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Remembering the forgotten: UVA Memorial to Enslaved Laborers leads calls for change

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 suit  two 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.

The President’s Commission on Slavery and the University was soon born, with Martin and von Daacke as co-chairs, and a range of professors, faculty, and community historians as members.

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 of  recommendations 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.

Updated 9/2

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Why are Charlottesville cops still driving this car?

Whether you were on Fourth Street that afternoon or not, you know the car: the low-slung gray muscle car with the distinctive brake lights that James Fields used to murder Heather Heyer and injure dozens of others on August 12, 2017.

From video footage and the shocking photograph that won local photographer Ryan Kelly a Pulitzer Prize, the car, a Dodge Challenger, became deeply associated with the terror of that day. Which is why one of our reporters was startled to see a strikingly similar car—another gray Dodge Challenger—with a Charlottesville Police Department decal, on a local street in June.

Police department spokesperson Tyler Hawn confirmed the car is part of the department’s fleet, adding that it was acquired well before August 2017.

Activist Rosia Parker says that when she saw the car, in the police department garage, it “gave me triggers” back to the attack. She raised the issue at a City Council meeting on July 16, 2018, but says she received no response.

A year later, on the way to James Fields’ sentencing, survivor Marcus Martin, who is pictured flying over the back of the car in Kelly’s photograph, said he had seen a similar car on the way to the courtroom and “it all came back.”

In reply to C-VILLE’s questions, Police Chief RaShall Brackney noted that the police department’s car is branded with the logo for the Special Olympics of Virginia Law Enforcement Torch Run and Polar Plunge events, and “this symbolic gesture is appreciated my many members of the local and state community.” Police participate in the events to raise money for athletes with special needs.

In addition to the Special Olympics logo, the roof of the car is emblazoned with what appears to be “thin blue line” iconography, which is commonly used to show support for law enforcement, but which some have argued is meant to show opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement. A thin blue line flag was among the flags carried by Unite the Right protesters at the August 12 rally.

“If the community feels threatened by the presence of this car, and request it be removed from our fleet, we would work toward an amicable solution,” Brackney said.

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Making space: Using diversity and inclusion programs to build a better workplace

As the U.S. population grows less homogeneous, organizations are increasingly seizing on opportunities to incorporate diversity and inclusion programs and policies—or in abbreviated corporate parlance, “D&I”—into their workplace cultures.

Diversity covers the spectrum of human differences, including age, race, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexuality, language, national origin, and socio-economic status. Inclusion refers to a culture of belonging where your employees are heard, welcomed, respected, and treated fairly. It means employees feel that their voice matters and adds value to the organization.

Here in our corner of the world, the civic and business community, including the City of Charlottesville, University of Virginia, and local Chamber of Commerce, have already taken steps to weave a more diverse and inclusive culture into the city’s fabric.

Fostering diversity and inclusion creates more opportunities for historically underrepresented populations to succeed, which is good for the community. But it’s also good for a business’s bottom line.

A wealth of research bears this out. The Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm, says “when companies and governments embrace diversity and inclusion as a critical driver of success, they are more likely to prosper and last.” A 2012 McKinsey & Company study revealed companies with diverse executive boards enjoy significantly higher earnings and returns on equity, while a 2015 McKinsey report, “Why Diversity Matters,” found that “more diverse companies are better able to win top talent, and improve their customer orientation, employee satisfaction, and decision making, leading to a virtuous cycle of increasing returns.” Deloitte has called D&I a “business imperative.”

“It’s the right thing to do”

Andrea Copeland-Whitsett, director of member education services at the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, says diversity is part of Charlottesville’s strength. And when businesses have strong diversity and inclusion programs, it not only strengthens the business, but further strengthens the community.

“Bringing together people with different experiences, perspectives, backgrounds…is always a good thing,” says Copeland-Whitsett. “So when a business or an organization creates an environment where employees of all backgrounds feel valued, appreciated, and also have equal opportunities, you’re creating a strong employee base.”

