph of the J.E.B. Stuart plinth—sans statue—is startling. Looking down from above, it’s covered in a colorful jumble of graffiti. One sees not only how the protesters altered the monument with their additions, making it their own and creating a dynamic new artwork in the process, but also, in the empty rectangle at the top, what they accomplished through their protests. The power of absence is palpable.
Marley Nichelle’s images of the burning Confederate flag (“F*** Your Confederacy”) and Richmond’s Lee statue, taken from the rear with electric Breonna Taylor graffiti emblazoned at the monument’s base (“Justice for Breonna”), are potent and beautiful. In his image of a young Black man sitting on the sidewalk overcome by tear gas, or emotion, or both, he captures a quiet moment that is subtle and exceedingly moving. Gazing at the image, we are brought into the man’s reality, pondering his life and the physical and psychic pain he is experiencing.
The exhibition shows us instances of passion, beauty, and grace parsed out from the larger turmoil of the protests. Yes, they bear witness to this important period in history, but they also touch something more eternal that speaks to our humanity. It is this quality, together with the photographers’ mastery of their medium, that elevates the images into art.
All the photographs are printed on the same matte paper, which draws the viewer in and adds a cohesive flow to the exhibition. Hung directly on the wall using magnets, the images have particular immediacy. This quality is enhanced by the fact that no glass or frame separates them from the viewer.
Shifting gears, we come to Sandy Williams, IV and Jack Doerner, who work in a variety of media including sculpture, performance, and film, all of which are incorporated into the images on view in the exhibit. Williams and Doerner began by creating monument-shaped candles from 3D scans. The miniature wax replicas trivialize the statues and undermine their import. Then the candles were taken to the monuments, lit, and filmed as they burn down. Watching the colorful surrogates melt away is satisfying, subversive, and mordantly amusing. At the gallery, a selection of the candles is displayed along with images of them smoldering at the bases of their stone counterparts. The images are printed on aluminum, which creates a luscious slickness and gives the pieces a three-dimensional weight.
To introduce an interactive element and promote audience engagement, the gallery tapped artist and activist Destinee Wright to produce a version of her “Solidarity Cards Project,” which she first initiated in response to the 2016 election. Visitors are invited to write their reactions to the show on index cards that are pinned to the wall.
“I had to move some things around in the season to make these two shows possible,” says Chiacchia. “But we’re keeping them up through November 14. I think it’s very important that they’re up through the election to remind people that deep, historic, systemic racism still exists and the fight isn’t over.” [slideshow_deploy id=’148118′]
In an ongoing effort to atone for its racist history, the University of Virginia could provide scholarships to descendants of enslaved laborers as soon as 2022. PC: Stephen Barling
Elijah. Julia. Sam. I took in every name, and let each resonate within me, as I quietly examined the granite slabs. I saw the name of my brother, then I saw it several more times. If he had been born just over 150 years ago, he could have been enslaved at the University of Virginia, alongside the rest of our family.
But what struck me even more were the unnamed. Of the 4,000 deep gashes inscribed into the memorial walls—each representing a person enslaved at the university—only 578 have names resting above them. Because they were viewed as property, and treated as such, the identities of more than 3,000 men, women, and children remain lost to history, and may never be discovered.
With its compelling symbolism and innovative design, the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers urges its visitors to confront these cruel realities of slavery, and honor the countless contributions enslaved people made to UVA, left unacknowledged for nearly two centuries. It is a site for learning, mourning, and remembering, as the university works to heal from its violent past.
As recent protests against systemic racism held at the memorial show, it also serves as a call for change. The painful effects of slavery can still be felt and seen around UVA today, and the school has a long way to go to achieve racial equity. But for many, paying respect to the Black people who built the university is the first step in the right direction, and offers a glimpse of a better future.
Long time coming
In 1619, the White Lion landed in Point Comfort, Virginia. The “20 and odd” Angolans aboard the ship were sold to Governor Sir George Yeardley, and brought to Jamestown—becoming the first enslaved Africans in England’s colonies in the Americas.
