MARKED BY THESE MONUMENTS

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.

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.

DOUGLAS: March 3, 1865, the Union Army moves into Charlottesville, camped for three days - as Dr. Schmidt says. And, they are greeted by the rector of the university, and the mayor of Charlottesville.

SCHMIDT: And Professor Minor, of Minor Hall fame. The original site of surrender is where the UVA Chapel is now. These three individuals literally waved a white flag at General Sheridan’s approaching scout. The majority of people here were enslaved, so this had to be the biggest day in the history of this city, of this county. Over have the population - their status changes. So, we call it Liberation Day now. That is, we flip that narrative on its head. A number of years ago – late 90s, early 00s, – there was a plaque that was put up that recognized the surrender of Charlottesville, and that was the language of it. And, much umbrage was taken by certain individuals in the community. I think they tried to change the language, but then the plaque was just stolen. And it wasn’t replaced until just a few months ago. I mean, it was gone for years. Now, think about it: every once in a while someone comes and tags the monuments with graffiti. So what happens? It’s in the news, it is immediately scrubbed off! The city sends maintenance workers there, and it is gone within hours. Right? So, it shows a certain set of priorities. I mean, and these are your tax dollars, these are all our tax dollars, too. And, I think it’s a contextualization that’s worthy of consideration. But, it shows a certain priority. And, similarly with this marker that talked about the surrender of Charlottesville being stolen and just removed, not replaced, for years until very recently, that also shows a certain priority. 

DOUGLAS: Yeah, and the language has changed from ‘Surrender of Charlottesville’ to ‘Occupation of Union Soldiers,’ so…

(The tour group groans.)

SHMIDT: On March the 2nd, there was what was called the Battle of Waynesboro.and, Union Generals Sheridan and Custard defeated General Early, of Earlysville fame, and General Early and his men, most many of them, escaped, much to the ire of the white families that were living in the Shenandoah valley. Many of them actually complained to General Lee, saying that General Early had been very ineffective, they demanded that he - that Early - be fired, and Lee agreed with them and fired him. But, you don’t read that on any of the plaques. But this gets to the point, the distinction between memory and history. It does say on the plaque for Early something about [how]  he was in the most battles. So, we’re not hearing about him winning the battles, we’re just hearing that he was in more of them than anybody else.

After the win at Waynesboro, that’s when the troops entered Charlottesville and that’s when that surrender takes place, and the Union army occupies for 3 days. So, after Early ran off and some of the Union soldiers came into town, they commandeered the press at the Jeffersonian Republican Newspaper – of course it was Jeffersonian – in order to print a report about Early’s defeat and his subsequent running away. They published a kind-of satirical broadside in the style of the runaway slave ads, and so they said: “WANTED: Old Jube. He ran away.” They were gonna pay $2 to get him back, making fun of General Early, comparing him to so many escaping peoples. Now, we have an account that a young Paul McIntire, who was then only 5, stood on his porch, and the Yankee soldiers are walking by, and he supposedly shook his fist at them. This young Paul McIntire, and I would contend that Mr. McIntire’s most long-lasting fist shaking are these monuments.

SCHMIDT: So Reconstruction was a 12 year period from 1865 to 1877, when Union troops withdrew, when there were biracial governments throughout the South. Virginia was the first state to be readmitted to the Union, and the requirement was write a state constitution that’s up to snuff with the US Constitution. 

DOUGLAS: Just to sort-of locate some of the conversation here, Virginia constitution is 1868. That’s the constitution that allows Virginia back into the United States.  

SCHMIDT: So, this new constitution was put in, Black voters – Black male voters, after the 15th Amendment, anyway – were voting in numbers, were getting elected to office, were becoming Delegates in political parties, becoming Delegates and Senators in legislature. 

DOUGLAS: Very early on, this is a politicized community. It’s a community that says that we understand that our vote is important, and these are the kinds of things that we’re interested in if you want to have our vote. And it’s things like, we don’t want to be arrested.

SCHMIDT: Without cause.

DOUGLAS: Without cause, certainly. We don’t want to be thrown out of our homes without cause, we want free education. 

SCHMIDT: Public schools in the South really didn’t exist before Reconstruction, that is a legacy of those Reconstruction governments specifically. 

DOUGLAS: So, clearly putting forth a plan for their own citizenship. And, if you go to the Heritage Center, there is a little bit of an article that says, and I’ll paraphrase: “The Negroes are free. They found a little school, they’re learning to read and write, they’ll want to sit on our juries, they’ll want to be in our parlors, and then they want to marry our daughters.” So, that’s the concern of 1865, September 1865 - 

SCHMIDT: Of the white population.

DOUGLAS: -of the white population, locally. Emancipation, Freedom, and Liberation Day is March 3rd, 1865, this article is September 1865. It’s one of the contiguous announcements of what the white population is thinking about what emancipation looks like.

SCHMIDT: This was kind-of part of a downtown development boom that started happening at the beginning of the 20th century, so these statues are part of that development, this so-called city beautiful movement, which was interlaced with ideas about race. Part of what was beautiful was who needed to be removed, supposedly, from public spaces in order to beautify them. Because at this time in the early 20th century this is actually a mixed-race area, downtown here. 

DOUGLAS: It’s also about a kind of way that one orders a city – the ways in which certain parts of the city are used, the establishment of public parks for the good, the ways in which one thinks about what those parks do, the idea that you can create central squares where communities gather, that’s a lot of what city beautiful was about, too. It was about how do you order and cause communal interaction.

DOUGLAS: Virginia has the largest number of Confederate monuments in the country. 75 of them exist in front of courthouses.  

SCHMIDT: So, we need to talk about that. The courthouse is, you know, run under the rule of law, that's according to the United States Constitution. So, it does beg the question of why the people who tried to overthrow the U.S. Constitution would be here on this ground as you're going into court to supposedly get a fair trial. But, we have to consider the kind of historical backdrop here, particularly after the end of Reconstruction in 1877. The former Confederates that had been barred from office because of their participation, especially leadership cadre folks, start slipping back into government and trying to reestablish white supremacy. And they use those words, white supremacy. They were not embarrassed about it. I mean, it kind of rings in our ears today, but they were very sanguine. That's the goal here – it’s to have the supremacy of the white race, white supremacy. So, they start coming back into office, and then things start getting really bad. This paranoia of a black majority is very fixed in the white imaginary of this city.

