Thread by @socialistdogmom

i can’t recommend this tour highly enough. drs schmidt and douglas tell the story of charlottesville’s confederate monuments properly.

https://twitter.com/jalane_schmidt/status/1154075551029706752

i enjoyed this tour so much last time that i’m up at this unusually early hour to hear it again and i’m gonna try to bring you the highlights.

dr andrea douglas, the executive director of the jefferson school african american heritage center, has a phd in art history & is uniquely positioned to talk about how these objects operate in our public space.

dr jalane schmidt is a professor of religious studies, who also teaches a course in critical whiteness studies, & a local activist.
the statues should be removed, but if we’re going to contexualize them, there are no better people to do it.

at the time of the civil war, 52% (14,000) of the local population was enslaved people. an additional 2% were free black people. the majority of the charlottesville/albemarle population at the time was african american.

the tour of these downtown monuments and markers starts with the slave auction block, a small plaque embedded in the sidewalk marking the spot where human beings were once bought and sold.
(picture on the right is its current state - someone has made a small correction)

dr douglas walks over the plaque, making the point that this object needs to be elevated off the ground. most people don’t even know it’s here.

“this is public space, it’s an expression of public value,” says dr schmidt, gesturing at the insignificant little plaque.

of the recent graffiti to the lee statue, she remarks that it was completely cleaned within hours. that, too, is an indication of our public values. meanwhile, we’ve been talking for years about improving this slave auction block.

there used to be a historical plaque about charlottesville’s surrender on march 3, 1865, marking the beginning of the liberation of local enslaved people. the sign was stolen years ago by someone who took issue with it & not replaced.

dr douglas says all of these public monuments and markers are preserved with our tax dollars. dr schmidt refers to a smithsonian article about the taxpayer cost of keeping up confederate monuments.... it’s significant.
smithsonianmag.com/history/costs-…

there is a plaque near earlysville commemorating general jubal early for fighting in the most battles. dr schmidt notes that the plaque does NOT note that he lost a shocking number of those battles and was fired by general lee. “history is selective,” she says.

the confederate monuments here were paid for by paul goodloe mcintire. dr schmidt tells a story i hadn’t heard before about a 5 year old mcintire standing on his family’s porch watching the union army stream into town after the surrender, shaking his fist at them.

“i maintain that these statues are paul goodloe mcintire’s longest fist shake,” dr schmidt says.

moving across the street now to the newly placed marker remembering john henry james, a black man who was lynched in july of 1898.
thread on that plaque’s dedication here:

https://twitter.com/socialistdogmom/status/1149727684622204929?s=21

dr douglas says this marker is only the first step. the equal justice initiative has created 800 coffin sized markers for each of the lynching victims identified. the intention is for the community they belong to to take them & place them in their public space.

dr schmidt acknowledges that mob violence affected more than just black people, but the focus of the EJI project is on racial terror lynchings. the public spectacle & community harm of those actions were uniquely horrifying.

dr schmidt reminds the crowd that this was a majority black community until 1890 - that census shows a shift. white people were moving in and “black people were voting with their feet,” moving away in the great migration.

what drove black people to move away “was not just the pull of better jobs and wages,” but “the push of racial terror.”

there are 376 confederate monuments in the commonwealth of virginia. 75 of them stand in front of courthouses. we have more of these monuments than any other state.

the jefferson school opened in october of 1865, just months after the local enslaved population was liberated. dr douglas says 6 year olds and 60 year olds were attending school. “this was a community that organized quickly.”

dr schmidt says after john henry james’ lynching, it was reported that “the community of charlottesville heartily approves” the murder. we know that’s not true - the community has half back at the time. “it says a lot about who was considered people.”

what a hideous welcome to all visitors to the albemarle county courthouse.

in 1902, a majority white legislature voted in a new virginia state constitution, which was devastating to the black population. over 90% of black voters at the time were effectively disenfranchised. this was happening across the south at that time.

the first local confederate statue was actually erected in the UVA confederate cemetery in 1893, but we don’t think about that one quite as much. the graveyard of enslaved people is directly adjacent and has only recently been restored & marked.

“women were perceived as somehow apolitical,” dr schmidt says. former confederate soldiers were prohibited from wearing their uniforms, holding office, etc, but their wives and daughters formed the ladies memorial association to commemorate the confederate dead.

in the 1890s, early 1900s these objects of mourning start to migrate into public spaces, particularly onto courthouse lawns.
these LMAs start to morph into what is now the united daughters of the confederacy, a still extant organization responsible for many confederate statues

“you are supposed to venerate,” dr douglas says of the placement and use of space of these objects. the confederate soldier is placed high on a pedestal, causing the viewer to stop in their tracks at look up at him.

the flag on the johnny reb statue is the flag of lee’s regimen of northern virginia. the way it’s placed on the statue makes the X on the flag look cruciform.

dr douglas directs our attention down fifth street approaching the statue. it’s a fairly steep grade - as you walk up the street, you’re making a pilgrimage to this object. “this is an aesthetic language that encourages veneration,” says dr schmidt.

the day this statue was put up in 1909, schools and businesses closed. hundreds of schoolchildren were given confederate flags to wave while they sang dixie.

the committee to erect it was formed in 1899, the year after john henry james’ lynching. the committee’s chair was the prosecutor who chose not to prosecute any member of the lynch mob.

who does justice belong to? who can expect justice? when he prosecutor who allows racial terror lynchings chairs a committee to place a confederate monument in front of a courthouse.

these statues marked downtown spaces as white spaces. these statues were placed in the midst of what is called the city beautiful movement. paul goodloe mcintire was working in chicago during the world’s fair, saw the beginning of that movement, and wanted to bring it home.

