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 […]
It was an unprecedented year for the city, but also one in which we saw a major shift among people in positions of power. Some heads rolled, some quietly retired, and the list of local leaders is almost unrecognizable from this time last summer. Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas abruptly resigned in December, making way […]
Rebranding hate If the #cvillestandsforlove looks familiar, like the “Virginia Is For Lovers” logo, for instance, that’s because Susan Payne, wearing her chair-of-the-Virginia-Tourism-Corporation-board hat, created the hashtag using the state’s 50-year-old iconic logo. “It’s the same family,” says Payne. “And it’s all free. No city money is being used.” According to Payne, Governor Terry McAuliffe […]
After City Council’s chaotic August 21 meeting where outraged attendees commandeered the meeting to vent about the deadly Unite the Right hate fest, many have suggested that trying to immediately conduct business as usual probably wasn’t the best idea, and that a wounded citizenry needed a [...]
Barely 30 minutes into its August 21 meeting, City Council was in chaos. Three demonstrators were reportedly arrested, city officials left the chamber and the meeting’s video and audio feeds were cut off as protesters stood on the dais holding a banner that read, “Blood on your hands.” The [...]
Last month’s City Council vote on a motion to remove the statue of General Robert E. Lee deadlocked 2-2 and left the chamber in disarray for 30 minutes. The issue was back on the agenda February 6 after Councilor Bob Fenwick announced he was changing his abstention to a vote to remove the [...]
Charlottesville’s confrontation with its slave-owning past has resulted in difficult discussions since Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy and Councilor Kristin Szakos called for the removal last March of statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and the renaming of the parks where [...]
After a year of debate, and a plea last week from the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to delay a decision, the Charlottesville City Council voted 3-2 December 19 to allow mountain biking and trail running at Ragged Mountain Natural Area. “We are looking forward to working collaboratively [...]
Calling the potential deer culling in Charlottesville a “Trumpian solution to a practically nonexistent problem,” one city resident says policymakers should consider non-lethal alternatives before condoning a city-sponsored killing. “We all live in Charlottesville because we appreciate [...]
In the midst of a national controversy surrounding racial inequality and civil rights, members of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Bar Association unveiled a 150-pound bronze marker July 12 to commemorate the first African-American student ever admitted to the University of Virginia. When Danville [...]
Gun control debate dominated the June 20 Charlottesville City Council meeting as members of opposing sides of the issue cited the Second Amendment—“the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”—and the Declaration of Independence’s inalienable rights to “life, liberty [...]
This article is part of a three-part story on the battle over the General Robert E. Lee statue in Lee Park. Read more on the history on Paul Goodloe McIntire and his statue donation. Read more on the future of the statue: Can it be moved? When Tony Horwitz wrote his 1998 classic, Confederates [...]