SCHMIDT: After the fall of Reconstruction in 1877, the Great Compromise of ‘77, Union soldiers withdrew from the South, effectively leaving the freedmen to the mercy (and there wasn't much mercy) of their former masters, who were then kind of started slipping back into office and establishing laws in order to reestablish white supremacy. And again, that was the language they used, this was the intent. 

SCHMIDT: And part of the enforcement mechanisms for doing this, of course, there's a legal regime that's being set up, but there's also extralegal terror. That is, lynching. Lynching campaigns that are being lodged against specifically Black people who are trying to vote, Black people that are trying to or do start businesses, or who are deemed to be too successful at businesses, showing up the white folk as it were. Black folks who are buying property. These are all folks that are getting beyond their, over their place. And law enforcement officials themselves are actually often involved in it. 

SCHMIDT: Exhibit A, I will give is our own community of Charlottesville with the lynching of John Henry James in 1898. Mr. James was accused of raping a young white woman from a prominent Charlottesville family. And again, this paranoia about Black men seducing or sexually assaulting white women, this is just kind of paramount in the white imaginary in terms of fears of what would happen with a free Black population. He was taken to jail, just behind on High Street there, the old jail. If you kind of look there you can see it just peeking over the top of a brick wall. There's this old gray stone. That was the old jail. That's where they held him.

SCHMIDT: A mob starts forming outside and so the police chief thinks it's a better idea, “wait, let's get him out of here so the mob doesn't overwhelm the jail, and let's take him to Staunton overnight. Just let things cool down here.” So they do, they actually took him over the back wall, went to the railroad and on to Staunton overnight. So then they're coming back the next morning, July the  12th, 1898, Mr. James is being transported with the sheriff and the police chief. You would think,  with this sort of enforcement of law, that he would be able to be brought to trial and given a trial.  But, what happened was that a white mob, armed mob, went and gathered on the train tracks.  And they weren't masked. They made no attempt to hide their identities. One of them was dressed as a woman, had a dress on, was doing a kind of damsel in distress action on the track to try to get the train to slow down and stop.  

SCHMIDT: Also at this time, there was a group of about 40 Black men who came from Charlottesville out to what became the lynching site, which is now on the grounds of the Farmington Country Club.  This group of Black men, they were trying to thwart the lynching. They were repelled by this armed mob. The train slowed down, stopped, and Mr. James was taken off.  

DOUGLAS: Taken 40 yards, he was allowed to pray for 20 minutes. Then he was hung, shot, and then left to hang there. Where his body, over time, parts of his clothing were cut away, parts of his body were cut away as souvenirs. He was removed from that site by the Black undertaker, and then tried posthumously and found to be guilty.  

SCHMIDT: The sheriff and the police chief were present  at the lynching. And no one was ever charged. And all those people were unmasked. But, the coroner of the inquest afterwards said it was at hands unknown. That's actually the title of a book. To hands unknown. It's history of lynching. Because this was often the conclusion. So, that happened here

(this transcript contains upsetting language.)

DOUGLAS: The first constitution is the Virginia Constitution of 1868. 

SCHMIDT: The Reconstruction Constitution.

DOUGLAS: The Reconstruction Constitution, yes. And the next constitution is the Constitution of 1902. And that's the Constitution that is meant to really solidify many of the sort-of Jim Crow laws that you begin to see in and around the 1890s. But by the time you get to 1902, the kind of segregation laws that are being implemented have a lot to do with voting, as Dr. Schmidt said. So you begin to see things like poll tax resurge, right? And the poll tax has to be paid three years in a row in order to vote. Also with that are things like literacy tests, and literacy tests are yet another opportunity to disenfranchise the Black voter. And by the time you get to the 1902 constitution, even across the South, the poll tax and those kinds of what they call Black Code laws become the laws that are then defining how we understand Southern life all across the south. Virginia is arguably one of the more milder. It's not Tennessee, it's not Mississippi, it's not the deep dark South, but it's very clear that this is a changing landscape. And even in the  language and excuse me, but… they say we are going to write a constitution that turns back, excuse my language, the “nigger constitution” of 1868, right? That's in the Virginia text. 

SCHMIDT: That's an elected official saying this, you know, about why this 1902 constitution, yeah, is being voted in. All right. All right. It's to overthrow that other one. Because now it's an all-white legislature, or pretty near, you know, almost everyone's been pushed out by then. Has anyone ever heard the term grandfathering, you know, to grandfather something? Yeah, this notion that you have to pay your poll tax three years in a row, I don't think you have to do that if you were white. 

DOUGLAS: No, well, everyone had to do it because it was considered a head tax, but the idea of the capacity to be able to do that had to do with grandfathering. It also had to do with whether or not your ancestor was a… soldier in the Civil War. 

SCHMIDT: Yeah, so if your grandfather voted or your grandfather was a Confederate soldier, then you can vote.  You see? So about 90% of Black men are effectively disenfranchised by this new constitution, and a lot of poor whites too. You can see there's a display at the Jefferson School that kind of goes into this in a little bit more detail. But you can see the voting rolls there, and you can see the steady drop, drop, drop year by year in the number of voters that are showing up.

SCHMIDT: I want to speak a little bit about… since we're talking about place and the controlling specifically of Black bodies in spaces that are increasingly being designated as white as the separate but equal clause gets instituted after the Plessy decision in 1896,  the vagrancy laws that were put into place… If anyone's seen the Netflix documentary, 13th, Eva DuVernay talks about this. Black men were often deemed vagrant if they couldn't demonstrate that they were employed, usually by a white person. And so just the movement  of Black people through public spaces is becoming riskier and riskier. I mean, all right, there's lynch mobs, you can be charged with vagrancy if you're deemed to not have a job. There is… Also, this is when the convict  leasing labor system gets going. You still see them today, guys in orange jumpsuits running around doing the yard work. Here, you see them? When you come around here, yep this is the… we're still living with this. And these statues are doing that work.

