Charlottesville finally removed its statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in July. Since then, the spaces where the racist monuments once stood have been empty, as the city decides what should go there.
During a virtual forum hosted by the UVA Democracy Initiative’s Memory Project last week, Black activists Bree Newsome Bass and Emil Little shared their experiences confronting Confederate monuments, and discussed how public spaces like the ones in Charlottesville should be treated after the Confederate iconography is removed. Atlantic columnist and poet Clint Smith moderated the event.
After 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof shot and killed nine Black people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, the state lowered its American flag atop the capitol to half-staff to honor the victims—but kept its Confederate flag flying high. Due to state law, the rebel flag could only be lowered after a two-thirds approval by the state legislature.
Instead of waiting for legislators to “essentially decide that our lives matter,” Newsome Bass felt she needed to take action and show defiance against white terrorism. Ten days after the horrific shooting, she scaled the flagpole outside the state capitol, and tore down the Confederate flag. She was immediately arrested.
“So much of the national focus of discussion was on the display of the flag, not the circumstances that led to a white man in his 20s being so errantly racist that he decides to go into a church and murder people,” said Newsome Bass. “It highlighted the disregard for our lives as Black people.”
The next month, South Carolina finally removed the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds—something Black activists had called for for decades.
Following the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, students at the University of North Carolina held their own protest against the university’s Silent Sam statue, which commemorated a Confederate soldier. For months, white supremacists had been visiting the racist monument, causing many Black students to feel unsafe, explained Little.
“I’m thinking the school’s going to have our back on this,” said Little, who was a doctoral student at the university. “But I’m watching police shove students, laughing at them, mocking them, hitting them.”
Over the next year, Little participated in sit-ins in front of Silent Sam, and passed out materials about the racist history of the monument. Fed up with the university’s refusal to take action, Little smeared red ink—mixed with their own blood—onto the statue during a protest in 2018. Little was arrested and later found guilty of vandalism.
“If you’re so proud to have this armed solider still standing for this cause, why not depict what he stood for, which was the murder of Black people and their enslavement,” said Little.
Little was inspired to smear real blood on the statue by a protest they witnessed while studying in China, during which migrant workers threw blood on a police station.
“The next day, even though there was no blood, people were like, ‘This has been tainted.’ They wanted to avoid it,” said Little. “I knew that doing [my protest] during the day meant that people would see the red ink and blood…and we believe that when something is bloodied it’s tainted.”
Four months later, hundreds of student protesters toppled Silent Sam. A tree has since been planted at the former site of the statue.
When recontextualizing the spaces where Confederate monuments once stood, Newsome Bass said it’s important to go “a step beyond” replacing them with a statue of a Black historical figure, like Harriet Tubman.
“It has often been about idealizing particular figures, which goes to the way that society itself is organized around capitalistic ideas of individualism, white patriarchy, the idea that we have supreme white men that are elevated above the rest of humanity,” said Newsome Bass.
“How do we transform public space in a way that honors and celebrates the ideals of humanity or the inclusion of everyone?” she asked.
Little wishes the Silent Sam monument had been left, toppled, on the ground. “UNC getting rid of it was convenient,” Little said. “Not only did the monument disappear, but the history of contention around the monument disappeared when it was taken away.”
For people like the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Confederate spaces are sacred because of their family lineage and belief in the Lost Cause myth, Smith pointed out. “How are you thinking about what it means to…make clear that these things that are rendered holy are manifestations of harm?”
Newsome Bass said she classifies white supremacy as a religion, upheld by centuries of colonization and state-sponsored violence.
“One of the main ways we desacralize something is to name it and classify it as a thing,” she said. “When we are talking about taking down a monument, it’s never just about the monument—it’s about the deconstruction of this ideology of whiteness.”
Both activists encouraged the audience to educate themselves on white supremacy, and support activists and organizers fighting for Black liberation.
“You cannot enter into this kind of a thing without taking a side,” Little said. “To be an observer in a struggle for life and death for Black people to me means you’re already against me.”
Work crews removed the statue of General Stonewall Jackson from its concrete pedestal on Richmond’s Monument Avenue earlier this month. PC: Eze Amos
Statue disposal
Many of Richmond’s Monument Avenue Confederate statues are gone, but debate over their removal continues, and people have wondered where the toppled statues are being stored. This week, some sharp-eyed Richmonders noticed a large collection of monument-shaped tarps standing around the city’s wastewater treatment plant. It’s about as close as you can get to literally flushing the things down the toilet.
PC: Castle Hill Gaming
Prime real estate
It looks like a slot machine. It plays like a slot machine. But actually, it’s a “skill game.” Now, these games are legal in Virginia—and there are more than a dozen lined up in a glamorous former bank building downtown. The space is currently home to high-end steakhouse Prime 109, which was shuttered by the economic crash. The new scene inside the building has left some in town wondering if there’s a swanky casino in Charlottesville’s future.
Prime 109 boss Loren Mendosa insists that “right now there’s not much to talk about.” Sure, it could be a casino eventually, but Mendosa says things are happening fast, and he has “no idea what the actual thing would look like.” Still, he’s rolling the dice on the idea.
The Prime team hurriedly carted the machines into the space at the 11th hour. On July 1, all previously installed skill game machines became legal, though the law change doesn’t allow new machines to be installed. “If we don’t have the machines installed by June 30th, there’s no chance of even talking about it,” Mendosa says.
“It’s definitely not [a casino] right now. Who knows?…It might be a lot of different things,” he says about his restaurant full of quasi-gambling machines.
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Quote of the week
“When you go outside and say, ‘I can’t breathe with this mask on; I’m gonna take it off,’ try breathing with COVID.”
—area resident Stacey Washington, who contracted the virus after taking her mask off at a family Fourth of July celebration.
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In brief
Teacher troubles
On July 9, Albemarle County schools laid out plans for in-person reopening this fall. It quickly came to light, though, that the plan had been created without getting feedback from ACPS teachers, reports The Daily Progress. Teachers and staff have since circulated an open letter advocating against in-person instruction, calling the proposal “unequivocally unsafe for Albemarle County staff and families.”