Copeland-Whitsett says the white supremacist rallies in summer 2017 put the spotlight on Charlottesville, and it’s another motivating factor behind why businesses may be thinking even more about D&I. “A lot of companies, for good reason, have sat down and said, ‘What can we do to make things better, to make everyone feel welcome, to make this community aware that we don’t stand for exclusion, we don’t stand for racism, we don’t stand for what was on display August 11th and 12th?,’” she says.

D&I programs need buy-in from everyone, from the top down, to be effective, Copeland-Whitsett adds, and a company has to be genuine about incorporating it into the work culture because “it’s the right thing to do.” It can’t be a “one-and-done,” check-the-box kind of effort.

“Like any other program implemented in any business, in order for it to be successful, there has to be ongoing evaluations and assessments of that program,” she adds. “The Leadership Charlottesville program that I run through the Chamber, I do it every year. Every year there has to be an evaluation of that program to ensure we are meeting the goals and fulfilling the mission. D&I programs are the same.”

A city priority

Hollie Lee, chief of workforce development strategies for the City of Charlottesville, says programs that support diversity and inclusion have always been a priority of the city, but even more so in recent years. The need for them is there: While Charlottesville’s population is roughly 30 percent non-white, only a little under 13 percent of local firms were minority-owned in 2012, according to census data.

The city’s Minority Business Program, which supports businesses owned by minority or disadvantaged populations, was recently revamped and is now backed with additional funding, Lee says. That includes two new positions: a minority business procurement coordinator, housed in the Procurement and Risk Management Services Division, and a minority business development coordinator, supporting the Office of Economic Development.

Lee says in the future, the two new positions “will work hand-in-hand in order to create more business opportunities for minority-owned businesses in the city.” By creating these positions, she adds, City Council is demonstrating its commitment to supporting a more diverse business community.

Other initiatives, like Minority Business Week (September 16-21, 2019) and the newly launched Business Equity Fund—created to help minority-owned businesses obtain loans at a low interest rate and initiated by City Councilor Wes Bellamy—will offer additional opportunities for diversity and inclusivity within the business community.

Lee says the city understands that having a diverse mix of businesses, whether based on ethnicity or based on industry, is important to Charlottesville’s economy and tax base. “And it’s also good to have businesses that reflect your community. So [if] businesses here in Charlottesville are not owned by diverse groups, then we’re not truly representing the makeup of our community.”

The long game

One of the top employers in the Charlottesville area is the CFA Institute, a global association of investment professionals headquartered on East High Street. The CFA has developed both internal and external programs aimed at promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“The aim of our diversity and inclusion initiative is to create a welcoming and safe work environment, where employees can flourish, no matter their background or heritage,” says Kelli Palmer, CFA’s newly appointed head of global diversity & equity and corporate citizenship. “It’s important to establish a culture of fairness, opportunity, and trust.”

To that end, the CFA created three internal “business resource groups” in early 2018—Institutional Awareness of Minorities, Women’s Initiative Network, and Pride at Work—to help “support employees from historically underrepresented populations and help foster inclusion across the organization,” says Palmer, specifically, women, minorities, and the LGBTQ community.

External efforts include the CFA’s annual conference focused on diversity and inclusion, as well as its Women in Investment Management initiative, which promotes gender diversity in the investment management profession through research, a peer network, and scholarships for women pursuing a career in investment management and who are interested in earning the CFA charter.

In fall 2018, the Institute also published a diversity and inclusion guide for the investment management industry, featuring 20 recommendations that firms can use to launch or develop a diversity and inclusion program. To assess its long-term impact, the CFA has recruited investment firm “experimental partners” to implement some of the ideas, measure outcomes, and report back.

Since the Women in Investment Management program was launched in 2013, Palmer says the percentage of women CFA candidates has grown globally from 30 percent in 2013 to 38 percent in 2018.

