i’ve been on @Jalane_Schmidt’s tour of downtown charlottesville’s confederate monuments countless times now. i have never failed to come away not only with new historical facts, but a deeper understanding of the harm they represent & continue to cause.
as confederate monuments are toppled & towed away nationwide, what better time to learn more about the statues that sparked a national controversy three years ago.
we’re starting today at the old horse fountain
this prominent, seven foot tall fountain is quite a marker & occupies significantly more space in this landscape than the (still missing after being stolen a few months ago) plaque marking the location of the slave auction block.
the slave auction block was removed a few months ago by someone who found it insufficient and disrespectful to the memories of enslaved people. the historic resources committee is working to determine what a fitting memorial for that space looks like.
maria perkins, an enslaved woman, wrote a letter in 1852, telling her husband of her distress at seeing her son sold away from her at the courthouse here.
moving now to the newest marker in this space, the plaque remembering the lynching of john henry james in 1898. while the lynching occurred out in the county, this is the courthouse that refused to seek justice for his murder.
both the sheriff and the police chief were present at his lynching. this courthouse, still guarded by a statue of a confederate soldier, has not been a place of justice for all people.
there is a common refrain in the protests now - “say his name.” there is an effort now to better remember men like john henry james. these lives lost were people with lives and loved ones. their lives mattered.
this lynching took place 2 years after plessy v ferguson, the supreme court decision that established the doctrine of separate but equal, jalane reminds us.
a year after this lynching, the local effort to put up the confederate statue in front of the albemarle county courthouse began. the chair of that committee was the prosecutor who declined to charge any member of the lynch mob.
not thirty feet away from where professor schmidt addresses the crowd about the context in which these monuments were erected sits jock yellott, the director of the monument fund, the group who sued the city to force us to keep these monuments to racism.
he’s just sitting quietly on a bench in front of the courthouse, as he often does. perhaps he finds the resonance of centuries of racial terror rejuvenating.
the effort to erect johnny reb began in the wake of a lynching and continued as the state rewrote its constitution to be much more aggressively racist
this statue was finally erected in 1909. jalane says the dedication speeches for all of these monuments are very revealing about the intentions behind them.
when this statue was unveiled, a confederate veteran and former mayor of richmond said emancipation was overrated, that this statue was representative of a restoration of virginia’s values.
this statue clearly marked this as a white space, one that intended to restore what was believed to be “the proper order” that has been upset by emancipation.
several of the companies honored by this statue were explicitly formed as slave patrols. “the nucleus of what became the 19th virginia infantry was formed as slave patrols.”
if (and only if, please - they’re weird about input from non residents and it will be counterproductive, i promise) you live in albemarle county, email the board of supervisors and tell them how you feel about this statue: bos@albemarle.org
(johnny reb in front of the county courthouse is albemarle county property, despite the entire park being contained within the city of charlottesville. the county is soliciting community feedback on the future of the statue now that the law has changed)
“we have entire generations of white southerners who were raised on the lost cause narrative of the war,” jalane says. it isn’t just the statues - confederate heritage orgs exerted control over textbooks.
the sun is setting but you can still make out the ghost of the last graffiti visited upon stonewall jackson - “THIS IS STILL RACIST” 
“what had been a thriving black and mixed race neighborhood became, by deed, a whites only park” with the placement of this statue
“this is our best statue, if you will, in terms of artistic quality,” jalane says of the jackson statue. it is not a cheap reproduction. racist as it is, it is technically well made.
jalane says this is part of what the statue does, too, though. it uses this classic greek style for the figures on the front of the pedestal to signal this is what is beautiful, this is what is dignified - this glorification of a man who fought for slavery.
those classical greek figures have sustained a little damage in the last year
the installation of this statue was sandwiched between some large llama events, “and i don’t think that’s a coincidence,” jalane says. it was installed in october 1921, just a few months after a local klan chapter was founded with a cross burning at monticello.
history doesn’t repeat but it rhymes - the klan on 1921 announcing their existence with fire at thomas jefferson’s tomb and neonazis with torches surrounding a statue of jefferson at uva in 2017.
the klan as it existed here in the 1920s held their chapter meetings in the courthouse right behind us, just feet away from the jackson statue. jalane says she can find no record of any black civic organization meeting in the courthouse.
the history of this space is undeniable.
the land taken from the black families on mckee row was then subjected to deed restrictions - for generations, that land could not legally be sold to black or jewish people.
“segregation had to be built brick by brick. it was not a forgone conclusion,” jalane says. before those neighborhoods were destroyed and legally segregated, black and white people lived on the same streets.
with the sun rapidly setting, the crowd moves to our final stop, the lee statue. on the short walk there, we encounter one of the self appointed “monument guards,” neoconfederates who sit vigil outside the parks at night protecting the statues from threats that never materialize.
one of the people who gave a speech at the dedication of the robert e lee statue, a prominent community member named w mcdonald lee (no relation to the general) was also a klansman. jalane says this to emphasize that upstanding members of the community were members of the klan.
this story really drives it home every time. west was a black man who worked for tips. these men came into his shop & he had to smile & cut their hair, knowing they’d bombed a black church
the park where the lee statue stands was NOT by deed whites only (the park with the jackson statue was), but jalane says whether de facto or de jure, they were both whites only spaces. black residents have reported being chased out of this park as recently as the 80s.
it wasn’t until 2016 that the city of charlottesville officially took a look at the legacy of these statues, at our values, how we’re using public space, what we’re commemorating.
i didn’t capture every moment of tonight’s tour, which was spectacular as always. someone was recording audio - i’ll post a link to that when i figure out who it was and where they’re posting it!