Party’s over
As coronavirus cases increase every day, Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker urged local residents to wear masks, practice social distancing, and stay home as much as possible, among other safety precautions, in a press conference on Monday afternoon. Walker also denounced the large gatherings being held around town—including parties on UVA’s frat row.
Mayor Nikuyah Walker reminded residents to wear masks, practice social distancing, and stay home. PC: Eze Amos
New faces
Norfolk Delegate Jay Jones and Alexandria Delegate Hala Ayala have announced 2021 campaigns for lieutenant governor of Virginia, joining Jennifer Carroll Foy and Jennifer McClellan—both running for governor—as the third and fourth people of color under the age of 50 to announce a Democratic run at statewide office. Meanwhile, Terry McAuliffe still lurks in the wings, having pulled almost $2 million into his PAC this spring.
Tiki terror
Early Monday morning, two local activists awoke to find blazing tiki torches in their yards—an eerie reminder of the KKK rally held nearly three years ago at the University of Virginia. (Another activist found an unlit, discarded torch.) The act was “without a doubt intentional,” according to a Medium post by Showing Up for Racial Justice.
Students Sarah Fadhil (left) speaks during a graduation ceremony for students getting their GED's through the Thomas Jefferson Adult and Career Education program at PVCC on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019. Photo by Zack Wajsgras
On their own terms
“If you have a dream, and you focus on it, and you work hard, your dream will come true one day,” Bushiri Salumu told a small crowd assembled at Piedmont Virginia Community College on Thursday, November 7. He spoke from experience: Salumu lost family members to the civil war in his home country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and lived in a refugee camp in Zambia for four years before arriving in Charlottesville in 2012. While working at a car wash and as a housekeeper, Salumu managed to learn English, become a U.S. citizen, and complete his GED. Now, he works at UVA hospital and hopes to become a nurse practitioner.
Salumu was the keynote student speaker at a graduation ceremony for adult learners from the PVCC Thomas Jefferson Adult Career Education program, which offers English language classes, career skills instruction, and GED and NEDP high school credential programs.
“The United States is a country where dreams can come true,” said Salumu. “It doesn’t matter where you come from or how you look.”
Each of the seven graduates took the podium to tell their story and thank their families and teachers for helping them along the way.
“I will continue to excel in my own time frame with no regrets,” said Crystal Morris, who earned her GED while juggling “two jobs, two leases, and a crying toddler.”
“To my fellow graduates—our lives may once have held bitterness and sadness,” said Sarah Fadhil, who arrived in the United States in 2017 and joined TJACE to learn English. “But now, all we need to do is look forward, with your head held high, and smile. Congratulations to all of us to succeed in our way.”
Quote of the week
“Two words have never been spoken in the 400-year history of the Virginia House of Burgesses and the House of Delegates: ‘Madam Speaker.’” —Senator Adam P. Ebbin on Delegate Eileen Filler-Corn’s election as the first woman speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates
In brief
Oops
A judge has dismissed a felony explosives possession charge against a Zion Crossroads man who was pulled over for having expired license plates and arrested when Charlottesville police mistook a tire pressure gauge in his car for a pipe bomb. Police searched the car after smelling marijuana and the department’s newly-hired bomb-sniffing dog identified the device, which police detonated. On Twitter, city councilor-elect Michael Payne called the case “an example of why we need a strong, independent Civilian Police Review Board.”
Spelling counts
Delegate Nick Freitas failed to get his name on the ballot this fall due to incomplete paperwork, leading the Republican incumbent to rely on a large-scale write-in campaign. But that left voters with the challenge of spelling his name. Culpeper administrators, who had to sift through more than 5,000 write-in votes, accepted Nick Feitas, Nick Freitos, Nick F, and the mononym Friets as legitimate votes, but nixed voters’ choices for Friems, Freton, Freit Rick, Nick Fruit, and NICKTKLE.
To catch a vandal
Downtown’s controversial statue of Stonewall Jackson has been vandalized more than once, and Jackson defenders may be taking matters into their own hands: A small camouflaged trail camera and a bell attached to a wire were recently found near the monument. Charlottesville police removed the items soon after pictures were circulated online, and said the camera did not belong to the department.
Pricey pied-a-terre
Some of the most expensive—and longest unoccupied—residential real estate downtown is finally seeing movement. Architect Bill Atwood’s Waterhouse project, which houses WorldStrides, put deluxe condos on the market in 2015. Most were still empty in 2017, when Atwood said he was “land banking” them, before losing them to creditors in 2018. In September, John and Renee Grisham picked up one of the units for $1.079 million.
Bill Atwood in his Waterhouse project.
Wright stuff
Harold Wright, the founder and general manager of NBC29, will call it quits after 46 years heading Charlottesville’s first TV station, according to the Progress. David Hughes, news director for WDBJ Roanoke, will succeed Wright.
Braxton Puryear is one attorney representing plaintiffs in the case. Staff photo
In a lawsuit aimed at keeping the statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson in Charlottesville, city councilors have been ordered to turn over documents related to conversations of removing them—a decision the council made, initially just to remove Lee, in a 3-2 vote in February 2017.
Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Rick Moore ordered June 19 that current councilors Wes Bellamy, Mike Signer and Kathy Galvin, and former councilors Bob Fenwick and Kristin Szakos, who were serving at the time of the vote, would have to supply documents dating back to September 2016.
Plaintiffs are asking for paper trails, including emails, text messages, phone calls, memos and videos from official city accounts and councilors’ private servers, and have specifically asked for those between the city leaders and members of activist groups such as Black Lives Matter and Showing Up For Racial Justice, according to acting city attorney Lisa Robertson.
“The plaintiffs are showing their hand,” she said. “It comes close to a witch hunt, your honor, and I don’t know any other word for it.”
Plaintiffs include 11 individuals, such as attorney Fred Payne, a city resident who “enjoys both Lee Park and Jackson Park and the monuments erected therein on a regular basis,” according to the lawsuit, and two groups: the Monument Fund and the Virginia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The suit was filed in March 2017, before the spaces were renamed as Emancipation and Justice parks, respectively.
Robertson argued that the plaintiffs didn’t succinctly define the type of documents they’re seeking, and that the range of dates from which they want to collect evidence was too wide. (While the judge ruled that councilors would need to sort through materials dating back to September 2016, plaintiffs had originally asked for that through January 2016.)