SCHMIDT: So, this downtown area was not really developed. This is the first downtown Confederate statue that's put up. It was put up in 1909. Now, there is another Confederate soldier statue at the Confederate Graveyard over in UVA. There's over a thousand Confederates that are buried there. And there is a Johnny Reb there, and that was put up in 1893 by the predecessor organization of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Ladies’ Memorial Associations. So what had started out… The memorializing that  took place  in graveyards, it was about mourning and memorializing. So these confederates, especially the soldier, were put up in graveyards by Ladies’ Memorial Associations. It's only into the early  20th century where there's this kind-of migration, like a Trojan horse, you know, out of the kind-of mourning memorialization of monuments, out of cemeteries and into public squares, like we have here. As Dr. Douglas said earlier,a  large proportion of these Confederate soldier monuments are put up all across… the South and in Virginia and an inordinate… number of them are put on courtyard lawns and it's done for a reason.

SCHMIDT: So, this statue here was erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Albemarle Charlottesville chapter was one of the earliest chartered chapters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It started in 1894. So, it was the Daughters of the Confederacy, it doesn't mention here the Sons of Confederate Veterans, but they were involved as well. Albemarle County levied a special tax for this. The city of Charlottesville kicked in some money. They appealed to the House of Delegates to get more revenues, right, but this is a joint effort. It took 10 years.

SCHMIDT: This is a mass-produced, cast-bronze statue.

DOUGLAS:  There are thousands of them. They were mass-produced in factories in Connecticut and in…

SCHMIDT: Massachusetts. 

DOUGLAS: Massachusetts

SCHMIDT: This one here… So, irony of irony, this one here was made in Chicago. That is, the land of Lincoln.  

(Dr. Douglas laughs)

SCHMIDT: They were shipped all over the place, they were generic. The purchaser, if they were a Northerner, they could specify they wanted USA on the belt buckle, and then it'd be a Union one. Southern purchasers put CSA. So this one, it says: “Commemorating the heroism and volunteers of Charlottesville and Albemarle County,” and also, and I should say, the University of Virginia too. Men from the county, the city, and UVA who were part of the 19th Virginia Regiment, which was with Lee's Army in Northern Virginia, and thus, kind-of Southern Cross variety of the Confederate flag, what's often known as the Confederate flag, but it actually was  Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.  

DOUGLAS: If it said CSA as it says here, so that's the Southern  one, and the ones in the North are the USA, and they are placed in Northern towns in order to talk about the unification of the United States, where these clearly are talking about something quite different. What strikes me always about how we are engaged in this place is the way in which they create the relationship between the law and religion. And, that these spaces are not just all about the law, but they are also about  the kind of divine right that is offered through religion. You can come at this in multiple directions but the most straight shot to it is straight down this street. And, so you would be coming up this street in sort-of a processional way, meaning that you would be in very real ways venerating this object.

SCHMIDT: So this is put in, as I said, in 1909, so that's just seven years after that new constitution. And, remember what we've been talking about with the demographic changes that were happening locally here in Charlottesville with the Black population actually dipping under 50% for the first time… in 1890s. But in the white imaginary, there is still this fear of a tyrannous majority. That's a direct quote from the installation speeches. We can actually tell a lot about these statues and what the people thought who were putting them up by reading about the ceremonies… Great pomp and circumstance, these were spectacles. UVA suspended classes, a thousand school children, if the daily progress count is to be believed, were lining the streets waving Confederate flags, singing Dixie and all this sort-of… the preachers came and gave benedictions, dinners were held… Confederate veterans coming, it was just a big, big spectacle. And the… Confederate veteran who gave the address for the statue, he was kind-of complaining at one point that this statue actually is meant to undo the history of Reconstruction. So again, here's this kind-of memory supplanting history, okay, is going on here. How do we know this? Because he told us so, in his speech, right? ah Because he said, “Well, people say that the result of the Civil War was so great, that it freed slaves. But actually, it's just a worse slavery because now even white people are enslaved.” So this is the “You Will Not Replace Us” of 1909, basically. You know… it's this false sense of white victimization. So there's some very deliberate work being done here by the installation of this statue, and a kind of anchoring of public space, and specifically the courthouse. Remember this is the first one that's downtown, here. It's basically stamping this space the white preserve.

DOUGLAS: The way in which the statue stands, the kind of contrapposto of that, if you look through your art history books, over and over and over, you'll see venerated saints standing with a similar kind of contrapposto. Right? It is part of a language of bodies  and how they're described  in space and what those bodies are supposed to do. Here, it suggests something that is at the ready. Right? But, as a language of visual or the visual language of art, that whether we understand them or not, because we are all visual people, we look at things and images are repeated for us over and over and over, hence why they seem  normal. We don't  question that.

GATHERS: You know, if you're not awake now, you're not asleep, you're in a coma.  

…

INTERVIEWER: All right. We are back at the Johnny Reb takedown special broadcast and I have an interview right now. Would you mind introducing yourself?  

GATHERS: Don Gathers.  

INTERVIEWER: What brought you here today?  

GATHERS: A moment of pleasure and reflection, a moment of redemption and reconciliation. 

INTERVIEWER: And as you saw the plaque being carried away, what was kind of going through your mind, that first step of taking it down?

GATHERS: The first thought was about our ancestors, and the pain and suffering that  this  symbolizes  for them. But it's also a moment in time where…  we're in a momentous moment.  We're finally  realizing the reality of… what the history of this country represents  and…  that these  symbols of hatred really  bear no relevance in today's modern-day society. Next, and very quickly, I hope that we can get rid of Stoney and little Bobby Lee down the street. And don't stop there. We also need to remove the George Rogers Clark statue. We need to remove the Sacajawea statue. So, this is a… progressive moment, but there's still five in this immediate community that need to come down immediately right after.

INTERVIEW: Right now, just a quick update on the statue. It looks like they are almost ready to move it. But we're going to turn back to Jalane. 

SCHMIDT: Hi, I'm Jalane Schmidt. I'm a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, and I'm a community organizer here in Charlottesville. Four years ago, in 2016, when the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Places was holding their hearings, I started going to those. Just started getting involved with community members who are interested in having a different landscape here. 

INTERVIEWER: Just for those of you who may have heard some cheers, the forklift is moving towards the statue. Jalane, what are you feeling right now as you see this  getting closer and closer to happening? 