Still, there’s more work to do. As the CFA acknowledges on its website, fewer than 20 percent of the holders of the Chartered Financial Analyst designation are women, a gender imbalance that’s mirrored in the industry as a whole. A 2017 study from the Knight Foundation and Bella Research Group revealed that women- and minority-owned firms manage only 1.1 percent of the $71.4 trillion-dollar asset management industry.

CFA D&I initiatives aim to bring about a change, but it will require “investment and a long-term commitment,” says Palmer.

“The reality is that diversity, equity, and inclusion is a long game that looks more like [a] winding road that goes both up and downhill more than an ascent to a singular peak,” she says. “What we have learned from our journey is that it’s important to engage in an ongoing educational process. This is not a ‘one-and-done’ exercise.”

“We’re becoming an open society”

As a starting point, one important way that C’ville businesses—or any business—can better ensure diversity in their work population, and that all of their employees are heard, welcomed, and represented, is by having an anti-discrimination policy, says Amy-Sarah Marshall, president of the Charlottesville Pride Community Network.

“One time, I was speaking with a local business and I asked them if they had an anti-discrimination policy, and their response was they don’t need one because, ‘We don’t discriminate against anybody,’” recalls Marshall. “And I thought that the sentiment was obviously well-intentioned, however that attitude completely glosses over the fact that we all have biases.”

Workplace anti-discrimination policies, she adds, are there to not only protect employees, but customers too.

Marshall also recommends safe-space training, which helps businesses, organizations, and individuals create welcoming, empathetic, inclusive spaces for the LGBTQ+ community. Organizations like Piedmont Virginia Community College, the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, and the Junior League of Charlottesville, among others, have participated in SafeCville,  the Charlottesville Pride Community Network’s safe-space training.

“It’s about understanding and respecting different points of view and where people are coming from and learning to not make assumptions,” says Marshall. “Everybody needs practice with that.”

Above all, Marshall says having a variety of perspectives and diverse, inclusive places to live and work matters to people today, whether they are LGBTQ+ or of a minority group or not.

Diverse, inclusive communities and work cultures help attract business and bring out the best in their employees, which is all good for the bottom line, she adds. “We’re becoming a more diverse society. We’re becoming an open society, and I think if you are wanting to grow, that is where you need to be.”

And if a business or organization is planning to create policies in support of diversity, inclusion, and equity, Marshall urges them to “do it right.”

“It’s got to be part of the makeup of your core value system as a business,” she says, “or otherwise people can smell the bullshit.”

The power of difference

J. Elliott Cisneros, executive director of the nonprofit The Sum, which facilitates diversity and equity workshops and assessments, says he moved to Charlottesville after the events of August 2017 to start The Sum study center on East Jefferson Street. (Cisneros shares an office with Heather Heyer Foundation President Susan Bro.)

While terms like “inclusion” are used today to describe strategies that bring differing groups and populations together, during the Civil Rights era, Cisneros says, the term “tolerance” was more commonly used to describe how people should get along.

“Now we look back and say, ‘Tolerance! Who wants to just be tolerated?’,” he says. “Now that language is about inclusion and equity, and similarly for me, I want inclusion, I want equity, but there’s something more. Like, do you really just want to be included? Or do you want to be seen and acknowledged and celebrated? So for me, our paradigm needs to move to that next step.”

The Sum’s free, one- to two-hour diversity and equity workshops, available to area businesses, introduce people to an unconventional online tool and methodology his team has developed called The Power of Difference Survey, which assesses an individual’s or group’s “power perspectives”—or patterns of thinking in relation to structural or institutional power—and how that interacts with sociocultural difference. Understanding one’s unconscious biases can help people learn to value difference and communicate more effectively across those differences.

“This is not about blame and shame, it’s not about wagging fingers at people and saying, ‘You’re really bad at this’ and ‘You need to get it together,’” say Cisneros. “It’s really providing the necessary support so that people can feel safe, and that they have the tools to do that internal work that really is going to allow them to impact people across differences in the ways that they intend.”

Diversity rises at the University of Virginia

Dr. Marcus Martin, outgoing vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity at the University of Virginia, came to Charlottesville in 1996 to serve as the first chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine.