Plaintiffs attorney Ralph Main didn’t deny that the scope of evidence was large.
“We wanted to find out if there was something going on ahead of time,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a fishing expedition.”
Robertson called the plaintiffs’ request “painful” and asked the judge if he had any idea of the sheer volume of emails councilors received from people all over the nation in the wake of their decision to remove Lee and Jackson. And Moore said, yes, because of the national movement to contact city clerk Llezelle Dugger, and tell her how he should rule. Through her, Moore said he received “thousands” of messages.
He then ruled that councilors would not need to turn over messages they received, and only the ones they sent.
Last week, he ruled that councilors are not immune to legal fees or paying for damages related to their vote to remove the Confederate statues, and Robertson said it could be two more weeks before the city’s insurance company is able to determine who’s covered.
Individual councilors may have separate attorneys, and should not be compelled to turn over evidence until that’s sorted out, argued Robertson. But Main said deadlines are quickly approaching, and they’ve been parties in the suit since it was filed.
In September, demonstrators with the RVA No-Hate Counterprotest gathered at Richmond’s Maggie Walker statue and marched down Monument Avenue, past the General J.E.B. Stuart statue above, to the General Robert E. Lee statue, where a pro-Confederate rally that brought fewer than a dozen supporters was held. Photo by SkycladAP.com
By Alexa Nash
Richmond, Virginia, was once the powerhouse of the South as the largest capital of the Confederate States of America. Today, one of the city’s most affluent streets, Monument Avenue, is home to five statues commemorating Civil War leadership—and one statue added more than 60 years after to honor Richmond native and tennis hero Arthur Ashe. The city faces big questions as its mayor, Levar Stoney, recently reversed course on his support of removing and/or relocating the Confederate statues. The commission he formed to study the city’s monuments and the act of contextualization is on hiatus until October following a September protest around Richmond’s Lee statue. In looking toward Charlottesville, where protests have erupted because City Council voted to move the statues of Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, are there any concrete answers on how to confront a past filled with slavery and racism in creating a solid future?
History vs. heritage
Richmond’s monument history begins with the Robert E. Lee statue, conceived after Lee’s death in 1870. The 61-foot statue with four granite pillars and a marble base was erected in 1890 after funding from private sources fell through. The General Assembly passed an act to create a Governor’s Board to lead the commemoration efforts, and the $52,000 statue was slated for Monument Avenue to increase property values, according to the Virginia Historical Society. It was erected by black laborers and dedicated in front of 100,000 to 150,000 people.
Two other Confederate monuments, those of General J.E.B Stuart and the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, were erected within four days of each other in 1907. General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s statue was unveiled in 1919, and the statue of Confederate States Navy commander Matthew Fontaine Maury was erected in 1929.
According to a list of data of public spaces and symbols dedicated to the Confederacy, approximately a quarter of those spaces in Virginia and across the country, including schools, streets, monuments, plaques and other memorabilia, were dedicated between 1900 and 1918. This time period aligns with the Jim Crow law era of the South and the Plessy v. Ferguson “separate but equal” ruling in 1896, which all stemmed from a Louisiana law that separated blacks and whites on railroads in 1890: the same year Robert E. Lee made his memorialized appearance in Richmond.
The most recent statue to go up in the Monument Avenue median is that of African-American tennis star and Richmonder Arthur Ashe. It was erected in 1996, 67 years after Maury’s statue. Ashe is the only African-American memorialized on the grassy lawn, and according to the Monument Avenue Commission, the addition sparked heated conversations beginning in 1993 about the appropriateness of him being remembered just down the street from five prominent Confederate leaders.
Conversations about the morality of the monuments and talks of removing them catapulted into the public eye again in 2015 when Black Lives Matter was spray painted onto the Jefferson Davis monument. Richmond police arrested Joseph Weindl, after they found him starting to spray paint “loser” on the monument the following night. Fast-forward to the past few months when, between vandalism, such as pine tar thrown on the J.E.B Stuart monument, and demonstrations, such as regular pro-Confederate flaggers around the monuments, Stoney set out to take control of the Monument Avenue conversation. (The latest spotlight on the monuments was the September 16 pro-Confederate rally that brought fewer than a dozen pro-Confederates, who were vastly outnumbered by counterprotesters. There were seven arrests and no injuries reported.) Stoney formed the Monument Avenue Commission, a group of historians, artists, authors, professors and public leaders, to discuss how to add context to the monuments, including discussing adding more monuments to the grassy median.
“Monument Avenue was a real estate development that began with the Lee statue…and it succeeded—as a development venture and in fabricating the Lost Cause ideology as truth,” Stoney said in his first commission statement. “In fact, it was nostalgia masquerading as history.”
The commission held its first public meeting August 9, and commentary from the community lasted for two hours. Opinions ran the gamut, from supporting contextualization to removing the statues to leaving them in place with no additions. Speakers were met with heckling and shouting for having different viewpoints.
The second commission meeting, originally set for September 13, was postponed until October due to safety concerns, after the events of August 12 in Charlottesville.
This impacted Stoney’s goals for the commission, and he reversed his opinion on removing or relocating the statues, effective August 16, according to a press release. Jim Nolan, the mayor’s press secretary, said the next public meeting will be a work session to plan for future community engagement, and there will be no public comment.
Future efforts
A recent push to pass a resolution to remove all of the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue by 9th District City Councilman Michael Jones was assigned to the Land Use Committee September 25, but he says he does not yet have the support of his colleagues. Jones says he will not “play the political game” of convincing the council to vote yes, but he will continue his cause.
“We can’t be afraid to have a conversation about this,” Jones says. “Since it’s been so volatile, there’s a greater conversation that needs to be had.”
Dr. Gregory Smithers, Virginia Commonwealth University professor of history, says he favors the removal of the statues.
“Yes, we need to understand the Civil War and its role in reshaping the nation, but we shouldn’t do that to the exclusion of other critical historical events and people who weren’t white, male, [or] took part in military engagements,” Smithers said. He also said that the timing of the erection of the statues—the time of Jim Crow laws, lynching and when Civil War soldiers were dying—contributed to the Lost Cause mentality and “Northern aggression.” According to a report from Governor Terry McAuliffe’s Monuments Work Group from 2016, 168 war memorials currently stand in Virginia, with 81 percent dedicated to the Confederate participants in the Civil War.