SCHMIDT: I feel like a kid on Christmas. Part of what's happening is that the city and county are engaging in a full renovation project of the Court Square here, including thinking about what memorialization will look here. And so we're hoping to build up the Slave Auction Block Site into a more respectful and developed.. memorial there. And then also to memorialize John Henry James, a man who was lynched here, that'll be coming. So, there's a lot of wholesale changes that are going to be coming up here in terms of our landscape here in Charlottesville, much like at the University where we have the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers now. There's just been a lot more thought about how to be inclusive and how to narrate our histories in ways that… are  more life sustaining and inclusive. 

INTERVIEWER: Here I have Zyahna Bryant with me. She's a Charlottesville community member and student at UVA.  

BRYANT: I wrote the original petition to take down the lease statue, which is right down the street um in 2016. And so this is the result of the work of a lot of Black women, Siri Russell, Jalane Schmidt, Dr. Douglas…

(Cheering)

BRYANT: …and also just a host of other people. So, I'm really excited to see that it's coming down today. It should have been down a long time ago. But of course, this is only one step in the process of equity and redistributing resources and tearing down systems. 

INTERVIEWER: And you mentioned that this is just one step. I know you're a student at UVA. What would you say to a peer that would be satisfied with stopping here or stopping with the event that we had today?

BRYANT: When you go out to do something, you never do it halfway. And I think the university is often satisfied with doing things halfway. And so… to my peers and to the faculty who are out here today, I encourage you to continue to push for more. You know, the BOV yesterday made some monumental decisions with wanting to remove the Clark statue. But I ask you, what about the Whispering Wall? We can't rededicate our way, we can't  recontextualize our way around racism. And so until we… it's all or nothing really, until we decide to take down all these odes and shrines to white supremacy, then we're still… giving into the issue. We're still feeding the problem. And so… simply I say no platform for white supremacy anywhere, period.  

INTERVIEWER: Right here with me is Andrea Douglas. She runs the Jefferson School. So, from an educational perspective as someone who is very intimately involved, what does this day mean?  

DOUGLAS: For me, watching this statue come down… it's somewhat bittersweet. I had hoped that we would go the full mile and not just take it down, but really sort of remove it from our public spaces. That's not going to happen. It’s going to go to a battlefield where it's believed that it will be contextualized in an appropriate way. I don't think it can be, by the very nature of what it is. The symbols that are coming with it are symbols that are very specific to an ideology that is about ownership, this is about control, this is about power. And I think that we feel that at least we have moved a body of people to understand that, a body of people who did not quite understand that in the past. The Board of Supervisors in making their decision clearly understood that this was an inappropriate object in its place, but I'm not quite sure they went as far as saying it's an inappropriate object, period. There's a whole group of young people who understand what this is and understand why this thing is a problem. 

DOUGLAS: And I think if you're asking me about education, that's where I feel most… I don't know the word. I feel good about it because I think that it's going to take every single one of us to be speaking to every single one of us in every single voice that we have to make sure that what is on that object is understood, that it's not just about bronze and stone. It's about ideology. In the front of that object is religion. On the back of that object is the state. It stands in front of our… jurisprudence discussions, right? This is wrong in every single way, and I think that that's what education means to me.

SCHMIDT: Stonewall Jackson never came to Charlottesville except on one occasion, and that was in his funeral car.  

(laughter)

SCHMIDT: Seriously, he was going on to Lexington to be buried. He was shot by friendly fire. That's another thing they don't talk about a lot either.

SCHMIDT: These statues don't just pop up on their own. I mean, there's a lot, there's urban planning that's going on. I've talked about, you know, the City Beautiful movement. There are different organizations.The United Daughters of the Confederacy, their role cannot be overstated, right? Women couldn't vote at the time that they were most active and influential,  but their campaign to memorialize Confederates, you know, as I said, it began in cemeteries, but then it starts in the early 20th century, emerging from cemeteries. It's no longer kind of mourning, mournful kind of statuary, but rather an emergence into the public square and it's laudatory now. It's about citizenship and what's the ideal citizen to be, of course… passively white and… on the courthouse lawn. So we have to look at this in context that at the same time that the UDC, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, is having their biggest building boom, right, in the early 20th century.  They are also promoting the Klan. Okay, not many people know I've got a book here to show I'm not making this up. You know, here it is. I was just in the archives yesterday.  This is a UDC-approved, a UDC-written book, 1913, just a couple, three years after Johnny Reb was put up here. Uh, was passed unanimously, which means our Virginia division voted for it.  Okay, so bear that in mind.  

SCHMIDT: So these are not disconnected. Okay, the kind of extralegal, terroristic enforcement by the Klan and these statues that are being put up, these are being fueled by some of the same people. I found this in the minutes…just yesterday: “…Mrs. Rose of Mississippi spoke of her work in compiling the history of the Ku Klux Klan,” that's this book, “asked for the endorsement of the daughters thereof and the cooperation of the president, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Anyway, motion passed and they wanted to put this in all the schools. That was the goal, to put it in all the schools and libraries all across the South so that the youth will know about this glorious organization. These are some of their terms. And why should the youth know about it? Because the Confederate soldiers were the real Ku Klux whose deeds of courage and valor have never been surpassed. There's a clear connection that's being made by these organizations between kind-of legal structures that are being put in, extralegal intimidation, and memorialization, in defining space, whether social, legal, or physical, geographical, as white.

SCHMIDT: Since we just talked about 1909 and the installation of Johnny Rebs, so we're in the 1910s here, and we want to talk about how this used to be a mixed-race neighborhood, McKee Row. So, we're going to talk about that neighborhood here, because it's not here anymore. It's the earliest, well, one of the earliest examples of gentrification. Actually, the first one's in the 1840s, because when the railroad comes in, those Black-owned properties that were on Main Street got taken away from Black property owners. 

DOUGLAS: When you talk about McKee Row, you have to talk about one person in particular: an African American…person named John West. And you do that because John West is known to have owned several homes here. It's, again, a biracial community, but largely a community filled largely with African American people. John West is descended from…Isabella Gibbons, who is the first African American teacher at the Jefferson School. 

SCHMIDT: She was a slave at the University.