Nearly 400 years later, in 2007, the Virginia General Assembly issued an apology for the state’s role in the institution of slavery. UVA’s Board of Visitors followed suittwo months later, expressing “profound regret” for the university’s use of enslaved people.
Earlier that year, the board also voted to place a small gray stone marker in the ground near the Rotunda, honoring the “several hundred women and men, both free and enslaved, whose labor between 1817 and 1826 helped to realize Thomas Jefferson’s design for the University of Virginia.”
Marcus Martin PC: Dan Addison/UVA Communications
“Most people step over it all of the time,” says Marcus Martin, MD, former vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity at UVA. The low stone “falls short in that it’s not very visible, and only talks about the period of 1817 to 1826. …Slavery didn’t end until 1865, and there were more than several hundred free and enslaved men and women [who] helped erect the university and maintain it.”
“The university, at that point, didn’t have the tradition of telling the full story about its history. Everything was focused on Jefferson,” says UVA history professor and associate dean Kirt von Daacke. “There was sort of a sense that Jefferson’s hand was in everything—he built it, he designed it. That was a vague myth.”
In 2010, two students—one an intern for University and Community Action for Racial Equity, the other a co-chair of the Student Council Diversity Initiatives Committee—took the controversy surrounding the marker as a chance to raise greater awareness about slavery at UVA, forming a group called Memorial to Enslaved Laborers.
The group organized community discussions on the creation of a memorial, among other initiatives. And the following year, it held a design competition.
“There were some neat concepts, but they were not of the quality to withstand the environment and test of time, [and] to be approved and erected on Grounds,” says Martin.
Accompanied by his assistant Meghan Faulkner and IDEA Fund chair Tierney Fairchild, as well as student leaders, Martin met with then-president Teresa Sullivan’s cabinet in 2013, proposing the university create a commission entirely dedicated to studying the university’s history of slavery, and recommending ways to commemorate the contributions of enslaved people—including a memorial.
According to von Daacke, it was not easy getting everyone on the Board of Visitors to agree to build the memorial “sooner rather than later.”
“When you start with projects like this, running counter to how you’ve done things before, there’s often a sort of fear-based perspective about it. That if we do this, it will bring protests. …That it’s talking about an unpleasant reality of the university’s past, and will be bad for the university, ” he explains.
“Our job [as the PCSU] was to convince everybody that no that’s not true. …Embracing difficult history is beneficial to us in a multitude of ways,” he says. “That takes some time. You have to do the research and public talks, where everyone gets used to hearing these stories, and you have to talk to people one-on-one. [But] protests aren’t going to come unless you do nothing.”
Kirt von Daacke PC: Supplied photo
In 2016, after years of lobbying, the BOV finally commissioned the memorial, and put together a design team: architecture firm Höweler + Yoon; alumna and architectural historian Dr. Mabel O. Wilson; landscape architect and professor Gregg Bleam; polymedia Nigerian-American artist Eto Otitigbe, and community facilitator Dr. Frank Dukes, co-founder of University and Community Action for Racial Equity and past director of the Institute for Environmental Negotiation at the UVA School of Architecture.
The design team immediately sought input from the community, sending out surveys and hosting public forums for students, staff, faculty, alumni, local residents, and descendants of the enslaved both inside and outside of Charlottesville, with the support of the PCSU.
In 2017, the BOV approved a final design and location for the memorial, and allocated funding toward its $7 million price tag the next year, alongside private donations.
After about a year of construction, the project was completed this April. Though its dedication ceremony had to be rescheduled for next April—during Black Alumni Weekend—due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the memorial is now open, “demanding you pay attention and interact with it,” says von Daacke.
The memorial “is really a reflection of the community in Charlottesville,” says Otitigbe, who is based in Brooklyn, New York. “[We] had a lot of interesting conversations with different community members and descendants…I am really thankful they all welcomed me and allowed me to do this, because I was essentially working with, in some way, the remains of their ancestors.”
Stone and symbols
The memorial’s stone was quarried nearby—it’s a variety of granite called Virginia Mist. The name fits: The memorial’s designers hope this stone can provide a physical representation of a murky and poorly documented past.
