Charlottesville Marks Racist Rally Anniversary with Civil Rights Pilgrimage

Mayor and 100+ delegation honor Charlottesville lynching victim from 1898 with trip to new Alabama lynching memorial.

Release from the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. – Over 100 community members from Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia, are traveling by bus on the Charlottesville Civil Rights Pilgrimage, a six-day, five-night (July 8-13) civil rights pilgrimage to the new Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Ala. During its journey south, the delegation will visit numerous important sites in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. The trip will culminate at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, where the delegation will deliver soil collected on July 7 from the Charlottesville lynching site of racial terror victim John Henry James.

At the one-year anniversary of the 2017 #SummerOfHate, this trip is one of many ways in which the Charlottesville community is mobilizing to face the town’s difficult history of white supremacy. Throughout last summer, groups of violent white supremacists, ostensibly protesting the city’s plan to remove its Confederate monuments, attacked counter-protesters in city streets and parks, resulting in multiple arrests, assaults, and deaths. The Pilgrimage commences on July 8 — the one-year anniversary of a Ku Klux Klan rally in Charlottesville — and arrives in Montgomery on July 12, the 120th anniversary of John Henry James’ 1898 lynching. Trip participants will report back to the broader Charlottesville community in early August, before the one-year anniversary of the deadly August 12, 2017 “Unite the Right” Rally.

“Charlottesville — and the nation — have to understand how the violent white supremacist rallies last summer fit into a legacy of racial terror,” said Dr. Andrea Douglas, Executive Director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, and organizer of the trip. “This is our challenge: Can we create a process that uncovers and disseminates racial truth? Can the 100 delegates on the Charlottesville Civil Rights Pilgrimage return ready to sow this truth throughout our community? People cannot arrive at empathy or understanding if they do not share the same undeniable truths about what has happened right here, in the present and in the past.”

As the delegation visits civil rights sites in various Southern communities, members will hear from local anti-racist activists and encourage local residents to examine the documented cases of the history of racial terror lynching in their own community.

The 100-member delegation includes: Mayor Nikuyah Walker, Charlottesville’s recently-elected, first-ever African-American woman mayor; Susan Bro, mother of slain anti-racist activist Heather Heyer; members of the clergy; University of Virginia students, faculty and staff; local public high school students and teachers; former members of the city’s Blue Ribbon Commission which held hearings in 2016 about Charlottesville’s Confederate monuments; representatives of community organizations, including 2017 #SummerOfHate counter-protesters; and other residents.

The Charlottesville Civil Rights Pilgrimage is sponsored by the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, the Charlottesville City Council, the CACF Heal Charlottesville Fund, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, the Charlottesville City Schools, the University of Virginia Office for Diversity and Equity, the UVA Nursing School Inclusion, Diversity and Excellence Achievement Initiative, UVA Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights, UVA Vice Provost for Academic Outreach, Red Light Management, The Women’s Initiative, individual donors from Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia, and Hilton Hotels International.

Pilgrimage Itinerary

Charlottesville, VA – July 7
Appomattox, VA – July 8
Danville, NC – July 8
Greensboro, NC – July 9
Charlotte, NC – July 9
Atlanta, GA – July 10
Birmingham, AL – July 11
Montgomery, AL – July 12