A Timeline of Events Related to Racism and White Supremacy in Charlottesville, Virginia

October 13, 2020

This timeline is far from complete. Most notably, it only record “events” – an acute occurrence or change – and not on-going situations and processes that have far more effect on people.

Other timelines:

Charlottesville City School History: A Timeline
Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity by Louis P. Nelson and Claudrena N. Harold

Timeline

For between 10,000 to 18,000 years, Indigenous groups inhabit Virginia.
Around 1000 What is now called Ancestral Monacan Society forms in central Virginia.
1492-1600s Numerous Indigenous groups speaking Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan languages live in settlements in Virginia. The Monacan people inhabit the area around Charlottesville.
1607 The first permanent English settlement is established at Jamestown, in an area occupied by the Powhatan autocracy. Siouan Indians of the Monacan and Mannahoac tribes inhabit central and western Virginia, including the area around what will become Charlottesville.
1600-1700s Monacan people respond to white settler-colonialist encroachment through local dispersal and out-migration.
1781 Thomas Jefferson publishes his only book, Notes on the State of Virginia. It is an intellectual pillar of racist thought at the time.
1807 January 19 Gen. Robert E. Lee born at Stratford Hall, Virginia.
1861 April Gen. Robert E. Lee resigns from United States Army and is elected leader of the Virginia state forces, which is later subsumed into the Confederate States Army
1863 January 1 Emancipation Proclamation issued, freeing enslaved individuals in the parts of the Confederate States not under Union control.
1865 March 3 The Union Army under Major General Philip Sheridan arrives in Charlottesville, forcibly ensuring the freedom of more than 14,000 enslaved people.
1865 April 9 Gen. Robert E. Lee, General in Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States, surrenders to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Commanding General of the United States Army, ending the Civil War.
1865 Ku Klux Klan white supremacist terrorist group forms in Pulaski County, Tennessee.
1870 October 12 Gen. Robert E. Lee dies in Lexington, Va.
1893 The Ladies Confederate Memorial Association erects a Confederate statue University Cemetery and Columbarium on the grounds of UVA.
1898 John Henry James is lynched west of Charlottesville while under police protection after being accused of raping a white woman.
1907 Dr. Harvey E. Jordan joins the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He forms UVa into an important center of eugenics research and though.
1909 Confederate Soldier Memorial consisting of the statue At the Ready and two cannons installed at Albemarle County Courthouse via a committee chaired by Mary Southall Venable, wife of Col. Charles S. Venable (1827-1900), who served as Gen. Robert E. Lee’s aide-de-camp from 1862 to 1865, then as a Professor of Mathematics at UVa until 1895.
1915 D. W. Griffith releases the cinematically-revolutionary and overtly-racist film The Birth of a Nation. It presentations the Ku Klux Klan as a heroic force, resulting in a resurgence of the white supremacist group (the “Second Klan”).
1918 Lee Park (Emancipation Park, Market Street Park) donated by Paul G. McIntire, on the site of the Southall-Venable House, formerly owned by Col. Charles S. Venable. It is a white-only park.
1919 Jackson Park (Justice Park, Court Square Park) donated by Paul G. McIntire. It is a white-only park.
1919 Statue Their First View of the Pacific, also known as Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, is erected, funded by Paul G. McIntire. This statue is of Lewis, Clark, and Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman who served as their guide for much of the journey. Sacagawea is intentionally shown in a submissive posture below two standing men.
1920 Charlottesville chapter of the Ku Klux Klan founded, Klan No. 9. UVa has a separate chapter, No. 5.
1921 Thomas Jonathan Jackson sculpture of Gen. T. J. “Stonewall” Jackson erected, funded by Paul G. McIntire
1924 The Racial Integrity Act of 1924 requires all birth and marriage certificates to specify “race” as either “white” or “colored”, and prevents marriages between two people who are classified as different races. This has the effect of “documentary genocide” against Indigenous Virginians as they are legally classified as “colored”.
1924 May Robert Edward Lee equestrian statue dedicated, funded by Paul G. McIntire. UVa. President Edwin Alderman accepts the statue on behalf of the City.
1924 November School board names new primary school for Col. Charles S. Venable, aide-de-camp to Gen. Robert E. Lee, supported by Paul G. McIntire
1950 Swanson v. Rector and Board of Visitors, University of Virginia forces UVA to admit Gregory Swanson to the Law School, the first Black student in a public college in Virginia.