“Actually, I was the first African American chair of a clinical department in the School of Medicine. And certainly, I always felt that I, as well as other clinicians, faculty members, [and] administrators, should be as well-versed as possible in diversity, equity, and inclusion because it brings a lot of value to whatever the organization is,” says Martin.

The entire university is diversifying across the board, Martin adds. The number of minority teaching and research faculty has increased by 70 percent—from 309 to 537—in the past 10 years, and the number of African American teaching and research faculty has increased by about 30 percent—from 86 to 109—in that same timeframe, as has total minority staff levels, from 1,084 to 1,335, representing an increase of 25 percent.

“So that’s good for recruiting students. When students see individuals who look like them, they tend to want to come here,” he says. The first-year class that entered in fall 2018 was more than 34 percent minority. “That’s the most diverse class ever,” he says. “The number of African American students at UVA is the highest that it’s ever been.”

Not only is the student population increasingly diverse, says Martin, the university has the highest retention rate and graduation rate of African American students of any public research institution in the country.

Efforts at increasing the number of women pursuing STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields of study are also on an upward trend at UVA, with 33 percent of women earning undergraduate engineering degrees, compared to a national average of 21 percent.

Metrics aside, the university is also attempting to ensure that the institution’s story, which has long been dominated by Thomas Jefferson, is expanded to encompass all its history. This narrative, including the role of slavery in building UVA, is key to the university’s D&I efforts.

One example of telling the complete story of the university’s past is the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers, now under construction near the Rotunda. The memorial will honor the lives and work of the approximately 5,000 enslaved African Americans who helped build and maintain the university between 1817, when construction started on the Lawn, and the end of the Civil War in 1865. Minority-owned firm Team Henry Enterprises of Newport News is providing general contracting work for the $7 million project, which is estimated to be completed in the next year.

Martin also points to the naming of Gibbons House after the enslaved African Americans Isabella and William Gibbons, a husband-and-wife butler and cook enslaved by UVA professors, and the naming of Skipwith Hall after Peyton Skipwith, an enslaved stonemason, as other meaningful ways the university is working to recognize the contributions of those who helped build it. Skipwith Hall is a facilities management building that rests on the same grounds where Peyton Skipwith quarried stone for buildings at the university.

“Bringing out information about the enslaved who contributed to the building of the institution—a story that was never really borne out in the past—gets credibility,” adds Martin. It humanizes the descendants of the enslaved and other historically underrepresented populations and demonstrates that the university “really cares, and cares about reflecting on the past, acknowledging the past history so we can be more inclusive as we move towards the future.”

Numerous other outreach efforts and programs have gotten off the ground since the Office for Diversity and Equity was created in 2005 by then-president John Casteen, says Martin. Those include the Diversity Council—which established the university’s “Commitment to Diversity” statement—the LGBT Committee, Women’s Leadership Council, Disability Advocacy & Action Committee, and the President’s Commission on Slavery and the University.

On a broader level, Martin says, diversity, equity, and inclusion are core values that should be integral to any institution, organization, or business. “The demographics are changing, becoming more diverse. Accepting and including individuals who may not have been included in the past is important for the strength of our community, for our state, and for our nation.”

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Federal judge to rule on motions to dismiss in August 12 victims’ case

In a lawsuit filed on behalf of 10 alleged victims of last summer’s deadly August weekend in which hundreds of white supremacists and neo-Nazis descended upon Charlottesville, a federal judge is now considering whether to grant several of the defendants’ motions to dismiss the case.

Attorneys Roberta Kaplan and Karen Dunn claim that 25 individuals and groups named as defendants in the suit premeditatedly conspired to commit violence at the August 12 Unite the Right rally.

Plaintiffs include victims of the Fourth Street car attack, other white supremacist violence and extreme emotional distress, including Elizabeth Sines, Marcus Martin, Marissa Blair, the Reverend Seth Wispelwey and Tyler Magill, who suffered a stroke after being beaten on August 11.

