The Charlottesville rally 5 years later: 'It's what you're still trying to forget' August 12, 2022 5:00 AM ET
by Debbie Elliot
Charlottesville activist Don Gathers reflects on five years since white supremacists terrorized his hometown — "all the hatefulness and evilness that transpired here."
Eze Amos for NPR
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — In a downtown park, grass grows over the spot where there once stood a massive bronze statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, astride his horse Traveller.
The space feels different now, says Don Gathers, co-founder of the local Black Lives Matter group.
"It's much more serene," he says.
Gathers is in the park to reflect on five years since a violent and deadly white nationalist rally ravaged his hometown.
"It's not what you can remember. It's what you're still trying to forget," says Gathers. "All the hatefulness and the evilness that transpired here."
Organizers targeted Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally after the city voted to take down the Lee statue, part of the town's reckoning with a fraught racial history.
On the night of Aug. 11, 2017, Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and other white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia campus bearing torches and terrorizing students with chants of "Blood and soil" and "Jews will not replace us."
Neo-Nazis, alt-right supporters and white supremacists encircle counter- protestors at the base of a statue of Thomas Jefferson after marching through the University of Virginia campus with torches in Charlottesville, Va., on Aug. 11, 2017.
NurPhoto via Getty Images
The next day, they rallied around the Lee statue at the downtown park.
"This represents a turning point for the people of this country," then- KKK leader David Duke declared at the time. "We're going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump because he said he's going to take our country back."
But the rally was met with resistance from hundreds of residents who rejected racism, chanting "Nazi scum off our streets."
Gathers was there and says it quickly turned violent.
"They lobbed all manner of things – rocks, soda cans filled with concrete and cement, water bottles filled with urine, tear gas and smoke grenades."
Gathers says police didn't intervene until then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency and shut down the rally.
"This is an absolute outrage," Richard Spencer, an alt-right leader and rally organizer, said at the time. "You're going to have to drag us out of here."
As demonstrators were pushed from the park, they dispersed through town, leading to pockets of violence and ultimately the deadly attack on a group of anti-racists. Neo-Nazi James Fields rammed his car into the crowd, injuring dozens of people and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Two state police officers monitoring the scene died in a helicopter crash.
April Muniz mourns with the Charlottesville community the day after a Neo-Nazi plowed his car into a crowd of anti-racists, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens.
Eze Amos
Charlottesville violence is seen as a catalyst
Racial justice advocates see the terror here as a turning point for the country – one that encouraged far right political violence, including the attack on the U.S. Capitol last year.
Gathers blames "continuous dog whistles" from President Trump that gave the white supremacists cover to come out of the shadows.
"They're emboldened," he says. "No one wanted to accept that or believe it as it was unfolding, but after August 11th and 12th in Charlottesville, there was January 6th."
"I think Charlottesville really was a catalyst for much of the white supremacist chaos that has ensued since," says April Muniz, who was in the crowd when the Neo-Nazi drove his car into the counter-protesters.
"What I witnessed is something that just broke me, basically," she says.
Muniz says she suffered PTSD and panic attacks and was unable to work for a time. And she grew increasingly frustrated that Fields was the only person arrested in the immediate aftermath of the Unite the Right violence.
April Muniz sees the events in Charlottesville as a catalyst for far- right political violence.
Eze Amos for NPR
"Everybody left town. Who's going to be held responsible?" she wondered at the time. "Because these folks that came were not immediately held accountable, they had permission to wreak havoc, and that is what they've done."
Fields was sentenced to life in prison on state murder and federal hate crime charges. When no criminal charges were brought against event organizers, some victims of the violence filed a civil lawsuit against about two dozen white nationalist leaders including Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler. A jury awarded more than $25 million in damages to the plaintiffs, among them April Muniz.
Holding organizers to account is an important step, says Ian Solomon, dean of the University of Virginia's Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. But he says it's unclear which direction the country will take.
"Are the pro-democratic forces and pro-democracy movements going to prevail or not?" asks Solomon.
He too considers events in Charlottesville a warning.
"One of the things about that weekend of 2017 was it revealed, it re- energized, it revived in many people's minds the reality that anti- democratic forces are ascendant in this country," he says. "Hate is quite brazen to show its face proudly, confidently with encouragement from elected officials."
At the time, Trump drew criticism when he condemned what he called an "egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides," seemingly equating neo-Nazis and white nationalists to the anti-racist demonstrators.
Days later as reporters questioned his response, Trump declared that there were "very fine people on both sides."
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