1951 Jackson P. Burley High School opens as a Black-only school serving both Albemarle and Charlottesville students, as part of the “passive resistance” effort to provide better schools for Black students to appear to more fully comply with the “separate but equal” doctrine, in order to forestall integration
1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling strikes down Plessy v. Ferguson “separate but equal” segregation doctrine. Brown includes the case Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, which attempted to address the poor conditions at the all-Black Moton High School in Farmville, Va.
1955 Brown II orders school districts to desegregate “with all deliberate speed”
1956 Virginia General Assembly passes “Massive Resistance” laws, advocated for by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr., allowing closure of schools that desegregate
1958 September Judge John Paul orders desegregation of Venable and Lane
1958 September Charlottesville delays schools opening while appealing Paul order in an attempt to forestall integration
1958 September Governor of Virginia J. Lindsay Almond closes Venable and Lane before they are about to open as desegregated schools as part of Massive Resistance
1958 Robert E. Lee Elementary School and the Rock Hill Academy are founded as private, white-only schools
1959 January Court orders Venable and Lane reopened while a plan for desegregation is formulated, but schools remain segregated. The twelve Black student plaintiffs take classes at the School Board office instead of their court-ordered assignments at Lane or Venable.
1959 September Venable and Lane re-open as desegregated schools as the “Charlottesville Twelve” attend, but school assignments are still mostly segregated, and transferring between schools is difficult
1960 Vinegar Hill neighborhood eviction and demolition begins, continuing until 1965, decimating the core of the Black business in Charlottesville and displacing many residents
1962 Johnson Elementary desegregated under court order
1965 Explicit race-based school segregation of both students and teachers ends, with new geographically-based attendance boundaries
1968 April 4 Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
1974 Charlottesville High opens as the sole public high school in Charlottesville.
1984 March The Charlottesville High newspaper The Knight Time Review publishes racist statements in an article and has racist graffiti sprayed in the parking lot. The school is closed after several large fights erupt.
2012 March At a Virginia Festival of the Book event, City Councilor Kristin Szakos publicly asks Civil War expert and former UVA professor Ed Ayers if the city should consider removing or recontextualizing Confederate statues
2015 January City of Charlottesville ends formal celebration of Lee-Jackson Day.
2015 March 18 Martese Johnson, a Black student at the University of Virginia, is assaulted by Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority Bureau of Law Enforcement officers during an an arrest after being denied admittance to a bar on the Corner.
2015 June 17 Dylan Storm Roof murders nine African American members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina in the delusional hope of igniting a “race war”. Soon after, Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley removes the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina Capitol. Efforts to remove many other public displays of Confederate flags and monuments begin.
2016 March Zyahna Bryant, a 14 year old student at Charlottesville High School, petitions the Charlottesville City Council to remove the Lee statue and rename Lee Park. Bryant continues this work.
2016 March Governor of Virginia Terry McAuliffe vetoes bill amending Virginia code 15.2** 1812 “Memorials for war veterans” to explicitly state that all monuments are protected, regardless of when they were erected.
2016 March 19 At a talk by social justice activist Bryan Stevenson, Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy publicly brings up issue of moving the Robert E. Lee equestrian statue
2016 March 21 Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy formally calls for moving the Lee statue at a City Council meeting.
2016 March 22 Press conference in front of the Lee statue calling for it to be removed and for Lee Park to be renamed, including speeches from Zyahna Bryant, Amy-Sarah Marshall, Dr. M. Rick Turner, City Councilor Kristin Szakos, and Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy.
2016 October Doug Muir, UVa. lecturer, venture capitalist, and owner of Bella’s restaurant, comments “Black lives matter is the biggest rasist [sic] organisation [sic] since the clan [sic]. Are you kidding me. Disgusting!!!” in response to a Facebook post about a event in Charlottesville featuring a panel including Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza.