PC: Stephen Barling
“One of the first things we heard [from the community] was you can’t build a memorial that is meant to humanize the enslaved without picturing humanity in some way,” says von Daacke. “This was sometimes interpreted as a call for a figurative sculpture of an enslaved person,” like Isabella Gibbons, who was enslaved at UVA and became an educator in Charlottesville after emancipation, he explains.
“But of course at UVA, we can’t do that. We have no images of enslaved people at UVA. We have post-emancipation photos, [which are] probably not good images to use to capture what life was like in slavery,” he adds. “Or there are pictures of people who continued to work for the university during Jim Crow, and were treated by white Charlottesville and UVA as the faithful slave. Their picture and story were told by [whites], and is not reflective of who these people were.”
Instead, architectural historian Wilson proposed a more abstract, circular structure for the memorial, symbolizing the broken chains of slavery. It’s also a nod to the ring shout, a dance rooted in West African traditions celebrating spiritual liberation practiced by enslaved people, during which they clapped, prayed aloud, sang hymns, and shuffled their feet in a counterclockwise direction. The ring is 80 feet in diameter—the same as the Rotunda.
“It’s nice that [the memorial is] visible from town and not within the enclosure of the university, on the Lawn or on Grounds, where these people were forced to work,” says Jalane Schmidt, a UVA religious studies professor and community activist. “They had complete lives. They did not define themselves solely as laborers. …They were members of a community.”
The design team says the horizontal slashes that are spread across the interior wall of the memorial’s larger ring are reminiscent of scars from brutal whippings that once covered the enslaved peoples’ bodies. After years of examining historical records, researchers were able to find the names of 578 people enslaved at the university to add to the wall above the memory marks, along with 311 people known by their occupation or kinship relation. However, the rest of the marks remain nameless, laying bare the violent dehumanization of slavery.
PC: Stephen Barling
This wall “extends the narrative about who this African American community is…[and] allows us to have distinct conversations about what their service looked like,” says Andrea Douglas, executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, and a member of the PCSU. “It really gives a better agency to people who were at some point largely dismissed.”
Every inch of the memorial was designed purposefully, and every detail is symbolic.
The eyes of Isabella Gibbons are inscribed on the outside of the wall. Otitigbe used a post-Emancipation photo of her to lightly carve her eyes into the rough-hewn granite, so they are only clearly discernible in early morning or late day.
“Her eyes are looking out to the community, and that can represent many things,” says Dukes. “To me, it’s asking ‘What are you doing? We’re here—what are you doing about it?’”
A second, smaller ring inside the larger circle contains a shallow water fixture, symbolizing the rivers used as pathways to freedom, as well as African libation rituals, baptismal ceremonies, and the Middle Passage. Once the fixture is turned on, water will flow over a historical timeline etched into the ring detailing the everyday experiences of enslaved people at UVA, beginning with the first enslaved Africans arriving in Virginia in 1619 and concluding with Gibbons’ death in 1889.
PC: Stephen Barling
Stepping stones adjacent to the memorial point to the North Star, which led enslaved people to freedom. And the brick walkway visitors use to enter the memorial will align with sunset on March 3, or Liberation and Freedom Day, when Union troops emancipated enslaved people in Charlottesville at the close of the Civil War.
The smaller ring encircles a fresh cut lawn, a space for gatherings, celebrations, performances, classes, and protests centered around topics of racial justice.
An excerpt of one of Gibbon’s writings from 1867 appears at end of the timeline: “Can we forget the crack of the whip, cowhide, whipping-post, the auction-block, the hand-cuffs, the spaniels, the iron collar, the negro-trader tearing the young child from its mother’s breast as a whelp from the lioness? … No, we have not, or ever will.”
In view
Douglas arrived at UVA as a graduate student in the ’90s. Confederate flags flapped from fraternity house windows, and students regularly popped up at parties wearing blackface. (Those things still happen, but with a little less frequency.)
Andrea Douglas PC: Eze Amos
“White supremacy was very much inculcated into the culture of the school,” she says. “Going to a university with that much blatant anti-Black racism, to have this [memorial] as prominent as it is [and] know there is a movement towards a kind of respect for the community the university sits in…It feels much different from when I got here.”
