As cities around the South struggle with what to do about confederate statues, the University of Virginia is offering one intriguing possibility.
When history professor John Edwin Mason was appointed to a city task force -- asked to suggest responses to confederate statues, he understood their importance.
“You see a man on a horse, and you know he’s to be admired," he explains. "You know the cause for which he fought is glorious. Now many of us think the statues of Lee and Jackson tell a mythologized story about the American South, but nevertheless those statues tell their story very powerfully.”
He also knew that the university owned a collection of portraits from Charlottesville and surrounding counties taken during the Jim Crow era. About 500 of those photos show individuals and families who were African-American.
“They couldn’t vote, couldn’t go to the same schools as white kids. Upward mobility was very limited. Housing was segregated. There was oppression, but you don’t see it in the portraits. What you see in the portraits are family, community, love, dignity, respect, beauty and grace as well,” White says.
Their stories are also powerful, and they’ll be shown for the first time this Saturday from 10-3 at the African-American Heritage Center in Charlottesville. Later this month, some of them will be displayed on construction fencing around the memorial to enslaved workers being built at UVA.