“In other words, Confederate monuments represent a conscious effort to rewrite American history, replacing it with the fictions of Southern heritage and the cultural and political myths of the Lost Cause,” Smithers says.
Contextualization, Smithers says, won’t work—because of the monuments’ location in Richmond’s busiest areas plaques won’t be sufficient. Relocating them to cemeteries, he says, would be a more appropriate place for their purpose of memorializing the Confederacy.
A statue of Maggie Walker, a Richmond native and the first female bank owner in the United States, was unveiled in July in Jackson Ward, a historically African-American neighborhood. Photo by Ash Daniel
In addition, new memorials are being placed throughout the city. Richmond native Maggie Walker, the first female bank owner in the United States and a civil rights activist, was memorialized in July in Jackson Ward, a historically African-American neighborhood. She was welcomed warmly by the community as an example of resilience, and Stoney said at the unveiling event that it was his favorite monument in the city.
The latest tribute slated for Richmond in 2019, as voted on by the state’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Commission, is the commemoration of emancipation memorial featuring 10 prominent African-Americans, which will be erected on Brown’s Island. It will memorialize Nat Turner, the leader of a violent slave rebellion in southern Virginia, and Gabriel Prosser, who unsuccessfully attempted to lead a slave revolt in Richmond, as well as Mary Elizabeth Bowser, Dred Scott, William Harvey Carney, John Mercer Langston, Reverend Wyatt Tee Walker, Lucy F. Simms, Rosa Dixon Bowser and John Mitchell Jr. The General Assembly has earmarked $500,000 for that statue, with the remaining $300,000 coming from private donations.
Monument Avenue timeline
Robert E. Lee
The 61-foot monument was conceived after the general’s death in 1870, and erected May 29, 1890. The original location was to be Hollywood Cemetery, but Lee was moved to Monument Avenue to increase real estate value and tax revenue. The General Assembly passed legislation to combine funding efforts, totaling $52,000. The statue was erected by African-American laborers and dedicated in front of 100,000 to 150,000 people. The neighborhood was called the Lee District until 1907. It was the base for a pro-Confederate rally September 16.
General J.E.B. Stuart
A resolution by City Council kickstarted the monument after Stuart’s death. It was erected May 30, 1907, at the intersection of Monument Avenue and Lombardy Street. Its original planned location was Capitol Square, but it was moved after the Board of Aldermen donated $20,000 to put it “anywhere but Capitol Square,” according to information from the Monument Avenue Commission. The base was vandalized with pine tar in late August 2017.
Jefferson Davis
Conceived 10 days after the death of the president of the Confederacy on December 21, 1889, the monument was erected four days after Stuart. Its original location was slated to be Monroe Park, then Broad Street. It was erected on Monument Avenue at the former Civil War Star Fort site after remaining funding was raised by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The monument was spray painted with “Black Lives Matter” in 2015and is a gathering site for pro-monument supporters and counterprotesters.
Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson
The 37-foot-tall monument was erected right after World War I, with fundraising lead by Mary Anna Jackson, the general’s widow, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The 1919 unveiling was attended by high-profile faces such as then-Virginia governor Westmoreland Davis, the Jackson family and Robert E. Lee’s grandson. School children, Virginia Military Institute cadets and Virginia National Guardsmen also attended.
Matthew Fontaine Maury
The inspiration for the allegorical monument of the Confederate Naval officer came from a Richmonder who saw Maury memorialized in Hamburg, Germany, and suggested the city to do the same. Confederate sympathizer Katherine Stiles lobbied the public with pamphlets of her memories of the Civil War. The General Assembly contributed $10,000; the City of Richmond $10,000; Virginia school children $2,000 and the United Daughters of the Confederacy $5,000. It was completed and dedicated in 1929.
Arthur Ashe
The nationally acclaimed tennis star and Richmonder was memorialized in 1996. Spearheaded by the Arthur Ashe Monument Committee after his death in 1993, the sculpture by Paul DiPasquale was discussed with Ashe in 1992. Ashe is the only African-American honored on Monument Avenue, and this was not without controversy. Some welcomed the statue, and others questioned his presence among Confederate leadership, which is an ongoing discussion.
Information from the Monument Avenue Commission and the Virginia Historical Society
Our city eyes contextualization in the form of additional memorials, plaques
By Michelle Delgado
Although they are now shrouded, Charlottesville’s statues of Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson remain at the center of a larger debate over the role monuments and memorials play in Charlottesville.
The events of August 12 added renewed urgency to conversations about how Charlottesville’s landscape commemorates its history and represents its values—and how the tension between old ways of life and new ways of thinking can be channeled into productive dialogue. As the legal battle over whether the Confederate statues can stay marches on, plans to bring new memorials to Charlottesville offer a glimpse of what the city’s landscape may increasingly look like in the future.
The two Confederate statues were donated to the community by Paul Goodloe McIntire, whose presence continues to permeate Charlottesville through an annual award given out by the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, as well as at both the business school and amphitheater, which bear his name, on the University of Virginia’s Grounds.
Despite these positive contributions, McIntire’s decision to commission statues of two Confederate generals who did not visit Charlottesville during the Civil War came during a time of racial terrorism waged against black communities in the South. Although he built parks intended for the city’s black community, McIntire also intended for the parks to remain segregated. Like Thomas Jefferson, he was a product of his time, complicating the current debate over the statues’ meaning.
Part of the legal battle over whether the statues can be removed hinges on whether they are considered war memorials or works of art.
Charles “Buddy” Weber arrived in Charlottesville as an undergraduate at UVA in 1964, and returned for law school in 1993. Twenty years later, he ran for City Council as a Republican and has been involved in public life ever since.
As a veteran of the Navy, Weber worries that removing statues of war figures could become a precedent for removing other statues commemorating unpopular wars such as Vietnam. The idea that Confederate statues are protected war memorials is at the heart of the Monument Fund’s lawsuit, led by Weber, against the city, regarding its February vote to move the Robert E. Lee statue.