DOUGLAS: Yep, enslaved at the university, leaves the University right after emancipation, and comes to live and reside in the community. At some point during her life, she gives her son, John West, to be raised by Nancy West, who's owning property along Main Street, places like where the hardware store, is it a hardware store? That property's being owned by them. Once Nancy dies, John West inherits all of her property, and he becomes one of the largest white or Black property owners in Albemarle County, Charlottesville in particular. He owns the property where City Market is. He owns that property. He owns the property that is 5th Street. He owns the property over by 10th and Page. He's owning property there, and he's owning property here. He's owning something like 200 acres over in the Shenandoah Mountains. So a very significant property owner, wealthy property owner. 

SCHMIDT: I can show you here, it's a little rainy unfortunately today, but here this is a census form from the 1900 census and it lists all the properties here in the key row and the names of the folks that are there and their occupations and their races. And you can see here it's Black, white, white, white, white, Black, mulatto, you know, they're all…mixed in there together. But this is 1900. By the 1910s that is gone. It doesn't exist anymore. That is the legal regime is changing, first starting in Richmond, coming over to here, making it illegal for Blacks to live in majority white places and whites to live in majority…Sound familiar? This is where it starts happening. 

DOUGLAS: So that's the 1911 ordinance from Richmond. It's fit to pass in Richmond. By 1917, it's voted on here in Charlottesville, and the council tables it, and it's never actually accepted here in Charlottesville. But, the idea of it maintains, and the idea is if the majority of the block is Black, then no white can purchase that block on that block, and vice versa. So that is how we begin to start talking about how these kinds of segregations of living spaces occur. And they largely occur and are maintained through racial covenants that are placed into the deed. And those racial covenants say that homes, if owned by whites, no Blacks can ever own them, right? So that's how you begin to get those segregated spaces.

DOUGLAS: And the moment that Paul Goodloe…

SCHMIDT: Paul Goodloe McIntire.

DOUGLAS: …McIntire is thinking about returning to Charlottesville, thinking about what his legacies would be, ultimately thinking about placing some object to honor his parents, which is what this object…does. It's not meant to be a monument in that kind of way, in the same way that that monument is meant to be. This community that is essentially from, I would argue…from Jefferson Street towards the back there is needing to be removed. And the language that is used is the same kind of language that is always used in relationship to Black property. It's blighted… We have to… 

SCHMIDT: Rookery, Negro rookery, it was called. I don't know what that means, but I want the t-shirt. But I mean, but… it is damaging in that a rook in this case is a place, a messy bird's nest. So here is this problem again with Black people being compared to animals and that this is a nest that needs to be rooted out. Also, it's very close to the opera house, where the white folks are coming for their entertainment and this is just seeing, again, the proximity to Black bodies. This is something that needs to be separated out. Again, given the years that we're talking about, early 20th century. So, moving Black people, seizing by eminent domain, it was originally, they were gonna, the county was going to put in…This is county courthouse, the county was gonna put in a white school there. That was the original plan. And Black folks were moved out of there. Paul Goodloe McIntire bought it. And instead, what they did was they razed all those buildings, okay, that were Black owned and owned by John West in order to  set up an all-white, whites-only park. Because again, we're segregating now, right? This is 1921, all right? And then anchoring this park with this statue for Jackson.  

DOUGLAS: Paul Goodloe McIntire gives the ceremony at the unveiling of this statue. The people who are doing that are the United Daughters of the Confederacy. 

SCHMIDT: Right, right. In the paper, The Daily Progress, noted this uh installation of that Negro rookery was removed by McIntire's magic.  So there's a very, you know, just a very kind of clearly delineating…that white is replacing Black. You know, this is what's going on. And it's being marked by these monuments.

SCHMIDT: So, since we're here at the courthouse, there are Klan meetings going on in the courthouse. This is where their organizational meetings are happening. You can't make this stuff up. Their first meeting took place at Monticello at Jefferson's tomb. Seriously. I mean, of all the places they could have selected to have their first inaugural cross burning, they chose Jefferson's tomb. And this is in 1921, the same year this is being put up. There's Klan parades going on, there's bombings, cross burnings, there's meetings in the courthouse of the Klan, and there's this.  

DOUGLAS: And there's a formation of the Anglo-Saxon Club. 

SCHMIDT: Yes. 

DOUGLAS: Right? And the Anglo-Saxon Club is based on the idea of the purity of the white race and ensuring the purity of the white race. And so all of that is happening within the context of this. And the Anglo-Saxon Club is largely…many of the members are located here. 

SCHMIDT: At the University of Virginia Medical School, specifically, there are many members there because this was the center of eugenicist thought…it was what University of Virginia Medical School was known for. It wasn't some sideline or something over there, it was like the Dean was a leading expert. These were invited lectures, et cetera. This is all going…So, yeah, this notion of segregating space, racial integrity, and all this sort of thing in physical spaces and then in eugenics and anti-miscegenation laws is really taking hold in the here. 

DOUGLAS: Again, this notion of Black threat, this notion of Black possibility, coincides with all of the need to entrench whiteness. So, by 1924, we have the Racial Integrity Act. The Racial Integrity Act is the reason why we all check boxes. And the Racial Integrity Act was really about identifying who was not white and making sure that, through the use of the registrar's office, that…it's both tied to all manner of things, every single thing we do. In terms of marriage, in terms of filing any kind of paper that gives us identification, it goes through the registrar's office. The registrar's office is also the office that controlled, at that point, voting. So, when you begin to see these two relationships, this is yet another one of these moments where there are some corollary kinds of information that suggest that that object is in no way innocent. That object is in no way about thinking about a long lost history. It is really about implanting and implementing  physically a kind of white supremacy.

SCHMIDT: One of the elements of popular culture that's very important to point out is the  release in 1915 of a film called Birth of a Nation. And, this was kind-of a lost cause version of the Civil War…in cinematic form. It was great kind-of advancement in cinematic arts of the time, still considered. And it was this glorying in the history of the Civil War and belittlement of Reconstruction, and the abilities of Black people to be citizens and, you know, and all this sort of thing. Very demeaning depictions there. It was wildly successful. This is when the Klan gets revived, actually, is after 1950. We can actually talk about the Klan in terms of the first, second and third Klan. The first Klan, the one that I read you that excerpt from the United Daughters of the Confederacy book, that's right after the Civil War. That's during Reconstruction where these ex-Confederates are trying to put down the Reconstruction government and the Freedmen. That's the first Klan. Elites, former Confederate officers. The second clan  comes about  after 1915, after the birth of a nation.

