When T. Denise Johnson was growing up in Charlottesville’s Westhaven neighborhood, she was one of the few black kids in her honors classes at school. Decades later, that’s a disparity that hasn’t changed—the city’s public school system has one of the widest racial achievement gaps in the nation. In both Charlottesville and Albemarle County schools, […]
Pearl Outlaw was 9 years old when she found out she was going blind. One of the brightest students in her class, Outlaw shone during discussions but baffled her teachers with surprisingly low test scores. Looking for answers, her parents decided to have her eyes checked—perhaps she needed glasses. And it was true, her eyesight […]
Who’s suing whom In advance of the two-year statute of limitations, a flurry of lawsuits have been filed stemming from the events of August 12, 2017, adding to several that are ongoing. Having a hard time keeping up with who’s a defendant and who’s a plaintiff? Here’s a primer: Sines v. Kessler Ten victims of […]
Less than a year after Charlottesville City Schools were called out in the national press for longstanding racial disparities, the city is paying nearly $500,000 to help remake its gifted education program. City Council approved the appropriation of $468,000 on August 5 to pay the salaries of six new gifted education teachers for the 2019-20 […]
In John Smith’s 1612 map of Virginia, at the point where the Rivanna River meets the James, he marked Rassawek, the capital of the Monacan Indians. Jump forward 400 years and the site is on another map, this one targeting it as a pump station to quench Zion Crossroads’ thirst. Louisa and Fluvanna counties joined […]
John Clark is a regular on the Downtown Mall, sitting in a beach chair with a tube-feeding machine. He has stomach cancer and says he hates to ask for money, but needs help paying for the medical supplies he needs as a result of having to get all of his nutrition through a tube. Clark’s […]
Forward together It was a full house at First Baptist Church on West Main Street on August 12, as a diverse crowd gathered for an interfaith service. “It fills my heart to see the pews filled like this,” said deacon Don Gathers. “We’ve come together not because of what happened, but in spite of it.” […]
Fifty years ago, man first walked on the moon and a music festival in Woodstock, New York, signaled a generational shift. As iconic as those events are, that’s not what Nelson County remembers about 1969, when the remnants of Hurricane Camille latched onto the mountains the evening of August 19 and dumped around three feet […]
Former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe had a rocky start to his book tour at Washington, D.C., bookstore Politics and Prose on August 1, when survivors of the August 12, 2017, Fourth Street car attack showed up to denounce his account of that weekend. But he found plaudits and praise among fans at the National Press […]
Why Charlottesville was targeted by a white supremacist rally, ostensibly to protest the removal of a Confederate statue, has led to several theories. That was the starting point for a panel sponsored by the UVA library August 12, two years after the Unite the Right rally. “Beyond the statues: The invisibility of black Charlottesville” began […]
It’s been two years since the “Summer of Hate,” and Charlottesville, to the larger world, is still shorthand for white supremacist violence. As we approach the second anniversary of August 11 and 12, 2017, we reached out to a wide range of community leaders and residents to talk about what, if anything, has changed since […]
A common gripe in Charlottesville among residents and city officials alike is how long it takes local government to get things done. But keeping track of complaints isn’t easy: Deputy City Manager Mike Murphy says the city receives so many emails that it can take a while to review them, and sometimes officials miss them […]
Tour de force For the past couple of years, Jalane Schmidt, UVA professor and activist, and Andrea Douglas, Jefferson School African American Heritage Center director, have been conducting tours of our downtown monuments, providing new context for the Confederate statues that have long dominated Court Square and Market Street parks. Now, those who haven’t seen […]
Pittsburgh. Christchurch. Charleston. The list of communities devastated by mass murderers continues to grow, as the past weekend attests. And houses of worship have found that nothing is sacred to those determined to target people of certain religions or races. Congregation Beth Israel realized that the weekend of August 12, 2017, when neo-Nazis marched through […]
The City of Charlottesville recently came up with another theory on how to defend itself in the lawsuit over its allegedly unlawful tampering with statues of Confederate generals: that the city never formally accepted the oversized bronze equestrian statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. But Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore rejected that argument […]
When he was 50 years old, Larry Bowles was a disgruntled car salesman who didn’t see eye to eye with his boss. After getting into a heated argument with his superior, he quit his job in a fury and whipped out of the parking lot, nearly hitting a taxi cab as he pulled onto the […]
Virginia high schools will put a new spin on the word “athlete” when they launch an eSports competitive video gaming league this fall. The Virginia High School League announced earlier this summer that it’ll be rolling out a one-year pilot program for the 2019-20 school year that includes three different video games: League of Legends, […]
Summertime and the sidewalks aren’t easy Walkability is one of Charlottesville’s small-city charms, but sometimes it’s not so easy to get around, particularly if you’re disabled. On July 27 the city listed a dozen sidewalk projects that limit access. And then there are the blockages that aren’t official closings. Pedestrian activist Kevin Cox spotted a […]
Carolyn Paige Rice, a former Charlottesville chief of staff and clerk of council, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor embezzlement charge Wednesday for failing to return an iPhone X and Apple Watch that were paid for by the city during her tenure. As part of the plea agreement, Rice was charged with a misdemeanor instead of […]
First glimpse of enslaved laborers memorial On July 16—just as we were sending last week’s issue to press—community members got to peek behind the construction fencing of the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at UVA, adjacent to the Rotunda and across the street from Bodo’s on the Corner. Made of stone and 80 feet in diameter, […]
Charlottesville raised its meals tax to 6 percent July 1, which, on top of the 5.3 percent state sales tax, adds more than 11 percent to your dinner tab. But a computer glitch at one local restaurant meant some customers were paying more than 16 percent. Lorena Perez, a designer at C-VILLE Weekly, had lunch […]
RaShall Brackney took the job as Charlottesville police chief a year ago, despite the notoriety the department faced following the violence of August 2017, the damning indictment of the Heaphy report, and the abrupt departure of her predecessor, Al Thomas. Although she hasn’t flinched from the public drubbing that came with the job, could anyone […]
By Kay Slaughter Each day, people cross the Drewary J. Brown Bridge on West Main Street oblivious of this memorial to Charlottesville’s history. Nothing announces the bridge over the railroad tracks as a special space. It was rebuilt in 1998 and renamed by City Council for Brown, a civil rights leader who had recently died. […]