But with scars from August 12 still fresh, the legality of that decision is still being debated. In 1998, the General Assembly passed a law restricting the movement of war memorials. That statute, along with the original law against removing war memorials passed in 1904, is currently under scrutiny, with Attorney General Mark Herring recently advising that the 1998 statute cannot be applied retroactively.
But some are not convinced that the Confederate statues can be considered war memorials. Jalane Schmidt, a religious studies professor and historian at University of Virginia, says McIntire originally described his donation as “works of art.”
Like many opponents of removing the statues, Weber is also concerned that the rule of law is being eroded in favor of “interest groups.”
“If our elected officials exercise their political will in violation of that law, we are in danger of losing America,” he says.
Nonetheless, Weber says that his current position is dictated by his interpretation of the current laws. If the law changed, his opinion might, too.
“There are deeper grievances,” he said. “A statue is just a symbol, not where the real grievances lie. It’s a diversion now.”
History lessons
Charlottesville’s culture of placing importance on history creates both common ground and significant differences of opinion. For some, the statues themselves represent history that should be respected. For others, the statues represent a crucial opportunity to discuss where historic narratives have been incomplete.
As executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, Andrea Douglas is dedicated to sparking conversations about the history of Charlottesville. Unlike Weber, she believes that the statues should be placed in a museum, both to signify their value as tools for understanding history and to remove them from public spaces where they serve as symbols that no longer appropriately convey Charlottesville’s values.
“What I find difficult about the conversation here is that people believe that history is not ongoing,” Douglas says. “If we believed that we could not change history, then we would be all sitting around here drinking tea under British rule.”
Margaret O’Bryant is the librarian and head of reference resources at the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society. Although the violent events of August 12 are still rippling through the community, O’Bryant feels that the statues were not directly responsible.
“I don’t think that the decisions made without our community [and] beyond our community should control what our community [decides],” she says.
One solution she has considered takes inspiration from the now-defunct Piedmont Council for the Arts’ Art in Place campaign, with temporary installations honoring notable community members, including those who have been historically overlooked. Controversial statues would only be on display for a short time, while popular statues could potentially become permanent fixtures, she says.
In 2016, City Council convened a Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces, which met for six months and ultimately recommended the city move both Confederate statues of Lee and Jackson or keep them in place and provide context (both Douglas and O’Bryant served on the commission). Schmidt provided historical context and background to the group.
In her research from the digital archives maintained by the Virginia Foundation for Humanities, she learned that the narrative of Confederate defeat known by most Charlottesville residents—that unlike the Virginia Military Institute or the University of Mississippi, the University of Virginia was spared in a gentlemanly and peaceful agreement—was missing some crucial elements. As she delved deeper, she says a different image of that time began to emerge.
Talk of creating a memorial to the enslaved laborers at UVA began in 2011, when a student group proposed a tribute to those who were forced to work at UVA for the first four decades of the university’s history. After winning support from the administration, the memorial is slated for completion in time for UVA’s bicentennial in 2019. Rendering courtesy Howeller + Yoon
When the Union Army reclaimed Charlottesville and Albemarle County in 1865, more than 50 percent of the population was African-American, the vast majority still enslaved. The 1860 Census showed that 13,916 enslaved African-Americans, as well as 606 free African-Americans, lived in Albemarle County, and those numbers held true throughout the Civil War. By comparison, just more than 12,000 members of the county’s population were white.
As the Civil War ravaged the United States, racial tensions flared in Charlottesville. Between 1862 and 1864, nearly 1,000 enslaved African-Americans were forced into the Confederate effort, and in the days leading up to the Confederate surrender on March 3, 1865, Schmidt found primary sources in which university faculty paternalistically complained that their “misguided, wretched” slaves were escaping to freedom and taking livestock for the United States forces.
“When you rearticulate these conversations, you create multiple ways of entering a dialogue about America and how Charlottesville was founded,” says Douglas, who points out that the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery in 1863, two years before Charlottesville was retaken by the United States Army.
“Did it free enslaved people?” asks Douglas. “No, they freed themselves. If you give people agency, it’s not the same narrative.”
Adding to the narrative
Frank Dukes is a professor of urban and environmental planning at UVA, as well as an active member of University and Community Action for Racial Equity, made up of university students and faculty and community members who discuss ways in which UVA’s history with slavery and segregation can be addressed and repair harms associated with that legacy. In recent years, he has seen change sparked by President Teresa Sullivan’s four-year-old Commission on Slavery and the University, which has recently renewed research into UVA’s history of slavery and eugenics.
In September, Dukes (who also served on the Blue Ribbon Commission) presented City Council with the idea of a lynching memorial, and points out that the lynching occurred at a demographic tipping point in Albemarle history.
“After 1890, blacks were no longer the majority here,” says Dukes, in part due to the rash of lynchings and other forms of racial terror that erupted across the South.
On July 12, 1898, John Henry James, an African-American Charlottesville resident, was accused of rape and arrested. While he was being transported to the Charlottesville jail, a mob of approximately 150 people seized him from the train that was carrying him.
The scene quickly escalated into violence. Without a trial to determine his guilt or innocence, James was hanged to death from a tree near the Ivy Depot. As was customary at the time, his body was also mutilated by more than 40 gunshots and his clothing and body parts were distributed among the crowd as souvenirs.
In 2018, the Equal Justice Initiative plans to open a Memorial to Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. The memorial will feature individual floating concrete columns commemorating each victim of more than 4,000 lynchings in America between 1877 and 1950. A duplicate column will be prepared for placement in the county where the lynching occurred, and Albermarle is one of those 800 counties. Courtesy Equal Justice Initiative
In 2015, the Equal Justice Initiative released a landmark report on the national history of lynching. The study uncovered more than 4,000 lynchings that occurred between 1877 and 1950, adding several hundred events to the existing historical record.
In 2018, EJI plans to open a museum and memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, to create a space for the public to interact with their findings. The Memorial to Peace and Justice will be constructed on six acres, with individual floating concrete columns commemorating each lynching victim.
For each column within the memorial, a duplicate column will be prepared for placement in the county where the lynching occurred. Albemarle is among 800 counties that were the sites of violent lynchings during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras.