SCHMIDT: And, as I mentioned, know, early 1920s, this was going on, you know, here in Charlottesville, too. There was a very active chapter. And these are the Downtown business elites, these are the leading citizens of the day. It was basically like the Elks Club  or the Masons, or something. It was considered a respectable fraternal order. So part of this memory-making with this kind of laudatory or Lost Cause version of the Civil War…was saying: “Ah, slavery wasn't that bad, and anyway, the war wasn't about slavery. And weren't these Confederates, you know, they were honorable people” and this sort of thing. So these monuments are helping to do that work of promoting the lost cause version of the Civil War. Now, Black historians such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter Woodson, and others, when they discuss Reconstruction, or the Civil War and Reconstruction…They talked about it, of course, in very positive terms, of Reconstruction, specifically.

SCHMIDT: So, Lee and Jackson are both kind of emerging, especially in the 1920s, as sort of iconic figures of Civil War memory. I mean, from the perspective of lost cause aficionados. So the Lee statue is installed in 1924. Lee, of course, was the general of the Army of Northern Virginia, surrendered at Appomatto. About a month after Charlottesville was liberated was Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox, so we got a little early start here, locally. The South lost militarily, but ideologically, the South eventually won through the efforts of memorialization like this, and also through the efforts of curricular interventions by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, only approving certain textbooks for use that had interpretations of the war that were deemed just to the South, which meant this sort of hero, laudatory, and kind-of playing down slavery or ignoring it altogether. I come back at people and get upset about disrupting the fascists that we have here. It's like, “Oh, don't show up, just ignore them.” Well, that's what happened in the 20s. These people walked among us. They were respectable. Nobody ever called them out. The sheriff was a member of the Klan. He went to First United Methodist, right there.

SCHMIDT: You know, the year after this, after the Jackson Statute was put in, 1922, this is the Luray convention, the annual convention of the Republican Party. Before the poll tax kind-of crushed out Black voting. You there were many Black delegates, politicians and this sort of thing. But the Black delegates from Charlottesville who went to Luray for the Republican Convention that year, they were refused seats. So, this marked a kind of turning point in cutting off Black access to the ballot box, and to political participation, and even at the level of political parties. Because then the Republican party is also trying to get the white vote and shed its reputation as the liberator party aligned with Blacks and scalawags and reconstruction and this sort of thing. This is the way to get votes. So we see this happening and it affects our community, our Black community, here in Charlottesville too.

DOUGLAS: The 19th Amendment is 1920. White suffragists in the South, in the way that they caused white men to vote for the 19th Amendment, was through the poll tax. They said, “don't worry about it, Black women will not be able to pay the poll tax either.” In Charlottesville, 800 women, white women, signed up to vote, but 124 Black women signed up to vote. Poll tax at that time is $1.50. 

SCHMIDT: It's a lot of money.

DOUGLAS: It's a lot of money. If you are a family, which many of these families, you had the father, you had a brother, you had the mother, and you had the sister. Do the math, it's a lot of money  needed three years in a row in order to vote.

SCHMIDT: You know, looking at the primary documents, the Articles of Secession of the various states, Confederate states, the Confederate States of America Constitution, that infamous speech by Alexander Stevens, the vice president of the Confederacy, the cornerstone speech, you know, that said that Negroes subordination is the cornerstone  of our country…There is no question among reputable historians, I should say, these days, that slavery is the cause of the war. Part of what's going on with this sort of memorialization in the ‘20s is promoting this lost cause version of the war that was preferred among white southerners, at least those that weren't, the few that weren't unionists. So these statues are doing work.

SCHMIDT: There is this intimidation factor going on. There's a spate of lynchings in Virginia in the 1920s. And there are some business leaders  and even politicians, white ones I'm saying here, who thought there's just too many lynchings going on. This isn't good for business. We're trying to build the new South, we're trying to attract industry, this isn't a good look for us, bad PR. So they decide, these businessmen and these legislators decide to pass into law  an anti-lynching law, which sounds great, but it was kind of more cosmetic. No one was ever prosecuted under it. But it was something that  the political leaders and business leaders could point to and say, “see, we're not Mississippi.” So this also kind of points to something that's endemic to  our culture and our Commonwealth, too. Putting on this gloss of civility and gentility, should say, to...kind-of in the interests of smoothing things over  and going on, but not really dealing with underlying problems. And looking down the nose, kind-of imagining, viewing themselves as social betters.

JALANE SCHMIDT: Thank you for coming. We're beginning tonight with the first night of observances of Liberation and Freedom Day here for our community, and we thought it would be important to reflect tonight on the experience of trauma, on who had the most to gain and to lose from Liberation and Freedom Day. That is, before we get to Tuesday, the beginnings of emancipation, we first have to reflect on what happened here and what happened here in our environment, where we are tonight.

DON GATHERS: And before we get too far into our program, I want to make sure that I take a special moment to offer up a thank you to each of you for coming out to attend this very special and solemn event. But I also want to take a moment to thank Elizabeth Shillue and the Beloved CVille Community  for helping to organize this event and put it all together. You may see the gray T-shirts around town. So, if you see those, thank them individually, please. Please recognize that while this is a celebratory event, it is a very solemn occasion. So, please bear that in mind as we move to the different locations along this very small trek that we'll be making on this evening. 

GATHERS: Why are we doing this? On this very first night of this week's observations of Liberation and Freedom Day, we are acknowledging and honoring the ancestors of our city and of our county. This solemn event is a reminder of the pain and trauma of the enslaved community who were the majority of our area residents. Tonight, we descend to the depths of pain before we celebrate on this coming Tuesday, the beginnings of emancipation. We are reckoning with history, and we're forced to reckon with that history which continues to impact our collective lives. We're gathered at the very seat of our local judicial system. This is where human beings were sold from the steps of this courthouse, then traffickers filed the papers from their transaction in the sale of those people who were considered property. This is the same justice system which today still disproportionately punishes black people

SCHMIDT: The way in which we mark and narrate our history matters to our community, especially to descendants. So, in keeping with the occasion, we want the focus to remain on ancestors and descendants. Descendants, if you desire to go to the front, if you so desire, because we're honoring their ancestors. So, we're going to walk around just this corner here of Court Square to three stations where enslaved people were bought and sold before we return here where we are now for the conclusion of our vigil. Please watch your step as we're going off and down the curb. 