For activist Don Gathers, seeing the names—or lack of names—on the memorial for the first time was “incredibly powerful,” bringing him to tears, he says.
“To stand there and take it all in—it speaks volumes to you. You realize the struggle and sacrifice that those individuals made, and were forced to make, to bring us to the point we are now.”
Though the memorial is effective, Gathers believes the location could have been better chosen.
“Where it is, it still has the semblance of…the Rotunda and Jefferson himself looking down upon the enslaved,” he says.
“Community members told us that they don’t go on Grounds,” explains Dukes. “We don’t feel welcome. So if you build it on the Grounds…we’re not going to come. It’s not going to be for us.”
Third-year Black student activist Sarandon Elliott believes the location of the memorial makes it much more visible, especially to students.
“When people walk towards UVA, they’re going to have to see that. And I also like that it’s near the Corner, a really busy area. People walking past it can stop and reflect upon it,” says Elliott, president of the school’s Young Democratic Socialists of America.
It remains to be seen if the memorial’s current location—technically off Grounds but still very much amidst the UVA bubble, tucked between the hospital and the Rotunda, just across the street from the student-swarmed Corner—will attract a lot of Charlottesville residents.
Though it’s just about impossible to identify every enslaved person, von Daacke and other researchers continue to search for names, occupations, and kinships to engrave on the monument’s inner wall. (A handful have already been found since it was completed, he says.)
Jalane Schmidt PC: Eze Amos
Last year, UVA also began discovering the names of enslaved people through its new descendant outreach project, spearheaded by renowned genealogist Shelley Murphy, which will continue for at least the next two years.
The descendants have formed a leadership group, but are still getting themselves organized, according to UVA employee and descendant DeTeasa Gathers. They plan to conduct educational tours and talks at the memorial, when the pandemic finally comes to an end.
“We consider this very vital, because the history books in Virginia are not inclusive and not very detailed [on] the quandary of slavery,” says Cauline Yates, who is also a descendant. “[Students] are our up-and-coming leaders of the future. We’re trying to make sure that they understand what even happened in their very own backyard.”
“This is not completely about us. This is more about telling the unvarnished truth about what happened going forward,” says DeTeasa Gathers. “We see this memorial as people who were enslaved…but it did last for generations past. It’s important to not forget the generations behind it who have been affected.”
Structural change
Shortly after the murder of George Floyd, dozens of UVA Health employees gathered at the memorial, kneeling for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin dug his knee into Floyd’s neck.
In addition to raising awareness about police violence against Black people, the group called attention to systemic inequality and racism in the health care system—bringing a crucial purpose of the memorial to fruition.
PC: Stephen Barling
Now that the memorial is finished, the university needs to answer its call to action, and implement real changes, says Schmidt.
The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers “is the sculptural, African American version of institutions’ spoken indigenous land acknowledgments, both now made with fanfare and solemnity: It’s a nice gesture,” she says. “But absent concrete material actions of repair, it remains just a gesture.”
Martin echoes Schmidt’s calls for sweeping structural change, pointing to the detailed list of recommendations the PCSU made in its final report to Teresa Sullivan in 2018.
For Martin, one of the most crucial issues facing UVA is its small population of Black students. While the state of Virginia is nearly 20 percent Black, only about 7 percent—a little over 1,000—of the university’s undergraduate students are Black.
UVA doesn’t just need to admit more Black students, but figure out how to attract and keep them here, explains Martin. He says the university offers admission to around 1,000 Black students each year, but only 35 percent of them accept.
A solution, he says, would be to offer more scholarships through the Ridley Scholarship Fund, minimizing the student debt for a demographic that statistically already has less wealth. The university could also explore ways to create a need-based scholarship fund for descendants of its enslaved laborers through the fund.
Martin also calls for the creation of more fellowships related to Black studies, so the school can attract more Black faculty—4 percent of the faculty of the state’s flagship university is Black.
Schmidt is all for more scholarships, but she believes UVA needs to include reparations in its admissions practices, like Georgetown University, which, since 2016, has given preferred admissions, or “legacy” status, to the descendants of those enslaved there.