A petition on Change.org is nearing 50 percent support for a lynching memorial to be placed near the courthouse, which currently hosts the Stonewall Jackson statue, providing additional historical context as a counter narrative to Lost Cause mythology. An additional marker could be placed near Ivy Depot, where the lynching occurred.
In September, Dukes (who also served on the Blue Ribbon Commission) presented City Council with the idea of a lynching memorial, and points out that the lynching occurred at a demographic tipping point in Albemarle history. Photo by Dan Addison
There are other plans to add context to Charlottesville’s landscape. Charlottesville’s Historic Resources Committee has been preparing a new series of nine markers that will offer a more complete narrative about Court Square.
One of the proposed markers will provide an overview of its history, with eight additional markers adding context to specific locations including taverns, hotels and commercial buildings. The text that will be on display is currently being finalized, with the goal of installing the new markers as early in 2018 as possible.
Additionally, the committee is working to create a new marker for Court Square that will identify the location of the auction block where enslaved men and women were once sold. The marker currently on display was previously built into the side of a building that once housed a 19th-century auction house, until the building’s owners had it relocated to an inconspicuous spot in the sidewalk.
“People have objected that it’s not prominent enough,” says O’Bryant. “Even people looking for it don’t always find it.”
Although there is no official date for the auction block marker’s installation, the new marker will provide more information than the current plaque. The Historic Resources Committee also plans to install the new marker vertically and closer to eye level to increase its visibility.
Rewriting history
Beyond signs and statues, Charlottesville has other options for sparking conversations about the city’s history. This spring marked the first celebration of Liberation and Emancipation Day, commemorating March 3, 1865, when the city was surrendered to the United States Union Army.
Following the surrender, as the United States army razed a textile mill (in the neighborhood that would later be named Woolen Mills) and destroyed a nearby bridge, Albemarle County was awash with jubilation as formerly enslaved African-Americans celebrated their freedom.
“They said things like, ‘I prayed and prayed that you would arrive, and now you’re here. Glory to god!’” says Schmidt, recalling primary sources from the VFH archive.
Schmidt’s academic work has focused on the importance of festivals and celebrations in culture.
“Festivals are a way to remember history, celebrate it and mark our values,” she says. “What better way to mark our values than to celebrate with these 14,000 people?”
The celebration was especially striking given that in 2015, the city moved to end Lee-Jackson Day, an annual state holiday celebrating the two Confederate generals whose statues are at the heart of the debate in Charlottesville.
“Take that to its logical conclusion,” Schmidt says. “You’ve already said that they’re not worthy of being celebrated.”
As executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, Andrea Douglas is dedicated to sparking conversations about the history of Charlottesville. Photo by Eze Amos
The festivities were centered around a church service at the University Chapel, which was the site where the surrender took place, and continued with a parade to the Jefferson School.
Douglas remembers approximately 150 to 200 members of the community arriving at the Jefferson School. She was struck by the mood, which she says set an appropriate tone for community conversations about history and race.
“It was celebratory as much as it was an informative moment,” Douglas says.
Moving forward, the holiday, which arose from the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces, is expected to become part of the annual calendar.
Echoing Liberation and Emancipation Day’s ability to engage the community, Charlottesville will soon gain two new memorials that will be interactive and designed to drive conversations about race and history forward, rather than serving as venerations of specific historic figures.
In 2011, a student group called for a new memorial to commemorate enslaved laborers who were forced to work at UVA for the first four decades of its history. After winning support from the administration and a long search for an appropriate design, a plan for the Freedom Ring memorial has been chosen and it is slated for completion in time for UVA’s bicentennial in 2019.
The design features a circular granite structure designed to echo broken shackles. Stretching 80 feet in diameter, it will create a natural gathering place on the grassy stretch between the Corner and the Rotunda alongside University Avenue.
The structure will be inscribed with all known names of enslaved university workers, as well as marks to signify those who are unnamed in public record, with a rough-hewn exterior that will recall the physical and psychological scars left by slavery.
The landscaping has also been given careful thought and symbolism. A water feature will echo the Middle Passage (referring to the transportation of Africans on densely packed ships across the Atlantic), while also suggesting liberation. Finally, the landscaping will feature plants set to bloom during significant times, with blue snowdrops that will flower during Black History Month and potentially flowers that will bloom in time for Liberation and Emancipation Day on March 3.
In addition to the memorial for enslaved laborers, the Jefferson School is currently working to fund a new sculpture to commemorate Vinegar Hill, a historic African-American neighborhood that the city razed in 1965.
“The Jefferson School [can be viewed] as a monument itself, and the two [will] stand together as a true conversation about the community that was Vinegar Hill,” Douglas says.
The effort to commemorate Vinegar Hill began in 2011. A jury of historians, artists and writers, including Carmenita Higginbotham, Sarah Tanguy and Frank Walker, searched for a sculptor who could bring both a keen historic sensibility and an understanding of Charlottesville to the project.
Eventually, the jury selected Melvin Edwards, an award-winning artist known for both his installations at internationally known institutions including the Whitney and the Venice Biennale, as well as his public art projects, which have previously been featured at public housing and university sites.
For Douglas, Edwards’ iconic statue ensures that Charlottesville’s African-American community will be included in national conversations for years to come.
After a series of meetings with the area’s black community, Edwards designed a sculpture specifically for the site near the Jefferson School. The proposed sculpture will be made of welded steel featuring both geometric shapes and more recognizable symbols including chains. Its modern, abstract form is designed to resist easy explanation.
“You can actually stand inside of it,” Douglas says. “There’s a relationship to your body; you can be surrounded by the metaphor of this object.”
This represents a radical departure from the design of the Confederate statues, which can be only be approached from a point of view of veneration, she says.
These new memorials offer hope to members of the Charlottesville community who would like to see conversations about the city’s history expand.
“The arc is definitely moving strongly toward more honesty, more complete histories, and more understanding the need to overcome white supremacy,” says Dukes. “To be pessimistic is to be cynical, and to be cynical is to be complicit. I choose to look to ways many people are changing, so it’s not too hard to be optimistic.”
