Posted on Aug 12, 2022
The Charlottesville rally 5 years later: 'It's what you're still trying to forget'
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https://www.npr.org/2022/08/12/ [login to see] /the-charlottesville-rally-5-years-later-its-what-youre-still-trying-to-forget
In a downtown park, grass grows over the spot where there once stood a massive bronze statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, astride his horse Traveller.
The space feels different now, says Don Gathers, co-founder of the local Black Lives Matter group.
"It's much more serene," he says.
Gathers is in the park to reflect on five years since a violent and deadly white nationalist rally ravaged his hometown.
"It's not what you can remember. It's what you're still trying to forget," says Gathers. "All the hatefulness and the evilness that transpired here."
Organizers targeted Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally after the city voted to take down the Lee statue, part of the town's reckoning with a fraught racial history.
On the night of Aug. 11, 2017, Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and other white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia campus bearing torches and terrorizing students with chants of "Blood and soil" and "Jews will not replace us."
In a downtown park, grass grows over the spot where there once stood a massive bronze statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, astride his horse Traveller.
The space feels different now, says Don Gathers, co-founder of the local Black Lives Matter group.
"It's much more serene," he says.
Gathers is in the park to reflect on five years since a violent and deadly white nationalist rally ravaged his hometown.
"It's not what you can remember. It's what you're still trying to forget," says Gathers. "All the hatefulness and the evilness that transpired here."
Organizers targeted Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally after the city voted to take down the Lee statue, part of the town's reckoning with a fraught racial history.
On the night of Aug. 11, 2017, Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and other white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia campus bearing torches and terrorizing students with chants of "Blood and soil" and "Jews will not replace us."
The Charlottesville rally 5 years later: 'It's what you're still trying to forget'
Posted from npr.org
Charlottesville
Racism
Nationalism
Black Lives Matter
Violence
Posted >1 y ago
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Transforming a Confederate statue into a more-inclusive display
Another project in Charlottesville is trying to upend the narrative around the statue of Confederate Gen. Lee. It’s called Swords Into Plowshares, and is being overseen by the Jefferson School African-American Heritage Center.
“Taking something that it was harmful and then transforming it into something that is useful and of the cultural desire of the place,” explains Jefferson School Director Andrea Douglas.
The city donated the statue to the Heritage Center after approving its plan to melt down the bronze and use it for a new work of public art. Two groups have filed a lawsuit trying to stop the plan. But Douglas says they’re moving forward with the process of gathering public input, and in a more inclusive way.
“Before one portion of this community made decisions about what would be in our common spaces and negated the voice that, had it not been for Jim Crow, could have had a voice,” Douglas says. “We are trying to return that voice.”
Douglas says the idea is to create an inviting and equitable space where all of Charlottesville can interact with one another and the reworked art.
For Don Gathers, it’s still hard to come to the park where Robert E. Lee stood sentry since 1924.
“It’s kind of surreal because the ghost of his presence still permeates heavily in this space,” says Gathers.
Much like the country, he says, it feels like there are warring spirits vying for dominance."
..."Transforming a Confederate statue into a more-inclusive display
Another project in Charlottesville is trying to upend the narrative around the statue of Confederate Gen. Lee. It’s called Swords Into Plowshares, and is being overseen by the Jefferson School African-American Heritage Center.
“Taking something that it was harmful and then transforming it into something that is useful and of the cultural desire of the place,” explains Jefferson School Director Andrea Douglas.
The city donated the statue to the Heritage Center after approving its plan to melt down the bronze and use it for a new work of public art. Two groups have filed a lawsuit trying to stop the plan. But Douglas says they’re moving forward with the process of gathering public input, and in a more inclusive way.
“Before one portion of this community made decisions about what would be in our common spaces and negated the voice that, had it not been for Jim Crow, could have had a voice,” Douglas says. “We are trying to return that voice.”
Douglas says the idea is to create an inviting and equitable space where all of Charlottesville can interact with one another and the reworked art.
For Don Gathers, it’s still hard to come to the park where Robert E. Lee stood sentry since 1924.
“It’s kind of surreal because the ghost of his presence still permeates heavily in this space,” says Gathers.
Much like the country, he says, it feels like there are warring spirits vying for dominance."
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I had surgery down at University Charlottesville Medical Center seven years ago PO1 William "Chip" Nagel. Before surgery I walked the grounds of the University and thought about how beautiful was down there. Hard to believe two years later what happened in the very same places.
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