The Change (2020)

Changes in the seasons, changes in the winds, in old and fussy institutions. 

Changes are afoot.

Seasonal ones - the autumnal arboreal wardrobe change is starting - but otherwise as well...

On one of the otherwise fronts ... the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia was installed to what sounds to be a generally positive review - a response to the times, the heightened awareness of suppressed stories of Black Americans, wrought, ironically, in part, by the hateful rhetoric of the current occupant of the Oval Office and the Pandora's box of bigotry that suddenly feels itself sanctioned in polite society. 

Charlottesville is dear; it was home away from home for three years.  But I had significant trepidation on my first visit - I had not been so far below the Mason-Dixon before then (Florida theme parks and Miami hardly count).  As I took the bus down, we passed fields upon fields hemmed with white timber fences that are so evocative of stills of Civil War battlegrounds in documentaries made in the century after, hence, evocative of slavery and the deep rooted and stereotypical racism of the South - at least to a non-White mind perceiving it with no actual experience.  Surprisingly to me, I found the school to be friendly and welcoming, the grounds open and beautiful, providing ample physical and psychological space to let go of some of the accumulated weight of growing up and living in the density and amid the frenetic pace of New York City.  It was a very much needed, and extraordinarily beneficial, interlude.

And then for three years, the academic bubble shielded me from much of the real town - I only left the bubble for a few stints volunteering at the county courthouse with the Domestic Violence Project.  It was those visits that brought me through the other side of town, and in contact with the other half of Charlottesville. 

But lurking beneath - of course we all knew that Mr. Jefferson's Academical Village had no formal place for Sally Hemings or any of her children.  That the author of the Declaration of Independence withheld same from human beings he owned.  That the vaunted Honor Code of the University existed for decades with a most profoundly dishonorable institution. 

So now, finally, the elephant in the room is acknowledged with the installation of the new Memorial.  And tours of Monticello include discussions of Sally Hemings these days.  At Montpelier, which was open for visitation during my last trip down for a reunion, there was an ongoing archeological excavation of the slave quarters.  Changing times indeed.

And, hopefully, a harbinger for change to come November 3rd.