Marked by these Monuments
Marked by these Monuments

MARKED BY THESE MONUMENTS

 A tour of the Confederate Monuments of Downtown Charlottesville and the history and memory of the people who put them up. Led by Dr. Andrea Douglas and Dr. Jalane Schmidt.

Map of the self-led tour of the Confederate Monuments of Downtown Charlottesville.

Charlottesville’s Confederate Monuments came down on a humid morning on July 10th, 2021.

We are honored to maintain this website as a testament to the historical research, activism, and time given to this cause by Dr. Jalane Schmidt, Dr. Andrea Douglas, Zyahna Bryant, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, the members of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces, and the countless community members, past and present, who have fought against racism and white supremacy in central Virginia.

Presented by WTJU 91.1 FM

Slave Auction Block Marker
Johnny Reb Statue
Stonewall Jackson Statue
Robert E. Lee Statue
Other Events and tours with the Jefferson School African american heritage center

Start. An Exercise in Amplifying Footnotes.

Dr. Andrea Douglas and Dr. Jalane Schmidt introduce themselves and discuss the difference between history and memory.

  • SCHMIDT: Dr. Andrea Douglas, who’s executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.


    DOUGLAS: Yes.


    SCHMIDT: And I, I’m an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, Jalane Schmidt. So, we are your guides, and we give this tour usually on a monthly basis. I sometimes do it more with school groups and journalist groups that come through, as well. We do this as an effort to promote public history, and I call this an exercise of amplifying footnotes. So, this is kind-of taking the facts of history that are usually in musty old tomes, or discussed only in seminars, or academic conferences, and this sort of thing, and making it accessible to a wider public because this history belongs to all of us. Which gets to the fact that memory is not the same thing as history, that memory can be promoted, tweaked, produced, reproduced, by things such as, you know, statues, or books, or activities, pop-culture programming, and all this sort of thing. This is an activity that we’re doing as an effort to shift community memory, to kind-of unearth the history. And, specifically, we’re going to be talking a lot about local history here.

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You Are Paying For This

  • DOUGLAS: In terms of thinking about the monetization of Confederate objects and histories and things, we’re spending almost 40 million dollars a year on these things. Meaning the museums, meaning the care of parks, meaning the houses – all of those kinds of things do have a taxpayer monetization. 


    SCHMIDT: You, you, you are paying for this. $800,000 in the Commonwealth of Virginia alone. 


    DOUGLAS: Alright, so I think that when we have these conversations, they also need to be thought of within this sort-of larger context of our social spaces and what it is that we as taxpayers think about those social spaces. 


    SCHMIDT: And they’re kind-of normalized as part of our physical landscape. Many people, not all of us, but many people kind-of walk by them for many years and don’t really even mind, or thought they were harmless, or all this sort of thing. And, so, we’re kind-of doing a little archaeological excavation of a historical nature, to see what were the values that were driving the folks who put them up.

Photos of Dr. Andrea Douglas and Dr. Jalane Schmidt.
Map of the tour. Start at the corner of East Jefferson Street and Park Street.
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On This Site Slaves Were Bought and Sold.

  • SCHMIDT: Alright, so this was the Slave Auction Block. There were actually several sites around Court Square where enslaved people were sold. This has been the one that the city has opted to mark. As you can see, it’s about 1 foot by 1 foot, flush with the sidewalk here, bronze lettering. It says: “Slave Auction Block. On this site slaves were bought and sold.” And, every once in a while, somebody comes by here, covers up the ‘slaves’ part, and puts the word ‘humans.’ And, as I mentioned before, over half the community here was enslaved. But, this is it. This is what we got. In starting here, we’re going to prioritize the lives and fates of the enslaved and their humanity. Black lives matter. 


    DOUGLAS: Just to that point, too, much of what is derived, or how we came to be sort-of thinking about this, was really a lot about a conversation about optics in our public space. And, they are meant to do something, your body is supposed to act in relationship to those objects, and that is part of the power of them, is the way in which you interact with these objects. 