“There is one thing about this case that should be made crystal clear at the outset—the violence in Charlottesville was no accident,” the lawsuit states. “Defendants spent months carefully coordinating their efforts, on the internet and in person.”

The document quotes Unite the Right promotions that stated, “If you want to defend the South and Western civilization from the Jew and his dark-skinned allies, be at Charlottesville on 12 August,” and “Next stop: Charlottesville, VA. Final stop: Auschwitz.”

The suit further quotes one rally organizer Elliott Kline (aka Eli Mosley), who allegedly declared, “We are going to Charlottesville. Our birthright will be ashes and they’ll have to pry it from our cold hands if they want it. They will not replace us without a fight.”

Ohio-based defense attorney Jim Kolenich, who represents Kline and nearly a dozen other high-profile Unite the Righters, including Jason Kessler and “Crying Nazi” Chris Cantwell, argued in United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia today that Kaplan and Dunn failed to prove that his clients conspired to be violent at the rally.

“There is no specific allegation in those paragraphs,” he said, adding that the only conspiracy was one “to come to Charlottesville and be provocative with their political speech.”

“Yes, they are provocative people,” Kolenich said, and noted that defendant Jeff Schoep, the neo-Nazi at the helm of the National Socialist Movement, has said if he could meet Adolf Hitler today, he’d thank him, as also referenced in the complaint.

Northern Virginia-based John DiNucci, who as of yesterday is representing Richard Spencer in the suit, made the same claim that no specific evidence pointed to Spencer’s premeditated conspiracy for violence. As did Brian Jones, a local lawyer who’s representing Michael Hill, Michael Tubbs and the League of the South.

Mike “Enoch” Peinovich,  the New Yorker who founded The Right Stuff, a right-wing media hub, and podcast The Daily Shoah, is the only defendant representing himself in the case.

“I have many opinions that people may find shocking,” he told Judge Norman Moon, but he also said there’s no evidence that he was planning to be violent at Unite the Right, and though the lawsuit points out that he announced the rally on his podcast and his name appeared on rally fliers, Peinovich said that’s “just First Amendment stuff.”

To combat the claims that the suit’s defendants weren’t the ones who conspired to do harm, Kaplan told the judge, “We carefully chose the 25 defendants we did. …We went after the leaders.”

She said her team is still gathering evidence from sites that alt-right leaders used to plan for the rally, such as Discord, where they often use screen names to conceal their identities.

When she gave the real-life screen name example of “Chef Goyardee,” Peinovich shook with laughter. She also referred to internet conversation about running counterprotesters over with vehicles, which she said the alt-right has since denounced as an “edgy joke.”

“We believe that what we have here is just the tip of the iceberg,” she said.

Kolenich, who admitted during the hearing that he doesn’t know which Confederate general’s statue is causing such a ruckus in Charlottesville, said outside the courthouse that the judge should have a ruling within 30 days.

Beside him, his co-counsel gave a rare interview with Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira.

Said Elmer Woodard, the Blairs, Virginia, attorney who’s recently spent quite a bit of time in Charlottesville defending white supremacists at the state level, “I represent murderers, drug dealers and perverts, but I’m not one of them.”

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In brief: The militia won’t come back, a free speech controversy and more

And stay out!

Six militia groups and their leaders named in a lawsuit aimed at preventing white supremacist and paramilitary organizations from showing their mugs around Charlottesville again have settled, agreeing they won’t engage in coordinated armed activity in any of the city’s future rallies or protests.

The latest round of defendants to bow out includes the Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia, New York Light Foot Militia, III% People’s Militia of Maryland, and their commanding officers: Christian Yingling, George Curbelo and Gary Sigler.

Militia groups were confused with the National Guard on August 12 when both groups showed up strapped with assault rifles and wearing camouflage tactical gear, but the former have maintained that they independently attended the rally to serve as a buffer between the increasingly violent alt-right and counterprotest groups.