UVA should not just aim to get more Black students, but also make them feel included and valued once they are on Grounds, says Elliott. This includes following up on the range ofrecommendations issued by the university’s Racial Equity Task Force last month, and removing racist symbols and names—from Alderman Library to the George Rogers Clark statue.
UVA student activist Sarandon Elliott believes the memorial must be accompanied by structural reforms. PC: John Robinson
“If we are not actively fighting racial and economic inequity, we are not properly honoring enslaved peoples,” she adds.
After spending an hour or so at the memorial, I left feeling pained. Black people at UVA, in Charlottesville, and across the country have endured so much violence and oppression. The memorial is here, but the violence has yet to cease.
But I also left with a sense of hope. Now more than ever, radical student leaders and activists of color like Elliott are holding the university accountable for its racism—without the initial push from students, it’s likely the memorial wouldn’t exist today. Through their efforts, and the efforts of the next generation, and the next, UVA may someday atone for its troubled past.
Protesters gather in downtown Charlottesville. PC: Eze Amos
C-VILLE requested a statement on Katrina Turner’s allegations from the Charlottesville Police Department on Tuesday morning, and CPD responded with a statement from Chief RaShall Brackney shortly after C-VILLE went to press. The statement has been attached.
When Myra Anderson saw the video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, ultimately killing him, she could not help but play it in her head over and over again. Now, she almost wishes she had never watched it.
“It just hurt me to my heart,” says Anderson, who is a black mental health advocate and peer support specialist. “There’s no way you can’t be affected by seeing somebody that looks your same skin color on TV, that’s not armed, and doesn’t appear to be doing anything [be killed]. It’s traumatizing deep deep down…It carries the weight of all of the other historical injustices and trauma that happened before.”
The violent murders of black people by police—and the recent extensive media coverage—has taken a toll on Anderson’s mental health, as it has for many African Americans across the nation. She’s felt a whole range of emotions, from anger to frustration to depression. It’s been difficult for her to stop crying, she says, or get some rest.
“This is a hard time for black mental health in general…It’s almost like we’re dealing with the pandemic of COVID-19, and on top of that, we’re dealing with a pandemic of racism. And both of them feel like they have us in a chokehold, unable to breathe,” says Anderson, who founded Brave Souls on Fire, a spoken word group that works to combat the stigma surrounding mental illness.
Now, more than ever, Anderson wishes that Charlottesville had a black mental health center, which could provide a “safe and liberating space to process racial trauma” for all black residents. She is also disappointed in local politicians and organizations that have released statements in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, but have done little to reach out to the black community, and haven’t provided any type of free mental health care.
For Katrina Turner, a member of the initial Police Civilian Review Board, the trauma is personal. In 2016, her son, Timothy Porter, called 911, claiming his girlfriend attacked him. The officers “chose to arrest him,” Turner says. “While he was handcuffed, they threw him against the wall. One of the cops threw a set of keys, hitting him in the back of the head. When they took him to their car, they threw him up against the front [and side] of the car…I witnessed it all.”
Turner and her family filed a complaint against the officers, but she says nothing was done. (Police spokesman Tyler Hawn says the department completed an internal affairs investigation, but cannot release the results publicly.) Since then, Turner has continued to pursue the complaint while publicly taking a stand against police brutality in Charlottesville, and now says her “mental health” is “through the roof.”
“Something needs to be done,” she says. “It shouldn’t have taken us to witness that murder on TV for all of this to happen.”
While it’s not easy, Eboni Bugg, a licensed clinical social worker practicing in the Charlottesville area, encourages all black people to “rest and breathe,” and take the necessary steps to protect their mental health during this time.
Prayer or meditation are helpful rituals to have, as well as a healthy sleeping and eating schedule, says Bugg, who serves on the steering committee for the Central Virginia Clinicians of Color Network. It’s also important to take time off of social media, do activities you enjoy, and intentionally connect with family and friends.
Bugg encourages adults of color in need of professional help to call CVCCN’s free non-crisis emotional support line (218-0440), which is available every Wednesday evening. Clinicians provide callers with immediate, short-term assistance, including resources and referral services.
