(If you will remember, this is where Trump referred to Nazis as "good people".)
(Follow link for 7 minute podcast.)
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — In a downtown park, grass grows over the spot where there once stood a massive bronze statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, astride his horse Traveller.
The space feels different now, says Don Gathers, co-founder of the local Black Lives Matter group.
"It's much more serene," he says.
Gathers is in the park to reflect on five years since a violent and deadly white nationalist rally ravaged his hometown.
"It's not what you can remember. It's what you're still trying to forget," says Gathers. "All the hatefulness and the evilness that transpired here."
Organizers targeted Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally after the city voted to take down the Lee statue, part of the town's reckoning with a fraught racial history. ...
Irony abounds.
Oxford history of US Civil War era says that in Mexico, “Captain Lee commended Lieutenant Grant” for his role in the attack on Mexico City.
Lee’s thanks were conveyed to Grant by Lieutenant Pemberton who 16 years later would surrender to Grant at Vicksburg.