“It became so overwhelming that the only thing we could do was pick people up off the floor,” Curbelo told C-VILLE after the suit was filed last October.

The lawsuit, which names 25 groups and individuals, was filed by Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection last October on behalf of the city and several local businesses and neighborhood associations.

At this point, Jason Kessler, Elliott Kline—aka Eli Mosley—Matthew Heimbach, the Traditionalist Worker Party, Vanguard America and Redneck Revolt are the only defendants actively litigating the case, according to the law group. Others are in default or haven’t been served yet.

The League of the South, its leaders, Michael Tubbs and Spencer Borum, and the swastika-loving National Socialist Movement and its leader, Jeff Schoep, have also settled.

So with the literal neo-Nazis officially agreeing to stay away, it begs the question: Who will come to Kessler’s anniversary rally (for which the city has denied a permit) this summer?

Rotunda Bible reader silenced

UVA alum Bruce Kothmann decided to challenge the university’s new speech policies when he read from the Bible on the steps of the Rotunda in early May. University police told Kothmann that was not allowed because he needed permission a week in advance and, in any case, the Rotunda is not one of UVA’s designated free speech zones for unaffiliated people—including alums.

Sex reassignment pioneer

Dr. Milton Edgerton, a plastic surgeon who performed some of the first genital reconfigurations in the country in the 1960s at Johns Hopkins University and then in 1970 at the University of Virginia, died May 17 at age 96.

Tweet of the week

Big bucks

The city’s FY 2019 budget provides $225,000 for City Council’s own staff, including a researcher and spokesperson. A recent job listing on Indeed.com for the latter, officially called the “council outreach coordinator,” offers a starting pay between $21.36 and $31.25 per hour to “develop, implement and champion council community engagement initiatives,” among other tasks.

 ’Hoo at Windsor

UVA alum and Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian attended the nuptials of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle with his bride, Serena Williams, who’s a pal of the new Duchess of Sussex.

Ryan Kelly

Ryan’s redo

Pulitzer Prize-winning former Daily Progress photographer Ryan Kelly, who last captured Marcus Martin flying in the air August 12 after being struck by a car that plowed into a crowd on Fourth Street, took photos of Martin and Marissa Blair’s wedding for the New York Times. Pop soul musician Major sang at the event, and the purple theme was in honor of the couple’s friend, Heather Heyer.

Pole-sitter lawsuit

The Rutherford Institute has filed suit on behalf of Dr. Greg Gelburd to demand that one Mountain Valley Pipeline protester named Nutty, who’s perched on a 45-foot pole in the Jefferson National Forest, be allowed food, water and examination by the doctor, whose conscience and religious beliefs have led him to offer services to poor and disadvantaged people across the world.

A big nope

A federal appeals court has ruled that Sharon Love, the mother of Yeardley Love, will not have access to George Huguely’s family’s $6 million insurance policy in her wrongful death lawsuit against her daughter’s convicted killer. The Chartis Property Casualty Company policy has an exclusion for criminal activity.

Ew, gross

The exotic East Asian tick, aka  longhorned tick, was found on an orphaned calf in Albemarle last week, after initially being spotted on a sheep farm in New Jersey in 2017. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is still determining the significance. And in other gross news, the invasive emerald ash borer is on its way to Charlottesville and expected to kill all untreated ash trees within three years.

Quote of the Week

Nikuyah Walker. Photo by Eze Amos

“Most of the stuff I’ve been dealing with is complete nonsense.” —Mayor Nikuyah Walker on Facebook Live May 16

 

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August 12 victims sue Unite the Righters

Eleven residents injured during the August 12 weekend, represented by legal powerhouse firms, filed a suit in federal court October 11 seeking monetary compensation from organizers of the Unite the Right rally, including Jason Kessler, Richard Spencer and more than three dozen white supremacist and neo-Nazi individuals and groups, alleging they conspired to commit violence in Charlottesville.