SCHMIDT: Our first station is at the former site of the Eagle Tavern, 300 Court Square. Right behind us, there Ms. Myra Anderson, who is a poet and activist and who is a sixth generation descendant of the Hern family of Monticello, will guide us. Ms. Myra will read aloud the names of 33 people, some of whom were her ancestors who were sold there at Eagle tavern at the Thomas Jefferson estate sale of 1829. The Reverend Carolyn Dillard, Associate Minister of Zion Hill Baptist Church of Keswick, will offer prayers for these trafficked people who were named and for their descendants. Next, we'll move to the former site of the Slave Auction Block marker, the number zero building, Zero Court Square, which is the former site of the Benson Brothers’ Auction House. There, we will hear the words, the recorded voice of Fountain Hughes, an enslaved man from Charlottesville, as he describes the pain of the buying and selling of enslaved people. The Reverend Xavier Jackson, pastor of Chapman Grove Baptist Church, will gift us with a sung meditation. Our third stop will be the Swan Tavern, right there on the corner of Park and Jefferson. There Ms. Cauline Yates, a descendant of Sally Hemings’ sister, Mary, will guide us. Ms. Cauline will read aloud the 1852 letter by Maria Perkins, an enslaved woman from Charlottesville who was being sold at this courthouse. Apostle Sarah Kelley, a Charlottesville native and pastor and founder of Faith, Hope, & Love Church of Deliverance will offer a few words and song.

GATHERS: We will come back here to the steps of the courthouse to wrap up the vigil and to offer a benediction as…we pray for our ancestors, the descendants, and each and every one of you that has taken the time out to come and gather with us on this evening. If you see someone struggling, or any of the elderly who may need help, please assist them as necessary and as you can. All right? And we will begin to proceed across the street to our first stop.

MYRA ANDERSON: In 1829, in front of Eagle Tavern, Thomas Jefferson's family sold 33 black people that the former president had enslaved. This was the largest recorded single sale of human beings in Court Square. This evening, we honor the ancestors. We say their names. Hubbard family: Abram Hubbard, Bartlett, Ben Hubbard, Betsy, Edmund Hubbard (age 16), Jerry Hubbard, John Hubbard, Jerry Jackson Hubbard (age 11), Isaiah Hubbard, Linnea, the unnamed child of Linnea (who was under two years old), Maria, Nance, Nancy, Rachel, Washington, and William Smith (age 10), all from the Hubbard family.

ANDERSON: Next family is the Gillette family: Esther Granger Gillette, Gill Gillette, James “Jimmy” Gillette, and Moses Gillette. The next family is the Hern’s family, of which I am a sixth generation descendant: Dave Hern, David Hern, Endrich Hern, Lily Hern, Ben Snowden, the husband of Lily Hern, Thurston Hern, and Stannard. And last is the Granger family: Virginia Granger and her three youngest children, who were as follows: Ben Granger (age eight), Esther Granger (age six), and Bagwell Granger (age two).

REVERAND DILLARD: Let us humble ourselves and breathe through the emotions, the pain, the truth of where we stand. Let us honor the ancestors. Let us appreciate and respect the descendants. I will be praying in my Christian faith in the name of Jesus. Father God in the name of Jesus, I come to You, Lord God, with an open heart, surrendering my will to you, Lord God, I am honored to stand on this hallowed ground. I am humbled, Lord God, to be present in this period in life, to share with the descendants as we move forward together, praying and thanking the ancestors for all they did and all they gave so that we could be free. We thank God for the descendants who have stood strong and are standing strong, arm in arm, to make a difference, to call out names, to be respected, to have their voices heard. I thank you for this community, Lord God, that prayerfully and, not just words but in language and in movement, that we move forward, not in a stagnant way, Lord God, but that we move together in true unity where the truth of the Black Spirit, the truth of the African American is known as equal. Lord God, we thank you. In addition, Lord God, I would be remiss if I did not ask for prayer for the oppressor, Lord God, touch their minds. Touch their hearts. Open their minds. Lord God, that superiority will not be the language of the day, but that common purpose and common love and unity do. Dedication to life and respect is what we all will move forward in together. In the name of Jesus, amen.

(CROWD: Amen.)

FOUNTAIN HUGHES: My name is Fountain Hughes. I was born in Charlottesville, Virginia. My grandfather belonged to Thomas Jefferson. My grandfather was a hundred and fifteen years old when he died. And now I am one hundred and one year old. Now, in my boy days we were slaves. We belonged to people. They’d sell us like they sell horses and cows and hogs and all like that. Have an auction bench, and they’d put you on…up on the bench and bid on you just same as you bidding on cattle, you know. But still, I didn’t like to talk about it. Because it makes, makes people feel bad you know.

(Piano interlude)

REVEREND JACKSON (SUNG): Though the storms keep on raging in my life, and sometimes it's hard to tell the night from day. Still, there's hope that lies within, gets reassured. As I keep my eyes upon the distant shore, I know He'll lead me to that blessed place He has prepared. But if the soul don't cease, and if the winds keep on blowing In my life, my soul has been anchored in, in the Lord. Though the storms keep on raging in my life, and sometimes it's hard to tell my night from day. Still, there's hope that lies within. It gets reassured as I keep my eyes upon the distant shore, I know He'll lead me safely to that blessed place He has prepared. But if the storms don't cease, and if the winds keep on blowing in my life, my soul, my soul has been anchored in, in the Lord. 

REVEREND JACKSON (SUNG): Oh, I realize that sometimes in this life, you're going to be tossed by the waves and the currents. They seem so fierce, but in the Word of God, I've got an anchor, and it keeps me steadfast and unmovable despite the tide. And if the storms, if they just won't cease, and if the wind keeps on blowing in my life, my soul, my soul's been anchored in, in the Lord. My soul's been anchored, my soul's been anchored, my soul's been anchored, my soul. For the bills may roll, the breakers may dash, I shall not sway, because he holds me fast.  So dark the day, clouds in the sky, but I know it's alright, cause my Jesus is nigh. My soul has been anchored in the Lord. 