In addition, The Women’s Initiative’s Sister Circle program offers free mental health care and support groups for black women.
“[I] just let myself feel whatever that feeling is, and don’t have any guilt about it,” says Anderson, when asked how she’s taking care of herself. “If I’m upset, I’m going to be upset. If I’m sad, I’m going to be sad. And I’m going to allow myself the space to work through that, whatever that looks like.”
Statement from CPD Chief RaShall Brackney:
It is unfortunate as the nation is on the cusp of bringing about transformational reforms in policing policies and practices, there is a local attempt to divert attention to a case that has been investigated, and reviewed by Internal Affairs, multiple City Mangers, and Chiefs of Police.
On June 17, 2016, Mr. Timothy Porter pled guilty to an assault and battery. Mr. Porter’s guilty plea stemmed from the events Ms. Turner references in her statement to the C’Ville Weekly. It is also factually inaccurate, as Mr. Porters’ intake picture and subsequent arrests for violating protective orders depicts that he was “ bleeding and all scratched up.”
During my two-year tenure as the Chief of Police, the Charlottesville Police Department has fully embraced the pillars of 21st Century Policing, in an attempt to undue the legacy of institutional practices that were established by predecessors. We will continue to work collaboratively with this community to reimagine the role of policing as we strive towards “Service Beyond the Call.”
Protesters gather in downtown Charlottesville. PC: Eze Amos
Over the past few days, videos of the murders of unarmed black people by cops and white “vigilantes,” which sparked nationwide protests, have been replaced by new videos, of cops brutalizing those protesters in cities across the country.
Many police officers have met the legitimate expression of pent-up rage with violence, beating demonstrators and journalists on camera, firing tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets, holding protesters all night without food or water, and, in a sickening echo of Heather Heyer’s murder, plowing their cars into crowds.
As I’m sure someone will write to me to point out, a few agitators have taken advantage of the chaos to loot and destroy businesses, including the office of an alt-weekly in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, where the editor reports their office was set on fire. Obviously, this is reprehensible (not to mention counterproductive). But it’s also no excuse for law enforcement to escalate violence.
Here in Charlottesville, hundreds turned out for a protest on Saturday, and the Black Student Union at Albemarle High School led another demonstration on Sunday. CPD, perhaps finally learning from its heavy-handed approach to past protests, was on hand largely to redirect traffic. Cops did not confront protesters, and the events were nonviolent.
That’s commendable—though it’s also disturbing that police not attacking nonviolent protesters should be such an anomaly. But the city still has work to do. The Police Civilian Review Board, created in the wake of summer 2017 to promote transparency and build trust, has yet to meet (the final member was appointed by City Council on Monday). And no board exists in Albemarle County, where residents have complained of racial bias by the police, and African Americans are disproportionately arrested, as shown in a report the county declined to fund.
Charlottesville spends $300,000 a year to put police officers in city schools, part of an alarming national trend that has contributed to the school-to-prison pipeline for youth of color. Ending that contract is among the demands put forward by the organizers of Saturday’s march, a list that could serve as a handy map to the steps required for real change.
Demonstrations matter. But supporting the work that follows is even more important.
Nearly a thousand protesters took to the streets of downtown Charlottesville May 30, demanding an end to police brutality and justice for the murders of black people across the country. PC: Eze Amos
Nearly a thousand protesters took to the streets of downtown Charlottesville May 30, demanding an end to police brutality and justice for the murders of black people acrossthe country, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade.
In solidarity with the dozens of other Black Lives Matter demonstrations around the nation, people of all races and ages carried homemade signs and chanted statements like “Cops and Klan go hand in hand,” “White silence is violence,” and “No justice, no peace.” Others joined in by car, blowing their horns and waving signs as they drove along Market Street.
“I was extremely pleased both with the turnout and the resiliency of the participants to remain peaceful…I am certain we got our message across,” says community activist and former Blue Ribbon Commission member Don Gathers, who spoke at the march.