    SCHMIDT: For instance, you walk across here and you would miss it. I mean, you have to actively literally look down in order to see this. 


    DOUGLAS: And, so, intentionality matters, right, could we argue with the intention of wanting to mark a spot? But the real fact of it is you walk past it. Many of you did not know it was here.

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Produce, Horses, and Humans

  • SCHMIDT: This is only one of several sites around Court Square where enslaved people would have been sold here. But, there’s a lot of misery here. I mean, families were torn apart on these spots. And, the reason for the sales here was that on court days, y’know, when people would be filing papers and legal notices, bills of sale, et cetera, et cetera, there would be kind-of markets set up here. Sometimes some enslaved folks, who had their own plots, garden plots, y’know, they kind of had a bit more produce, they could bring it into town and sell it. Also, free blacks as well. So, produce, horses, and humans are what would have been sold here on those court days.

We Call it Liberation Day.

The Surrender of Charlottesville - March 3rd, 1865.

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You Don’t Read That on Any of the Plaques

Liberation and Freedom Day at the University of Virginia, 2017

Liberation and Freedom Day at the University of Virginia, 2017

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“Legislature of Virginia,” Library of Virginia, 1871-1872.

“Legislature of Virginia,” Library of Virginia, 1871-1872.

Putting Forth a Plan for their Own Citizenship.

The Reconstruction Years in Charlottesville, 1865-1877.

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Removal From Public Spaces

Re-Establishing White Supremacy.

The Post-Reconstruction Years, 1877-1890s.

The Johnny Reb Statue in front of the Albemarle County Circuit Courthouse in Downtown Charlottesville.

The Johnny Reb Statue in front of the Albemarle County Circuit Courthouse in Downtown Charlottesville.

He Was Left to Hang There.

The Lynching of John Henry James, 1898.

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90% of Black Men are Effectively Disenfranchised

Guys in Orange Jumpsuits Running Around Doing the Yard Work

Out of Mourning and Into the Public Sphere

Albermarle County Levied a Special Tax for This

Marker to John Henry James at the The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.

Marker to John Henry James at the The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.

Soil collected from the site where John Henry James was murdered.

Soil collected from the site where John Henry James was murdered.

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 There are Thousands of Them.

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The ‘You Will Not Replace Us’ of 1909

The Language of Bodies in Space

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 We Have to Look at This in Context.

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This Used to Be a Mixed-Race Neighborhood

They Razed all the Buildings that were Black Owned and Set Up a Whites-Only Park

This Was a Center of Eugenist Thought

Promoting the Lost Cause Narrative

McKee Row, Holsinger Studio Collection, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library.

McKee Row, Holsinger Studio Collection, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library.

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Statue of General Robert E. Lee shrouded following the white supremacist rally of August 2017.

Statue of General Robert E. Lee shrouded following the white supremacist rally of August 2017.

Charlottesville City Schools Students at the Racial Justice Walkout organized by Charlottesville High School’s Black Student Union.Ézé Amos, Charlottesville Tomorrow, March 26, 2019.

Charlottesville City Schools Students at the Racial Justice Walkout organized by Charlottesville High School’s Black Student Union.

Ézé Amos, Charlottesville Tomorrow, March 26, 2019.

Conclusion.

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Cutting off Black Access to Political Participation

800 white women signed up to vote and only 124 black women

There is No Question that Slavery is the Cause of the War

A Gloss of Civility

Many thanks to Dr. Jalane Schmidt, Dr. Andrea Douglas, and the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center for their unwavering dedication to educating the public about this essential and difficult history we live with today.

If you are able, we encourage you to take the full tour - look out for the next one and other event announcements from the Jefferson School on their Facebook page.

Slave Auction Block Vigil: Honoring the Ancestors

Listen to the voices of the people who were bought and sold here in Charlottesville and the mourning and reverence of their descendants. Recorded on March 1, 2020 as part of Charlottesville Liberation and Freedom Days 2020.

Further Reading:

What You Need to Know about Charlottesville’s Courthouse Confederate Soldier
Charlottesville’s Confederate statues still stand — and still symbolize a racist legacy