(Applause)

CAULINE YATES: My name is Cauline Yates. In 1852, just four days into the October term of the Albemarle County Court, Maria Perkins, an enslaved woman in Charlottesville, wrote this desperate letter to her husband, Richard: “Dear husband, I write you a letter to let you know of my distress. My master has sold Albert to a trader on Monday court day and myself and other child is for sale also. I want to hear from you soon before next court if you can, I want you to tell Dr Hamilton or your master if either will buy me they can attend to it now. Don't wait a trader to get me. I don't want a trader to get me. They took me to the courthouse. A man by the name of Brady bought Albert and is gone. I don't know where. They say he lives in Scottsville. I'm so heartsick and I am ever will be your kind wife, Maria Perkins.” (Full transcript as written) 

APOSTLE KELLEY: Even listening as that letter was read and thinking about how our family was so scattered… I had said I didn't mind, but I'm realizing it's affecting me. But I could just hear them, and the song that came to my mind.

ASPOSTLE KELLEY (SUNG): No more weeping or wailing, no more weeping or wailing. There'll be no more weeping or wailing, because we are going to be with God. Soon we'll be done with the troubles of this world, the troubles of this world, the troubles of this world. Oh, soon, we'll be done with the troubles of this world, going home to be with God. There'll be no more weeping or wailing, there'll be no more weeping or wailing. There'll be no more weeping or wailing because we're going to be, ‘cause we're going to be, ‘cause we're going to be with God.

GATHERS: Everybody, please come on in and gather closely. As we move towards the conclusion of our program…What we have scheduled now, I will indeed ask that the descendants will lead us in this specific portion. My dear Sister, Reverend Brenda Brown-Grooms, will lead us as only she can, in song. And as we're doing so, I would ask that all who are, who are present, available, and capable to come and pour out a libation to our ancestors and to and to those who have gone on before us and whose shoulders we stand on today. So as she leads us in song, if those who can, will come, just dip into the basin and pour out into the ground, libation. Thank you.

REVEREND BROWN-GROOMS: I come back to this song time and again. It was the first thing I could sing after my stroke, which left me paralyzed on my right side, head to toe, including my right side of vocal cords. But this song came back first of all. It's important, because it speaks of people who lost their names into slavery and who gained a faith in the God whom we knew before we came to these shores. And we said it with these words that even if you take everything for me, I believe you'll allow me to live. “I Told Jesus.”

REVEREND BROWN-GROOMS (SUNG): I told Jesus, it would be all right if he changed my name. I told Jesus, it would be all right if he changed my name. I told Jesus, it would be all right if he changed my name. Be alright, yeah, be alright if he changed my name. He say, your Mama won't know you, child. Your Papa won’t know you, too. Be all right, yeah, be all right, if you change my name. I told Jesus, it would be all right if he changed my name. I told Jesus, it would be all right if he changed my name. I told Jesus, it would be all right if he changed my name. I told Jesus, it would be all right if he changed my name. Be alright, yeah, be alright if he changed my name. 

GATHERS: Please continue to come forward, anyone who wants to participate.

CROWD (SUNG): Wade in the water, wade in the water, children, wade in the water, God is gonna trouble the waters. Wade in the water, wade in the water, children, wade in the water, God is gonna trouble the waters. 

REVEREND BROWN-GROOMS (SUNG): See that band all dressed in white,

CROWD (SUNG): God is gonna trouble these waters,

REVEREND BROWN-GROOMS (SUNG): Well, It look like a band of Israelites,

CROWD (SUNG): God is gonna trouble these waters. Wade in the water, wade in the water, children, wade in the water, God is gonna trouble the waters. Wade in the water, wade in the water, children, wade in the water, God is gonna trouble the waters. Oh, God’s gonna trouble the water, God’s gonna trouble the waters, God’s gonna trouble the waters.

GATHERS. God bless you. Are there others? If so moved, please come forward.

GATHERS: I pray that as you stand with me, you'll recognize that while this was very much ceremonial, it was extremely powerful and very much appropriate and necessary for this gathering and for this moment. This is a ritual that goes back well… into our deep, into the depths of our ancestry. And I'm just happy that so many people decided to participate in it on this evening. As we move forward towards the conclusion of this…program and this event, as we move towards our benediction, I would like for Ghislaine and Elizabeth to come forward as well. And please, continue to come and participate in the libation ceremony. Again, I just want to recognize these two young ladies did so very much work on putting this together, and being able to come out and get this type of gathering and this type of response is truly incredible. And I really would like to give both of them a round of applause at this moment.

(Applause)

GATHERS: As we move towards…our dismissal, excuse me.. let us bow and go to the throne of Grace. Father, it is indeed in your immense wisdom that we were gathered here today and we thank you for this event, dear Lord. We thank you for every head, heart, mind and soul that's gathered here. We thank you, dear Lord, for those who wanted to be here before whatever reason could not. We thank you for our visitors from out of town who have come. We thank you for moving on the hearts of each and every man and woman here today, dear Lord. Father, we as we stand here upon the shoulders of our ancestors, we recognize, dear Lord, that all that they were able to do was indeed through and by You. And Lord, we just love you and we uplift you because of that. We exalt you, dear Lord, we shout hallelujah for all that we have seen and all that we've overcome, knowing that there is still full measures that we need to achieve. We stand with you, dear Lord, knowing that you will never forsake us and never leave us. And we thank you, dear Lord, for being with us thus far along this journey. Father, as we leave this place, but never from your presence, dear Lord, we pray for traveling mercy as we separate to our several homes. We pray that you will indeed dispatch your angels in mercy and of goodness, dear Lord, to be upon each and every individual, and pray for a safe arrival, safe travel, safe passage. Lord, we love you, we honor you, we praise you, and we uplift your name as well as the descendants and the ancestors. And we offer this prayer unto you in,  Jesu’. Precious Name. Amen. 

(CROWD: Amen.)

GATHERS: I thank each and everyone for coming. Unless there's anything on anyone else's heart on this evening that concludes our program. Thank you.