As cyclists ride through downtown Charlottesville, two monuments on the edge of the University of Virginia campus provide two starkly different representations of Virginia’s history: a statue to Thomas Jefferson and a memorial to the enslaved people who built the university. The contrast between the two monuments in design and meaning is profound. The statue of Jefferson focuses on a single man, thus suggesting that individuals shape history through their ideas, their leadership, and their influence on others. The memorial to enslaved laborers, by contrast, emphasizes the collective, thus suggesting that history is shaped by the contributions of many people, including those forced through circumstances to contribute to outcomes over which they have little influence (and in some cases, bring them no positive benefits). The focus on the individual is a theme across the city of Charlottesville, including Jefferson’s home, Monticello, and the University of Virginia, designed by Jefferson. Yet the slave monument is also part of the history of this city and reflective of a broader effort to recognize the previously silenced, omitted, or denied role of African Americans in shaping American history. This episode uses these two monuments along Route 76 in downtown Charlottesville to explore the longer history of how Americans recognize and remember history and how these patterns of recognition and remembrance are shaped by contemporary contexts.
Welcome to episode 12 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the city of Charlottesville, located just under 200 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and just about 350 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. I am your host, Tom Ewing, and this podcast is produced by the digital humanities program in Virginia Tech University Libraries, under the direction of media manager Joe Forte.
The memorial to enslaved laborers recognizes the estimated four thousand enslaved persons who worked at the University of Virginia between the founding in 1817 and the end of the civil war in 1865. The memorial consists of two concentric rings, rising as high as eight feet yet taperning to ground level, thus inviting visitors to enter into the circle. The names of enslaved persons are carved into the granite stone. In many cases, only first names of slaves were recorded, a reflection of how slave owners (who maintained the records) refused to acknowledge the humanity of enslaved persons. Some names include other identifying information, including family relations (father, mother, husband, wife, daughter, son) or occupation (carpenter, midwife, and more). An inscription in the monument includes the statement from a former slave, Isabella Gibbons, lamenting the “hundreds of our race” who have been killed by the “horrible cruelties” of slavery. The monument was dedicated in spring 2021, at a time when higher education institutions across the country were dealing with the reality that institutional histories were inseparably connected to the practices of enslavement.
The statue of Thomas Jefferson is located between the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers and the Rotunda, the best known building on the campus of the University of Virginia. The bronze statue depicts Jefferson holding a scroll with the Declaration of Independence. The base of the monument, in the shape of the liberty bell, includes four allegorical angels representing the principles of Liberty, Justice, Freedom of Religion, and Jefferson’s role in drafting the declaration of independence. The statue is a replica of the original located in Louisville, Kentucky. This statue was designed by Moses Esekial, a late nineteenth century sculptor best known for his massive monuments to the Confederate “Lost Cause.”
The co-location of these two monuments in Charlottesville provide contrasting perspectives on the relationship between Jefferson, liberty, and slavery. For generations, Thomas Jefferson occupied an unquestioned position as one of the most important leaders of the American Revolution. Born into a family of privilege in 1743, Jefferson studied law at the College of William and Mary before entering revolutionary politics in the state capital, Richmond. Just thirty three years old, Jefferson assumed a leading role in drafting the Declaration of Independence, which was signed on July 4, 1776. In 1785, Jefferson was sent to France as the second minister to America’s most important ally, succeeding Benjamin Franklin. In 1790, Jefferson served as Secretary of State for President George Washington. Jefferson ran for President in 1796, but lost in a close election to John Adams. Following the process at the time, Jefferson became vice president. Jefferson became president of the United States in 1800 and was re-elected for a second term in 1804. In 1803, Jefferson expanded the territory of the United States by purchasing the Louisiana territory from France. After his second term ended, Jefferson retired to his home, Monticello, on a hill overlooking Charlottesville. In 1817, Jefferson founded the University of Virginia, and designed the core of the campus to express his enlightenment vision of classical learning. Jefferson’s tombstone lists the three achievements that he himself valued the most: author of the declaration of American independence and the statute of Virginia for religious freedom and father of the University of Virginia.
