Elijah. Julia. Sam. I took in every name, and let each resonate within me, as I quietly examined the granite slabs. I saw the name of my brother, then I saw it several more times. If he had been born just over 150 years ago, he could have been enslaved at the University of Virginia, […]
Since press time, Governor Ralph Northam has proposed legislation to make Juneteenth a paid state holiday. If it passes, all state employees would get the day off. With additional reporting by Erin O’Hare Every July 4, people across the country don their red, white, and blue; pull out their grills; and watch fireworks with family […]
The developers of Six Hundred West Main, a luxury apartment building that opened in September, promised the city a “gift” in the form of a public mural from internationally acclaimed artist Faith XLVII. But some residents may want to give it back. The mural, which was unveiled during the week of September 23, features a […]
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 [...]
An all-black town. An all-black town? It was a stray mention in a book on the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, but Jamelle Bouie was intrigued. An all-black town. “It got stuck in my craw,” says Bouie. He found a few local news articles, a mini documentary film, and a couple books on the subject—the [...]
“C’ville is awash with monuments. Why no statues to women besides a cowering Sacajawea (who happened to be pregnant but still led the white guys through the wilderness)?” – Donna Lucey “We do have three statues of women, you know,” says former mayor Virginia Daugherty, her [...]
About 50 people gathered in the woods beside the train tracks running west of Charlottesville early July 7. The morning was cool and birds could be heard chirping in the quiet—a scene nothing like the one 120 years ago, when a mob yanked John Henry James off a train there at Wood’s Crossing and [...]
It’s a humid but not hot Saturday evening in early May. Jazz floats through the auditorium of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, filling in the spaces between laughter, delighted gasps and conversational murmurs in the next room. Dressed in brown slip-on shoes, relaxed fit [...]
As big a role as history plays in Charlottesville’s identity, some events, like an 1898 lynching, were pretty much buried or forgotten until Jane Smith was doing historical research and going through old issues of the Daily Progress in 2013. She happened upon this July 12, 1898, headline: “He [...]
The lynching of John Henry James in Albemarle in 1898 for allegedly assaulting a white woman was both horrific—and all too common in the era of Jim Crow. More than 4,400 black men and women were the victims of domestic racial terrorism between 1877 and 1950, according to the Equal Justice [...]
Lights go up on the wood-paneled stage in the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center auditorium to reveal the inside of a jitney cab station in Pittsburgh. It’s early fall 1977 and the Hill District, a group of neighborhoods that have long been the cultural center of black life in [...]
It’s the time of year C-VILLE editorial staffers dread most: landing on the final names for our Power Issue, followed by the inevitable complaints that the list contains a bunch of white men. Sure, there are powerful women and people of color in Charlottesville. But when it comes down to it, [...]
When Charlottesville decided to keep the historic Jefferson School and its prime real estate as a community center rather than selling it for condos, a complicated financial structure was required to make the $18 million rehab of the 1926 high school possible. Four years after the renovated [...]
A forthcoming addition to the Downtown Mall will commemorate Vinegar Hill, the historically African-American neighborhood that saw displacement of 158 families when city residents voted to develop the land in the 1960s. Officially called Vinegar Hill Park, this chunk of real estate between the [...]
Nine members appointed to serve on Mayor Mike Signer’s Blue Ribbon Commission—created to make a recommendation to City Council on how to treat race, memorials and public spaces after a major controversy regarding the General Robert E. Lee statue in Lee Park—now have about half a year and [...]