“what is beautiful to the people who are doing this at the time is removing black folks,” dr schmidt says about these city beautification efforts.

dr schmidt explicitly says she wants to tie the placement of these statues to what happened here during the summer of hate. “you remember those ugly chants - ‘you will not replace us.’” white folks have been fearing “replacement” here since reconstruction.

we’ve moved a total of maybe 100 yards but we’re on our fourth public monument - the statue of general stonewall jackson, still in the shadow of the albemarle county courthouse.

dr douglas says immediately after emancipation, local african american families were pooling their resources, purchasing property, founding churches and schools and hospitals and neighborhoods.

the placement of these objects was a response based in white fear about the success of these new free black communities. a fear of being replaced.

“there was a very successful, economically and politically active black community here,” says dr schmidt. she pulls out a copy of the 1900 census, showing the thriving community of what was then mckee road, right here.

“there is a direct correlation between the placement of these statues and the taking of black people’s property,” dr schmidt says. the black families on that 1900 census were gone from this block when the jackson statue went up in 1921.

the daily progress wrote of the destruction of m’kee row, that black community, “the negro rookery has been removed by mcintire’s magic,” referring to paul goodloe mcintire’s efforts to “beautify” the city.

dr douglas: “as they transfer black property into white property, they then make that into white property in perpetuity,” with the introduction of racial convenants. these made it illegal to sell properties to black (and sometimes jewish) people. this wasn’t outlawed until 1968.

dr schmidt objects to the idea of recontextualizing these statues with plaques. they represent an erasure of entire black communities. “we’d have to build a statue to black history just as tall and instead what we have are these dinky little plaques.”

dr schmidt says the klan rally here in 2017 was “a kind of homecoming.” that rally was held right here on the spot where we’re standing outside the albemarle county courthouse. a century ago, the klan held regular meetings in that courthouse.

dr schmidt holds up a copy of a book published by the united daughters of the confederacy that lauds the ku klux klan. “this was part of a much broader program of instituting jim crow and bringing about racial terror.”

remember, the united daughters of the confederacy paid for the johnny reb statue in front of the courthouse.

the installation of the jackson statue was celebrated with a klan rally. “think about the intimidation factor of what’s going on here.”
in 1921, the conversation isn’t about reconstruction anymore. we’re fully into the romantic narrative of the lost cause.

“the only time he [jackson] ever came through here was on a funeral car on his way to getting buried,” dr schmidt says

“the only history books that meet there approval are ones that are seen as “just to the south,”” public school curriculum in this era was written and reviewed by people desperate to rehabilitate the image of the confederacy.

“the contextualization is all around the object,” dr douglas says, pointing at the symbols on the pedestal. it’s hard to see through the bushes, but underneath these two figures are what they represent - faith and valor

if you’ve not stood in this space, this statue is quite large

historically speaking, this statue was placed in a time when soldiers were coming home from world war I, a time when women were getting the right to vote. dr douglas says it makes sense that women were driving the efforts to place these statues.

the deed to this park, a gift from paul goodloe mcintire, required that it be a whites only park.

the plaque outside the park says mcintire donated the statue “for the pleasure of all those who pass by,” which would legally have only been white people.

moving now from court square park to market street park (formerly justice park and emancipation park, respectively and jackson park and lee park respectively prior to that). market street park is home to this piece of scrap metal.

“it’s really picking up steam, the klan here & in the south” at the time the lee statue was erected in 1924. according to the daily progress, “hundreds of charlottesville’s leading professional men” attended a KKK cross burning at monticello.

dr schmidt recounts a story from john west, the son of enslaved people and a barber here in the 1920s, recalled watching a klan procession through downtown & being able to, as their barber, recognize all the masked men by their shoes.

in 1921, a petition was written to allow the black community to open a high school. until 1926 when it opened, education for black children here ended at 8th grade or else children had to be sent away to continue school.

dr douglas says the lee statue is not as well executed as the jackson statue. (truly - aside from the obvious issue of it being an object of racial terror, it’s just ugly and clunky)

market street park is an artificially created landscape. it was intentionally built up to be above the surrounding street, with the lee statue in the center as a focal point.

“these statues are doing work, they’re not these innocent objects,” dr schmidt says. this statue says “that’s far enough” to black people.

“these are clear demarcations of these social spaces,” says dr douglas.

by 1924, lee is part of “this pantheon” of southern figures in the lost cause narrative. dr schmidt isn’t using that world accidentally - she’s a professor of religious studies. there really is a kind of worship of the lost cause.

1924 also saw the passage of racial integrity laws codifying the one drop rule into law.

“native americans were legislated out of existence” in virginia - records were destroyed and altered making them simply “colored” (this is a primary cause of the difficulty of native peoples in virginia getting federal tribal recognition)

so these parks are defining spaces as white at the same time the law is changing defining exactly which people are white, narrowing that definition.

virginia elites have always looked down their noses at the deep south, ignoring the fact that the slave trade out of virginia was the primary source or enslaved labor in those parts of the country.

dr schmidt says the spate of lynchings in virginia in the teens and 20s was a bit of a black eye to the state’s reputation, prompting anti lynching laws to signal to business interests in the north that we’re not like the backwards deep south.

part of what we’re dealing with here that was brought to public consciousness in 2017 is that there is a history here, in these monuments and in the spaces they occupy, says dr schmidt. people ask “why charlottesville?” but it’s been happening here for over 100 years.

“they stand here mute, but they’re saying a lot,” says dr schmidt, concluding the tour of downtown charlottesville’s monuments.

reverend don gathers reminds the assembled crowd that as we stand here in the shadow of this confederate statue, originally dedicated by a klan rally, we’re standing on the same spot that richard spencer held a torchlit rally in may 2017.

it’s the same symbols. the same hatred. again and again in the same space.