In recent years, however, this laudatory image of Jefferson has been complicated by greater awareness of how slavery affected his personal life and public role. During his lifetime, Jefferson owned at least six hundred enslaved people who worked at Monticello or other property in the region. In Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson referred to slavery as a “great political and moral evil,” and he advocated for a ban on the importation of enslaved Africans. Scholars generally agree that Jefferson hoped for the eventual end of slavery in the United States, yet he also remained committed to a belief in white supremacy and recommended the deportation of slaves to Africa. Jefferson did allow a few of his slaves to become free, but the vast majority remained enslaved throughout his lifetime. As Governor of Virginia and then President of the United States, Jefferson took no action to end the system of slavery that made thousands of white plantation owners, including Jefferson, very wealthy at the expense of the lives of millions of enslaved persons.
Most recently, scholars, led by Annette Gordon-Reed, have argued for the centrality of Jefferson’s role as a slave-owner. Jefferson was the father of at least six children born to Sally Hemings, who lived as his companion for almost thirty years after the death of his wife. Determined and persistent efforts by descendents of the Hemings family, with the support of civil rights organizations and scholars, brought about notable changes in public perceptions of Jefferson’s attitudes toward slavery and his treatment of enslaved people. At Monticello, slave quarters are now part of the tour. The Hemings family has been integrated into most histories of Thomas Jefferson, including the online guides for Monticello. Whereas cyclists during the Bikecentennial of 1976 would have been unlikely to hear the name Hemmings when touring Monticello or reading about Jefferson, now the story of this enslaved family has been more fully integrated into most public discussion of Jefferson’s life and legacy.
To explore these connected themes of race, identity, and memory, this episode looks back almost one hundred years to July 4, 1926, a date which marked two anniversaries: 150 years (a sesquicentennial) since the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 and 100 years (a centennial) since the death of Thomas Jefferson on July 4, 1826. These two anniversaries were widely celebrated in Virginia. In reviewing the observations of these connected anniversaries, however, important differences emerge in the discourse of white and African American communities, particularly around the question of rights as well as the meaning of slavery. A review of relevant articles from this moment provides insights helpful to understand the context in which the Bikecentennial occurred in 1976 as well as the implications for another coincidence of these commemorations on July 4, 2026.
As these two commemorations approached in July 1926, American newspapers published numerous laudatory articles about Thomas Jefferson. In a lengthy article published on July 4, 1926, The Richmond Times-Dispatch praised Jefferson as the “apostle of democracy” and “the greatest foe of autocracy of all time.” An essay by Edwin Alderson, president of the University of Virginia, declared that Jefferson was “a world force,” “the first great intellectual radical to appear in the political history of this country,” and “the greatest liberal that ever appeared in American history.”
These articles about Jefferson’s centennial provided a very positive account of Jefferson’s views on slavery. The Richmond Times-Dispatch article declared that Jefferson “would have abolished slavery” and tried, without success, to include a clause in the Declaration of Independence about slavery. This article also praised Jefferson for creating a training school that prepared slaves to become cabinet makers, bricklayers, masons, and smiths.
Yet the Richmond Times-Dispatch article is perhaps most revealing in a sentence that mentioned the 154 slaves owned by Jefferson together with the acres of land and the number of mules, horses, and cattle. In other words, enslaved persons were equated to other forms of property including land and livestock.
Although this article praised Jefferson’s wife, Martha Shelton, it made no mention of Sally Hemings or the children born from this relationship. In other words, the narrative of Jefferson’s public and private lives told at the centennial of his birth was a white-washed history, with his role as a slave-owner omitted from the public narrative.
