America is Charlottesville Now

Charlottesville in the Commonwealth of Virginia is a city of about 50,000, evenly divided among white and black residents.

- SHREEKANT SAMBRANI

Charlottesville in the Commonwealth of Virginia is a city of about 50,000, evenly divided among white and black residents. It is among the oldest cities in the state, with great historical significance. Monticello, the estate of Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of the United States and its third President, is just outside the city. Jefferson's successor as President, James Madison, the "father of the Constitution," and the author of the Virginia Compromise, which equated electorally five freed slaves to three white persons, was from the nearby town of Orange. The Confederate General Robert E. Lee was also a Virginian. He commanded the Army of North Virginia, which included Charlottesville. Yet, Charlottesville was a city where nothing much happened. Post-civil war Reconstruction quickly gave way to Jim Crow legislation, which left the freed slaves as poor as before and confined to a ghetto. The razing of the Vinegar Hill district in Charlottesville in the name of redevelopment further cramped the black neighborhoods. The segregated Lee Memorial Park with statues of Lee and Johnny Reb stuck out as reminders of the hateful past.