But he believes there should have been “tens of hundreds more” at the event. “Anyone with a pulse and a moral compass should have been out there protesting the disgusting murder and ongoing brutalization of blacks across this country,” he says.
Don Gathers PC: Eze Amos
The march was initiated by local resident Ang Conn, who, after seeing the murder of Floyd on video, felt “just completely distraught with what to actually do.” Floyd died after white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into the black man’s neck for nearly nine minutes, despite Floyd’s pleas that he could not breathe. (Three other police officers on the scene, who failed to intervene, were fired along with Chauvin, but only Chavin has been arrested.)
Conn reached out to multiple racial justice groups and put a local team together to plan the Charlottesville protest, and get the word out.
The event started at 3pm in front of the city’s police department, where activists, including Zyahna Bryant and Rosia Parker, led chants, gave speeches, and invited the crowd to take a knee. Demonstrators later marched down the mall to City Hall, then through Market Street Park, along Preston Avenue, and into Washington Park, chanting and listening to speeches from area activists and residents. Nearly all wore masks, bandanas, and other facial coverings.
While police in other cities have responded violently to protesters (including in Richmond, where peaceful demonstrators were tear-gassed Monday evening), cops did not confront the crowd in Charlottesville, and the event remained nonviolent. CPD, which has been criticized in the past for heavy-handed treatment of protesters, chose to have “officers remain at a respectful distance, so that people attending could engage in civil discourse peacefully,” says spokesman Tyler Hawn.
City Councilor Sena Magill was thankful that CPD took a hands-off approach to the protest, instead of “trying to stop it.” She says she’s also “proud of our community in general for coming out and saying enough is enough, and doing it in a way that was peaceful.”
As for Conn, she says she hasn’t thought much about how it was peaceful, or how many supporters came out. “We’re protesting black people getting murdered. That’s not fun. It wasn’t a party [or] a get together. We’re in the middle of a pandemic and there are millions of black and brown people locked up in jail cells…which was also what this protest was about.”
On Sunday, the Albemarle High School Black Student Union hosted a demonstration in front of the Albemarle County Office Building. Joined by community members, students of all races stood on the sidewalk in masks, chanting and holding signs with phrases like “Justice for George.”
“We wanted to continue the momentum. It’s important for us to keep protesting peacefully and raising awareness,” says BSU president Faith Holmes. “We’re actually really happy with the way it turned out…we weren’t expecting the numbers that we had. It was fulfilling to see people from [the community] come out and support Black Lives Matter.”
Moving forward, Gathers says he and other local activists will “continue to monitor the situation across the country,” and “should there be a situation that comes to light, God-forbid, here in Charlottesville, we certainly will be at the ready and quick to respond.”
Charlottesville residents of all ages and races attended Saturday’s protest. PC: Eze Amos
Charlottesville has its own fraught relationship with the police. Following community anger over the tear-gassing of counterprotesters during the July 2017 KKK rally, and CPD’s failure to protect residents during the violent Unite the Right rally later that summer, City Council created the Police Civilian Review Board to enhance transparency and trust. After years of controversy and disagreement over the board’s bylaws, City Council appointed seven members to the board in February, but the board has not yet met—an eighth, non-voting member, who was required to have prior law-enforcement experience, was appointed at Monday’s City Council meeting. Councilor Lloyd Snook, however, announced during the city’s Cville360 broadcast on Tuesday that the board could begin virtual meetings.
Before Saturday’s protest, organizers also released a list of demands for the city, county, and state, which Conn read to the crowd on Saturday. It included an end to pretrial detention and home monitoring fees; the demilitarization and defunding of CPD; and the release of more people from jail and prison, especially given the current high risk of death from COVID-19.
Several Charlottesville officials offered statements condemning Floyd’s death and police violence against the black community. And while Magill did not comment on the specific demands, she says the recent incidents of police brutality around the country “have been weighing heavy on all of council” and, from what she’s seen, council is “committed to true change.”
“So many things are hard to get moving quickly, but we all know that we have to do something real,” she adds. “The time for thoughts and prayers is done—it’s been done.”
Updated 6/3 to reflect the recent appointment of a new CRB member and the board’s ability to have virtual meetings