Tyler Magill, who had a stroke a few days after being whacked by a tiki torch during the August 11 march through UVA’s grounds, Marcus Martin, who was struck by defendant James Fields’ car, which broke his leg and ankle, his fiancée, Marissa Blair, and the Reverend Seth Wispelwey are among the plaintiffs suffering physical and emotional trauma, according to the suit.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs include Roberta Kaplan, who represented Edie Windsor in the landmark Supreme Court case on gay marriage, and former federal prosecutor Karen Dunn with Boies Schiller. In a 96-page complaint, the plaintiffs allege an unlawful conspiracy to intimidate, harass and injure blacks, Jews, people of color and their supporters.

The suit cites Andrew Anglin, publisher of the Daily Stormer, who wrote of an “atavistic rage in us, deep in us, that is ready to boil over. There is a craving to return to an age of violence. We want a war.”

Organizer and new Identity Evropa CEO Eli Mosley promised,”They will not replace us without a fight,” according to the suit.

Says Kaplan, “The whole point of this lawsuit is to make it clear that this kind of conduct—inciting and then engaging in violence based on racism, sexism and anti-Semitism—has no place in our country.”

tylerMagill et.al. v. whiteSupremacists

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Stand up: Heather Heyer’s legacy lives on

Droves of community members clothed in shades of purple poured into the Paramount Theater August 16 to remember Heather Heyer, a local activist and paralegal who lost her life to what some have called an act of domestic terror the weekend before.

“They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well, guess what. You just magnified her,” said her mother, Susan Bro. The crowd of hundreds erupted in applause and sharp whistles as nearly every person stood in support.

Heather was killed August 12 when a participant of the alt-right’s infamous Unite the Right rally plowed into a crowd of peacefully protesting pedestrians on the Downtown Mall with his Dodge Challenger.

“I’d rather have my child, but by golly, if I have to give her up, we’re going to make it count,” Bro said and encouraged those in attendance to notice the injustices going on around them and stand up for those who need it, just like Heyer always did.

Heather Heyer’s grandfather, Elwood Shrader, addresses hundreds of people at her memorial. Staff photo

Also among the list of speakers were her grandfather, Elwood Shrader, her father, Mark Heyer, her pastor, cousins, friends and co-workers.

All spoke about how the fiery 32-year-old was filled with love and passion, but never backed down from an argument.

“She wanted to put down hate. …She could tell if somebody wasn’t being straight and she’d call you on it,” her father said.

“It didn’t matter who you were or where you were from, if she loved you, that was it,” he added. “You were stuck.”

Diana Ratcliffe remembered Heyer’s infections smile and eyes that glittered. She read a letter she wrote to her “baby cousin” in the aftermath. “Did I tell you that you come from a long line of stubborn and passionate women?” she said. “Your patience was heroic,” and she, too,  said Heyer never gave up on people.

Her coworkers echoed the same sentiments, and said Heyer treated her clients at the Miller Law Group—many of whom have shared their condolences—with the utmost care.

“She cared about everyone she spoke to,” said Alfred Wilson, her supervisor, and she always stood her ground. He remembered a time the two were leaving the office one evening and her boyfriend was outside waiting for her. “You didn’t tell me you worked for a black man,” her boyfriend said. Heyer, unsurprisingly, broke things off after that.

“Everyone who knows her knows that she cursed like a sailor sometimes,” said co-worker and close friend Freda Khateeb-Wilson, and the audience laughed while she recounted Heyer’s everyday battles with the office printer.

Governor Terry McAuliffe and Senator Tim Kaine sat in the front row next to Heyer’s family. Both were quick to give their condolences and denounce the white nationalist rally that thrust Charlottesville into the national spotlight and brought the community face to face with hate.

Marcus Martin, left, pushed finace Marissa Blair out of the way of the car that killed Heyer. Andrew Shurtleff/Daily Progress

“Maybe if you didn’t stand up, or if you didn’t talk so loudly, or if you weren’t so bold, they wouldn’t have heard you and you’d still be here,” Khateeb-Wilson said. “Thank you for making the word hate real, but thank you for making the word love stronger.”