2016 November As the first action in a protracted campaign to remove Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy from office, Jason Kessler publishes a blog post calling attention to several public tweets from between 2009 and 2014 from Bellamy that are sexist, homophobic, and bigoted, out of nearly 150,000 tweets from his account. Bellamy resigns from a State education board, is placed on leave from his teaching position at Albemarle High School, and later resigns that teaching position.
2016 December Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces issues final report to City Council. This report recommends two options, Relocate and Transform-in-Place, for the Lee and Jackson sculptures, though these are only two of the many recommendations for public memorials in the report.
2017 February By a vote of 3-2, City Council votes to move the Robert E. Lee statue, with Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy, Bob Fenwick, and Kristen Szakos voting yes, and Mayor Mike Signor and Kathy Galvin voting no. Signer and Galvin instead support the Transform-in-Place option.
2017 February Equity Package presented to City Council by Vice-Mayor Bellamy.
2017 February 11 Corey Stewart holds event at Lee statue
2017 February 16 Jason Kessler submits petition signatures to remove Vice-Mayor Bellamy from City Council
2017 March The groups Virginia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans and The Monument Fund, along with 11 individuals, file a lawsuit to prevent moving the statue
2017 May 13 Richard Spencer, UVa. alumnus living in Northern Virginia, holds “tiki torch” white supremacist rally at Lee statue. About 100 people attend.
2017 May 14 Candlelight vigil held at Lee Statue as a counter-protest to May 13 tiki torch rally. About 500 people attend.
2017 June Lee Park renamed Emancipation Park, Jackson Park renamed Justice Park
2017 July 8 A rally of approximately 30 to 40 people is held by the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from Pelham, North Carolina at Emancipation (formerly Jackson) Park. Over 1,000 counter-demonstrators oppose them. After the rally, police declare an unlawful assembly of counter-demonstrators, and, upon the authorization of Deputy Police Chief Gary Pleasants of the Charlottesville Police, Virginia State Police officers release tear gas to disperse them.
2017 August 11 Unite the Right “tiki torch” march at UVa. Chants from the crowd include “Jews will not replace us” and the Nazi slogan “blood and soil”. White supremacists surround and injure a group of counter-protesters (mostly UVa students) at the Thomas Jefferson statue behind the Rotunda
2017 August 12 Unite the Right rally in Market Street Park. Hundreds of white supremacists and thousands of antiracist counter-protesters attend. James Alex Fields Jr. kills Heather Heyer and seriously injures dozens of others with his car. After monitoring the rally all day, Virginia State Police Trooper-Pilots Berke Bates and Jay Cullen die when their helicopter crashes.
2017 August 13 Jason Kessler attempts to have a press conference in front of Charlottesville City Hall, but after speaking briefly, flees as the crowd closes in on him
2017 August 16 Candlelit vigil on the UVa Lawn attended by thousands of students and community members.
2017 August 21 City Council votes 5-0 to move the Stonewall Jackson statue from Justice Park
2018 January Nikuyah Walker begins her term on City Council and is selected as mayor. She is the first independent candidate elected to City Council since 1948 and the first Black female mayor of the city.
2018 July Emancipation (formerly Lee) Park renamed Market Street Park, Justice (formerly Jackson) Park renamed Court Square Park
2018 Summer The exact site of John Henry James’s lynching is identified. Soil is gathered and taken to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.
2018 December 7 James Alex Fields Jr. found guilty of first-degree murder of Heather Heyer and other charges in the August 12, 2017 car attack
2019 July City Council establishes March 3 as Liberation and Freedom Day to celebrate the freeing of enslaved individuals in Charlottesville by the Union Army in 1865
2019 July Historical marker for the “Lynching of John Henry James” is installed in Charlottesville’s historic Court Square
2019 November 15 Emma George, Rose Ann Abrahamson, Willow Abrahamson, and Dustina E. Abrahamson, familial descendants of Sacajawea, present to Charlottesville City Council their perspective on the Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (also known as Their First View of the Pacific) statue, particularly their feeling of shame at seeing how Sacajawea is depicted. City Council then votes 4-0 (1 absent) to permanently move the statue from its current location.
2020 February A white local resident, Richard H. Allan, III, steals the “Slave Auction Block” marker in Court Square, in an attempt to force the City to place a more prominent memorial.
2020 September 12 The Confederate memorial to veterans of Charlottesville and Albemarle At Ready is removed from Court Square.