Projects
— Support for Matthew Christensen’s Change.org petition to remove the Confederate statue from in front of the Albemarle County Courthouse, including attendance at relevant city and state governance meetings and community organizing leading up to and during the 2019 legislative session of the Virginia General Assembly.
— Support for activities of the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality, including contributions to routine meetings, moving couches, cleaning offices, and participation in protests and rallies related to the Virginia Prison Justice Network (VPJN), women’s rights, and Confederate monuments.
— Production and distribution of posters and T-shirts to aid the efforts of the Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project in Richmond, VA and draw attention to the need for a Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park.
— Support for “Truth and Conciliation in the 400th Year: A Shockoe Bottom Public History Symposium” as a Shockoe Bottom Advocate. The conference took place at the Library of Virginia in Richmond, VA, on December 7, 2019 and was organized by the members of the Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project alongside the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality. The event examined the history of Africans and people of African descent in Virginia from their earliest days to the present, and the significant role that Shockoe Bottom has played in that history. The centerpiece of the symposium was the re-presentation of the community-generated proposal for a nine-acre Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park.
— Advocacy related to the need to rename the Barringer Wing in the West Complex of UVA Hospital, rename The Boulevard in Richmond to Arthur Ashe Boulevard, and remove the Lee statue and other Confederate monuments in Richmond.
— Development of an undergraduate course at the University of Virginia for 2019 Summer Session (II) entitled “Monuments, Memorials, and UVa.”
— Development of a Zotero repository, entitled monumentsmemorialsuva, containing primary and secondary sources related to the history of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, and Albemarle County.
— Efforts to build a network of students at UVA who are engaged in issues involving monuments, equity, and racial conciliation.
— Online advocacy on Twitter related to the need to address the racism embedded in public symbols.
— Research on a man named Reuben and the history of Blue Cottage at the University of Virginia.
— Development of an image archive, based on the current Flickr photostream, containing photos of works of art, buildings, and sites at the University of Virginia, to be made available as an institutional resource for those interested in the history of race and place in UVA, Charlottesville, and Richmond.
— Research to track creative responses to monuments and war memorials across the South.
— Research on the history of the Department of Art History at UVA, with a focus on Paul Goodloe McIntire, monuments, and parks in downtown Charlottesville.
Writing
— Article by Justin Greenlee, entitled “‘Next up, Charlottesville!’: Silent Sam and the Confederate soldier at the University of Virginia,” (click title for link) published on the online platform Medium on 9/9/2018. The essay contributes to the current debate on Confederate monuments in public spaces and argues that the re-contextualization and/or removal of the soldier at UVA is needed and necessary.
— Adobe Spark presentations entitled “On Preston Avenue: A brief history of Thomas L. Preston and the people who were enslaved on the Preston plantation” and “The Birmingham decision and Confederate monuments in the state of Virginia” (distributed via Twitter on 1/10/2019 and 1/21/2019, respectively). Historical research presented in the form of a social media thread and shared to inform the current debate regarding: a) the renaming of Preston Avenue in Charlottesville, VA; and b) a decision handed down by Judge Michael Graffeo in Jefferson County, AL related to a wooden screen that was put around the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Birmingham and the constitutionality of the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017.
— Twitter threads on the history of the current name of UVA’s yearbook, Corks & Curls, Louisa Ware and the Frank Hume Memorial Fountain at UVA (also known as the “Whispering Wall”), and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, visit to Grounds on March 25, 1963.
Image credit: View of the University, Charlottesville & Monticello, taken from Lewis Mountain by E. Sachse & Co., published by Casimir Bohn, 1856, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va (image source here)