As the Vinegar Hill statue awaits complete funding, it raises broader questions about how statues and memorials are funded in Charlottesville. Part of the debate over whether the city has the legal right to remove the Confederate statues hinges on the fact that they were originally the result of a private donation, rather than public funding.
Although the Blue Ribbon Commission directed some funding to the Vinegar Hill sculpture, its position on private property and the fact that the jury process was not held publicly through City Council suppressed the amount of funding.
“If we got the money in 2012 or 2013 it may have been able to change the conversation,” Douglas says. “Had it begun and been more robust earlier, would the community be more prepared for the conversations we are engaged in now?”
Despite Edwards’ dialogue with Charlottesville’s African-American community, Douglas was clear that not everyone agrees about the final design. Nonetheless, these interactive memorials will provide new entry points into discussions of race, history and culture, offering Charlottesville new opportunities to debate and define its story.
“The only good thing of the events this summer is people are paying much more attention to our history,” says Dukes.
A judge will decide by February 27 if the tarps that shroud statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson should be removed.
Photo by Eze Amos
In the case of whether the city’s longstanding General Robert E. Lee statue should remain on its feet, a judge ruled October 4 that a lawsuit protecting it can go forward, and the black shrouds temporarily draped over Lee and his buddy, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, can also stay.
In Charlottesville Circuit Court, S. Braxton Puryear—one of several attorneys representing plaintiffs who want to overrule City Council’s March decision to remove the Lee statue—argued that the tarps could cause irreparable harm to the monuments.
“It’s not a shroud, it’s a trash bag,” he said, bringing to mind an image of the statues as giant bags of leaves set out on the curb.
The city’s Parks and Recreation department sheathed Lee and Jackson August 23, to mourn the loss of Heather Heyer and two Virginia State Police officers, who died during the August 12 white supremacist rally.
“Every minute those covers are in place, there’s harm being done,” Puryear said, and he cited evidence from experts on corrosion and aeronautics, who testified that the tarps could trap moisture that corrodes the statues, or catch like a sail in the wind and blow the whole monument over.
A stifled snarl could be heard from someone who appeared to believe Charlottesville winds are incapable of blowing away a massive bronze war memorial.
Lisa Robertson, the deputy city attorney representing Charlottesville in the case, motioned to strike all of the plantiffs’ evidence, and said she doesn’t think the shrouds have caused irreparable harm to the statues.
“Like it or not, since the covers have gone on, things seem to have calmed down,” she said. She called City Manager Maurice Jones to the stand, who said Parks and Rec employees intermittently check on the statues and haven’t reported any damages.
The shrouds have, however, been ripped from the statues so many times we’ve lost count. Now, Lee and Jackson are surrounded by orange fencing and no trespassing signs. Moore ruled they can stay that way for an undisclosed amount of time, so long as the coverings and barriers are temporary.
The judge also ruled that while a Virginia statute protecting war memorials does apply in this case—a major win for the plaintiffs—they have not convinced him that the Lee sculpture falls into that category. He gave them 21 days to amend their pleading and refile.
The code says it’s illegal for any locality “to disturb or interfere with any [war] monuments or memorials so erected, or to prevent its citizens from taking proper measures and exercising proper means for the protection, preservation and care of the same.”
Puryear’s pretty sure the Lee and Jackson statues are war memorials. “These are not a couple of old guys out riding on a horse,” he said. “These are Confederate generals.”
Plaintiffs also asked the judge to extend the injunction of the removal of the statue until May 2018, but he ruled that he would not expand it further than its November expiration date. He did allow the injunction to include the Jackson monument, because City Council has also voted to remove that one, too.
Robertson offered to tell the court the full costs of the Unite the Right rally on August 12, and said the “sole purpose” of the deadly white supremacist gathering was to protest the removal of General Lee.
Judge Moore called her comment a “red herring,” meant to distract from the questions at hand in the lawsuit.
“No one had to show up to confront those people,” Moore said, accompanied by groans from those in favor of tearing the statue down. “The statues didn’t cause anything. People did.”
Robertson replied, “Your honor, you don’t have to tell me that.”
In fewer than 48 hours after City Council unanimously passed a resolution to cover statues of generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, the black tarps went up over the monuments this afternoon to commemorate the city’s mourning over the deaths following a hate-filled rally August 12.
The draping went up without public notice from the city, with the bucket trucks in Emancipation Park, formerly known as Lee Park, signaling the swathing of the Confederate monuments.
Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy, who in the same park a year and a half ago called for the removal of the statues, initially was silent as Lee was swaddled in black plastic. “I’ve learned it’s best.” he says, when pressed for comment.
After the city turned the lights out on Stonewall Jackson in Justice Park, he told reporters that shrouding the statues isn’t a be all, end all, but a step in the right direction of eventually removing them and placing them in a museum with historical context. And other localities that have recently toppled their Confederate statues used similar language to Charlottesville’s in their order, but didn’t face a lawsuit.
Musician/activist Jamie Dyer says, “Symbolically, it’s a good start,” but he’d still like to see the statues gone.
“What’s going to change?” asked Roshi Hill, who filmed the Lee shrouding with her black cell phone. “It’s a statue. It’s been here forever and to take it down changes nothing.”
Instead, she suggests City Council stop granting permits for the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups to assemble in the town’s parks. She also supports renaming Emancipation Park after Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old activist who died during the August 12 Unite the Right rally.
“She lost her life over this statue,” Hill says.
Before alt-right and neo-Nazi groups dubbed Charlottesville their battleground, the African American woman says she knew she could smile at anyone she crossed and they’d smile back. Now, she says minorities have to stop and think before interacting with white people. And when one is walking behind her, she says she stops to let him pass in front of her.
“I don’t like having to feel uneasy,” Hill says. “Do they still love us?”
Others were dismayed by the draping. Brian Lambert was walking by when he saw the cherry pickers. “It’s disappointing,” he says. “It’s just disappointing.”
He nodded toward Bellamy. “To see that man gloating,” he says. “It’s sickening.”
There have been threats that the black plastic shroud will be removed, and Lambert thinks that’s likely to happen before Friday. “This will not stand,” he says. “This tarp will be taken down. It’s illegal.”
