Nate Hartzell: Reflection 4/14
Looking at the podcast episode on With Good Reason, I immediately got excited when I saw Jelane Schmidtâs name. Last semester, in one of my first classes at UVA, I had her as professor for a class on oppositional activist movement throughout history. Listening to her speak brought me right back to her class and reminded me of how much I appreciated her drive and motivation to demand that people acknowledged our history and how it is still present in our everyday lives even if we are too busy to notice. In her class we discussed many topics that were centered around Charlottesville and the greater Virginia area. Like the slave auction, the place where the lynching of John Henry James occurred in Charlottesville is also a place that people in Charlottesville are almost completely oblivious to. For me this really struck me because I think it shows how currently so many people do not want to acknowledge the history of where they are living which in turn can lead them to be slightly ignorant. In my opinion understanding the history, no matter how brutal, of where you grew up or where you are currently living is vital because history plays into our present day environment even if it is not obvious to every person. Also one thing that stood out to me was that Jelane Schmidt starts her tour of Charlottesville at the slave auction despite  Monticello and the rotunda being the most popular sites of Charlottesville. The way that the history of African Americans has been kept differs drastically from the way white Americans history has been kept. Sites like Monticello show us how places and monuments that were important to white people have been preserved where as so much of the history for African Americans has been wiped away and more is still under threat of being forgotten.












