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 […]
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 […]
By Ben Hitchcock “I feel like I’ve been training for this one job for 30 years,” said Coy Barefoot when he took over as executive director of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society in April of 2018. In an interview with ilovecville.com, the local author and media personality expressed his desire to rebrand the organization and […]
Five current and former city councilors can breathe a little easier now that a judge has ruled they aren’t personally liable for their votes to remove two Confederate statues downtown. Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore penned a letter to the opposing legal teams in Monument Fund v. Charlottesville on July 6, explaining that he […]
It was the same old, same old in Charlottesville Circuit Court on March 13, when attorneys involved in a lawsuit to keep the town’s Confederate monuments in place hashed out all-too-familiar arguments. It’s been two years since the Monument Fund and a dozen other plaintiffs filed suit in response to City Council’s vote to remove […]
By Jonathan Haynes City Councilor Wes Bellamy sat down for a revelatory interview at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center January 10 to promote his new book, Monumental: It Was Never About a Statue. The title alludes to the former vice-mayor’s push to remove Confederate monuments from Charlottesville parks, and the racist backlash it […]
Goodbye, Robert E. Lee The statue remains in the former Lee Park, but the park’s name has changed—twice—in the past year. That trend is happening across the state, most recently last week in Staunton and Lexington. By name Lee Park is now Market Street Park. Robert E. Lee High School in Staunton will be renamed, […]
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 […]
Immediately following a March 26 trial in which Charlottesville’s Brian Lambert was found guilty of multiple charges of trespassing in Emancipation and Justice parks and attempting to remove the tarps from the shrouded statues, Lambert could be seen applying a trail of Confederate flag stickers on surfaces in the direction of the General Robert E. […]
“Wes is a jackass” became a familiar slogan to those living in Charlottesville last summer, as it was scrawled on a giant cardboard sign carried by local retiree Mason Pickett, and its derivative, “Bellamy is a jackass,” was often chalked on the Downtown Mall’s Freedom of Speech Wall as well as several sidewalks. It’s […]
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 […]