The Troubled History of Charlottesville

Book Explores Charlottesville's Past and the 2017 Unite the Right Rally

Deborah Baker’s *Charlottesville: An American Story* examines the history of Charlottesville, Virginia, and events that preceded the August 2017 Unite the Right rally. The book traces local developments from the colonial period through the 20th century and into 2017, focusing on figures and institutions connected to the city.

When Joe Biden announced his 2020 presidential campaign, he referenced the 2017 rally, during which Heather Heyer was killed after being struck by a vehicle driven by James Fields Jr. On August 12, 2017, President Donald Trump stated that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the debate over Confederate monuments while explicitly excluding neo-Nazis and white nationalists from that description. On August 14, 2017, Trump separately condemned neo-Nazis and white supremacists by name. Baker’s account places these statements within a longer local timeline rather than treating the rally as an isolated occurrence.

The book opens with descriptions of the University of Virginia campus and the nearby Monticello estate of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson founded the university and expressed views on liberty and reason while owning enslaved people, including Sally Hemings, with whom he fathered children. Baker uses these elements to frame subsequent chapters on the city’s record of racial segregation and resistance to integration.

The first two sections cover four centuries of local history. They include the colonial settlement of the area, 20th-century academic work at the university that promoted eugenics, and organized opposition to federal court orders requiring school desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s. Baker documents specific individuals and organizations active during Virginia’s “Massive Resistance” period. An interlude titled “The Heart of Whiteness” profiles John Kasper, a Columbia University graduate who arrived in Charlottesville in 1956. Kasper organized against school integration, corresponded with Ezra Pound, and participated in cross-burning incidents targeting public officials. Court records and contemporary reporting show his activities overlapped with other segregationist efforts in the region.

A second interlude, “A School of Backward Southern Whites,” profiles Patty Boyle, a Virginia resident whose family background included ties to Confederate officers. In the late 1950s, Boyle publicly supported the admission of the university’s first Black law student, Gregory Swanson. She later participated in civil rights marches, was arrested during a 1964 protest in St. Augustine, Florida, and joined a Black congregation in Charlottesville. Her 1962 memoir *The Desegregated Heart* described these experiences.

The third section reconstructs the period immediately before and during the Unite the Right rally. Baker draws on social media posts, video recordings, and participant accounts to describe planning by local blogger Jason Kessler and the arrival of demonstrators on August 11 and 12, 2017. The narrative notes the presence of counter-protesters and the sequence of clashes that culminated in Heyer’s death. Baker observes that the volume of contemporaneous digital records creates challenges for a single chronological account.

Recurring figures in the book include Wes Bellamy, who moved to Charlottesville in 2009, taught computer science, and later served on the city council, and Zyahna Bryant, a high school student who petitioned for removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in Emancipation Park. Baker lists 105 individuals in an appendix to assist readers with the large cast.

The book presents the rally as one outcome of long-standing local conflicts over public symbols and school policies rather than an abrupt departure from prior patterns. It documents both segregationist organizing and integration efforts through primary sources, including NAACP legal filings from the 1950s and local newspaper coverage. Baker avoids centering national figures such as Richard Spencer in favor of lesser-known local participants on multiple sides of the disputes.

The structure alternates between historical chapters and focused interludes on individual lives. This approach links 1950s events involving Kasper and Boyle to later activism by Bellamy and Bryant without asserting direct causation. The text includes archival material on UVA faculty positions during the eugenics era and on the growth of the local NAACP chapter, which at one point became the largest in Virginia.

Baker’s account records that full school integration in Charlottesville occurred in 1962 after earlier court rulings. It also notes Boyle’s later recognition, including a reference in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” These details are presented alongside descriptions of continued residential segregation patterns in the city through subsequent decades.

The final chapters return to the 2017 rally logistics, including permit disputes and police preparations. Baker cites city records and participant timelines to outline the sequence of events on August 11 and 12. The book concludes by situating the rally within ongoing local debates over monument removal that continued after 2017.

Throughout, Baker relies on court documents, contemporary journalism, and interviews to construct the narrative. The text supplies a character list and extensive citations to allow verification of specific claims. The result is a detailed local history that connects 18th-century land and labor patterns, mid-20th-century school policy conflicts, and 21st-century public demonstrations through documented actions of named individuals.