Says Lambert, “If people are offended, there’s plenty of free therapy available.”
A lawsuit filed against the city for ordering the removal of the statues will be heard again in court September 1, and Lambert thinks the violent rally of white supremacists and neo-Nazis will affect the judge. “I think they would have been successful with the lawsuit except for recent events,” he says.
Local attorney Lewis Martin says he believes, according to Virginia code, covering the statues could also be illegal.
“It shall be unlawful to disturb or interfere with any monuments or memorials,” the code says. Adds Martin, “Clearly, if you cover it up so people can’t see it, it’s interfering.”—Samantha Baars and Lisa Provence
Names not chosen for the former Jackson Park (left): Court Square, Park, The Commons, Memory Park, Little Sorrel Park. For the former Lee Park: Sally Hemings Park, Library Park, Central Park, Festival Park
Following the disruptions to City Council meetings that have occurred with regularity since the call to remove the statue of General Robert E. Lee was first made more than a year ago, councilors voted 5-0 to ditch the monikers honoring Confederate generals Lee and Stonewall Jackson and dub them, respectively, Emancipation and Justice parks.
The public comment period before the vote reflected the divisiveness between far left and right that’s played out in the city over the past few weeks since the visit of white nationalist Richard Spencer and his tiki-torch-carrying brigade.
Former NAACP chair Rick Turner called the statues symbols of “white supremacy and terrorism” that have “distorted our historical memory.”
City Council candidate Kenneth Jackson told councilors, “You guys are lucky enough to be the only City Council that this city has actually went to hell on,” and he accused the council of “generating an atmosphere of hate and intolerance.”
And when he said black residents “don’t care about that statue,” activist Veronica Fitzhugh, who was arrested for a May 20 confrontation with Spencer buddy Jason Kessler, stood behind Jackson with her middle fingers extended.
When John Heyden came up to object to what he calls the “kill your local Nazi” posters that have been plastered around town and to members of Showing up for Racial Justice getting within two inches of his face at Miller’s last week, SURJers in attendance started humming, causing Mayor Mike Signer to suspend the meeting.
“This is ridiculous,” scolded Signer. “You’re like adolescents.” He asked Fitzhugh, who had wandered to the podium, to return to her seat.
Kessler decried the lack of First Amendment rights granted to white people, right-wingers and Confederate supporters, such as those he said peacefully assembled in Lee Park. “This is hyperbolic, it’s out of control,” he said.
SURJ members began to sing, “Fuck white supremacy,” to the tune of “Shoo Fly, Don’t Bother Me.” Signer again halted the meeting and police officers hauled out a handful of singers.
Council candidate Nikuyah Walker also attended the meeting, and said the statues have brought up a lot of trauma. “If we don’t fix those, we’ll never have peace in the community”, she said.
Don Gathers, who had been chair of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces, noted the divisiveness and hostilities coming from “a chunk of rock.”
He said, “As a city, we’re better than this,” and he urged the different sides to listen to each other and “to accept different viewpoints.”
It was a couple of hours into the meeting when councilors turned to renaming the parks. Councilor Kristin Szakos pointed to a name not on the list from the citizen survey and from the recommendations of parks and rec and the Historic Resources Committee for “the park formerly known as Lee Park”: Emancipation Park.
And she agreed with Councilor Kathy Galvin’s proposal to rename Jackson Park “Justice Square,” although she took issue with “square” because the park is not square, there’s already a Court Square there and the sibilant sound of Justice Square.
Signer favored “a bolder, more conceptual” name for the parks and supported Emancipation because “it was really strong.”
Councilor Bob Fenwick pointed out that the court injunction prohibiting the removal of the statue likely would be upheld, and he questioned calling it Emancipation Park with the Lee statue still there.
It was Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy who praised the aspirational nature of Emancipation and Justice parks. He favored a bold approach, as well, and urged the councilors to “use our collective energy to move forward,” with Emancipation and Justice as two steps that “are going to push us in the right direction.”
Don Gathers (center), the commission’s chairman, is disappointed by the group’s recommendation to keep the Confederate statues in their original locations. Photo by Eze Amos
In a 6-3 vote, Blue Ribbon Commission members recommended that the city keep its General Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson statues in their current Lee Park and Court Square locations, though the committee’s chairman Don Gathers voted otherwise.
“We as a commission and as a city missed an opportunity here to show some real progress,” Gathers says.
Mayor Mike Signer created the commission on race, memorials and public spaces after Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy called for a rally to remove the Lee statue from Lee Park in March, because some members of the community have been offended by the celebration of Confederate heroes in a post-Civil War era.
“It is my sincere belief that for us to take no action, which in essence is what I personally feel that we’ve done, means that we have bowed down to a segment of society in our area that has no real relevance here anymore,” Gathers says about the November 1 vote to let the statues stay. His commission was elected to evaluate the presence of similar statutes in town and recommend to City Council what should be done with them.
He continues, “Unfortunately, the commission didn’t vote to capture the lightning in a bottle when we had the chance to do so.”
The controversy has been fueled by passion, he says, and members of the public at each meeting have spoken strongly about either keeping the memorials in place, further contextualizing them or moving them out of their public parks and into private areas.
And each idea, either presented by the public or the commission, has been heavily criticized. But Gathers says he hasn’t taken the scrutiny to heart—“I’ve refereed high school and college basketball for over 20 years,” he says, laughing. “I’m used to criticism.”
One of his ideas, which he says most of the commission members seemed interested in at one point, was moving the statues to McIntire Park because Paul Goodloe McIntire gave them to the city in the early 1900s.
“I couldn’t think of a better place for them to reside than in the park named after him,” Gathers says.
From 6-9pm on November 10 at Walker Upper Elementary School, the Blue Ribbon Commission will present to the public a portion of the final recommendation it will make to City Council on December 19. Time will be set aside for public comment.
Gathers says commissioners will further explain the recommendation to contextualize the memorials in their respective parks with a more expanded version of the history the statues represent.
“There are some who don’t know for certain that that particular [task] can be accomplished,” Gathers says. “That was a real concern throughout the discussions.”
And what will those contextualizations look like? It’s up in the air.
“I think the plan was to pretty much leave that up to Council,” he says.