In 1926, the same year these celebrations of Jefferson were published, however, the Black Press across the United States, including in Virginia, offered a more complicated vision of the relationship between ideals of democracy and practices of racial oppression. The Norfolk Journal and Guide, one of the leading Black newspapers in the State, published an essay on July 3, 1926, under the headline: “The Political Clouds Grow Darker.” This article declared bluntly that the “political fortunes” of African American citizens “were never lower and darker since the Civil War than at this time.” The two major parties, Democrats and Republicans, had essentially abandoned the interests of African American citizens. Neither the US Congress nor most state legislatures had meaningful African American representation. White political leaders across the nation were openly declaring that the emancipation of slaves and the reconstruction amendments promising equality had been mistakes. The US Supreme Court had endorsed laws across the South effectively preventing African Americans from voting in any elections. Despite this bleak assessment of the current situation, the essay declared with some optimism that over time these disadvantages would decrease and eventually disappear. The challenge, the essay concluded, was for African American citizens and organizations to campaign effectively to secure the rights defined in the Constitution and promised in the amendments passed after the Civil War.
The celebration of 150 years since the Declaration of Independence in July 1926 encouraged leading rights organizations to suggest ways for the federal government to affirm and protect the rights of African Americans. The National Equal Rights League called for the formation of Declaration of Independence Leagues to celebrate the 4th of July, and other holidays, including the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, with efforts to fulfill the guarantees of the constitution and other founding documents. In addition, this organization called on the US Treasury to mint special half-dollar coins with the slogan: “God Created All Men Equal.” Yet these efforts were no more successful than the campaign at the same time to pass a national law against lynching, one of the most persistent legacies of the terrible violence inflicted on African-Americans by slavery.
The celebrations at Monticello were presumably segregated, as were events in all public spaces during the Jim Crow era. Several articles published on July 5, 1926 about the public events at Monticello celebrating American independence and Jefferson’s death included just one mention of the presence of any African Americans. When a sudden storm forced the ceremonies to move inside, the speakers read their texts under the light of a candle held by a “grizzled” African American servant. Given the centrality of slavery to the history of Monticello, the importance of slavery as an issue during the revolution, and the continued efforts of African Americans in the 1920s to secure protection for their lives and rights, this brief mention of an African American man in a service role at this ceremony is further evidence of how this population was marginalized and diminished by the white establishment that claimed to be heirs to Jefferson’s legacy.
The tension between aspirational ideals of liberty and equality and the reality of segregation were clearly evident in the celebration of Jefferson’s advocacy for the freedom of religion. Speaking under the candlelight held by this unnamed African American servant, Father Lyons from Georgetown University offered this aspirational statement inspired by Jefferson’s defense of religious liberty: “Class prejudices, racial pride, assumed superiority must be dislodged from the minds of men that justice may function and equality and the dignity of human nature remain.” There is no indication that Father Lyons understood that a white man reading a speech by candle held by an African American man (who was almost certainly the children of slaves) was itself an expression of racial prejudice and assumed superiority, the very values he quoted Jefferson to condemn.
Almost one hundred years later, in August 2017, Charlottesville, a city best known as the home of Jefferson’s Monticello and the campus of the University of Virginia, was thrust into the global spotlight when a rally of white nationalists turned into a violent confrontation. On Friday, August 11, dozens and perhaps hundreds of right-wing extremists marched through the university campus, most carrying torches, some displaying Confederate or Nazi flags, and many chanting anti-semitic and racist slogans. On the following morning, August 12, authorities declared a public emergency and prohibited further assembly. A local resident, Heather Heyer, was murdered when a white nationalist drove his car into a crowd of counter-protestors. The killer was later convicted of murder and hate crimes and is serving multiple life sentences. Several months later, the block Fourth street where the death took place was renamed Heather Heyer Memorial Way, and is marked by a commemorative sign. Route 76 passed by this block, where Fourth Street intersects with Water Street. This memorial provides cyclists with another opportunity to reflect on the complicated relationship between race and history in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the United States.
You have been listening to episode 12 of the Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast. This episode is connected to the city of Charlottesville, located just under 200 miles from Yorktown, the starting point for the westbound route, and just about 350 miles from the Kentucky border, where eastbound riders enter Virginia. This podcast is a production of Virginia Tech, a public land grant university located in Blacksburg, just three miles from Route 76 in southwest Virginia. I am your host, Tom Ewing, and this podcast is produced by the digital humanities program in Virginia Tech University Libraries, under the direction of media manager Joe Forte. To learn more about the stories in this episode, visit our website or follow us on social media, all accessible from the homepage for this podcast.
