"Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible." - Maya Angelou, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes1
The Battle Over Silence and Space
On January 24, 1901, Anna Murray and the Loudoun UDC began planning to place a twenty-five-foot Confederate memorial in the Courthouse Square.2 Eighteen months later, on July 31, 1902, a mob of over 200 men dragged a Black man named Charles Craven from the county jail and across that same square with a noose around his neck while women and children cheered. Whooping white crowds lined the streets as the tortured Black man was paraded in front of them before the rope was thrown over a tree branch. As Charles, writhing and protesting his innocence, was yanked into the air, his body was riddled with over 500 bullets.3 The Courthouse Square manifests the power dynamic of 1902 in the material iconography of the Silent Sentinel, rendering the multiple lynchings that took place there genuinely silent.
The fact that the United Daughters of the Confederacy had placed their plan for a Confederate memorial in action at the same time that hundreds of people from Loudoun County felt free to lynch a Black man in broad daylight speaks to the racial hierarchy that was in place. About 300 men participated in the four-day manhunt that preceded the lynching, as groups of white women gathered together at night in homes guarded by white men under the auspices that a crazed Black succubus would attack them.4 Was Anna Murray one of the women who sought protection with armed white men? It has to be assumed that she knew what was happening as men on foot and horseback traipsed across Loudoun County for days.
To understand how the Leesburg Confederate monument affects the historical narrative of not only the Lost Cause but also the self-conceived identity of the town, it is imperative to interrogate the narratives muted by that same statue.
The Lynching of Charles Craven
"Our country's national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob." ~Ida B. Wells5
On July 24, 1902, Charles Craven, a 25-year-old black man recently released from prison after serving a 3-year sentence for burning down a barn, allegedly robbed a young white boy named William Steadman Jr. of $2.50.6 He threatened the child with a butcher knife but did not harm him. William told his father what happened, and word spread quickly throughout Loudoun County.7 Therefore, it can be assumed that Charles Craven was at the forefront of people’s minds when, four days later, William Wilson, a white man, was shot by an unseen assailant. Despite the lack of witnesses and Wilson’s inability to identify the person who shot him before he died, most white people jumped to the conclusion that the shooter was Charles Craven, and a massive search ensued.8
The papers covering the story used extremely slanted language, describing one member of the posse as “an old Confederate” who was “brave and resourceful.”9 Meanwhile, the Times wrote Craven “has as black a record as any negro in the state.”10 On July 30, the Alexandria Gazette opined, “A manhunt participated in by 300 infuriated Virginians led by bloodhounds is in progress within 30 miles of the nation’s capital, with every prospect that it will be terminating in a lynching, probably by burning at the stake.”11 A tracker named Hurricane Branch and his bloodhounds were summoned from Suffolk, VA, and he stated that he could find Craven before sunset.12 On July 31, Craven was found sleeping in a hayloft and gave no struggle when captured. Of the three men who initially located their “prey,” the Times wrote, "too great credit can not be given for the intelligence, coolness, bravery, and forbearance they exhibited throughout.”13
As word spread of Craven’s arrest, a crowd of men with guns drawn followed the Sheriff and his prisoner to the train. The crowds grew at the Courthouse, and a local white man, Sam Grimes, was heard shouting, “Three murders have been committed in Loudoun; the guilty parties have escaped; this man is guilty, and he ought to be killed now; come on; boys, take him out of the jail and kill him.”14 The Sheriff, who was on hand at the time, stated that there was nothing he could do to stop the mob from taking Craven, nor, even though the assailants were not wearing masks, could he identify anyone who participated.15
The Sheriff announced the next day that he would be conducting an inquiry into the lynching and that he had a list of forty-five witnesses to interview.16 However, despite the brutal and public execution that had occurred the day before by a mob of 200 white men, the Richmond Dispatch, under the heading “A Night of Terror,” reported the town of Leesburg was in a state of panic over the congregation of fifty black men on the Courthouse Square “threat[ing] to avenge the violent death of Charles Craven,” and “one negro was heard to remark, ‘If we can’t get a man we’ll get a woman.’”17 By August 6, five men had been arrested in connection with the lynching, and warrants were issued for five more.18
On August 8, Judge Tebbs called a jury the Richmond Dispatch labeled “the leading citizens of this county.”19 The Roanoke Times relayed a speech given by the judge to the jury as they were convened. The judge stated that the lynching was “a blot” on Loudoun County’s reputation.20 This was not, however, because a man had been executed without due process but because the crime of which he was accused did not warrant extrajudicial action. Expanding on this explanation, the judge stated, “Throughout this southland often when the greatest of all crimes is committed upon women, men, true men, to prevent the shame of forcing some shrinking girl or honored matron to undergo an ordeal almost worse than death in repeating before some gaping crowd the revolting details of this horrid crime, have made way with the offender, and if not justified, their act as been condoned. But no such case is before us.”21 Therefore, the stain upon the reputation of Loudoun County was not the lynching itself but the fact that it occurred to avenge the murder of a man and not the rape of a woman. In reference to the magnitude of men who participated versus the paltry number who were facing prosecution, Judge Tebbs stated that most of the men who participated “have already seen, or will yet see, the error of their ways, and in the future will be true defenders of the law.”22
It appears that only two men were ultimately tried for the lynching of Charles Craven: Charles Lowenbach and Scott Bradley. Charles Knapple was also arrested in Maryland, but Governor John Walter Smith refused to extradite him to Virginia for trial due to a technicality: “the requisition [was] defective because of the absence of a seal on the document.”23 Lowenbach was quickly acquitted on September 11, but Bradley’s trial stretched out for a few days longer. The prosecution had several witnesses who saw Bradley, “wearing a Confederate badge,…lunge at Craven through the steel bars of the cage”24 in the jail and that he was one of the men seen dragging Craven with a rope. This information appeared in the Richmond Dispatch under “Lyncher Wins Pity, Want Him Acquitted” and the subheading “State’s Evidence Strong.”25 The defense painted a sympathetic portrait of Bradley as a man being targeted for crimes committed by more powerful men. The Richmond Dispatch reported, “The prevailing impression among the best citizens of this town is that Bradley, who is poor and has but few friends, should not be made the scape-goat for an offence (sic) generally recognized to have been committed by at least 200 of the most highly respected and estimable people of this county, and that like Lowenback (sic), who was charged with complicity in the same crime, he should be acquitted.”26 It took the jury just nine minutes to come to the same conclusion.27 There were only forty-six days between the lynching of Charles Craven and the acquittal of the representative men tried for the crime.
"We live in a world which respects power above all things. Power, intelligently directed, can lead to more freedom. Unwisely directed, it can be a dreadful, destructive force." ~Mary McLeod Bethune28
Returning to Tim Cresswell’s statement, “Place, at a basic level, is space invested with meaning in the context of power,”29 the organization of the Courthouse Square around the Confederate Memorial while erasing the horrific history of the lynching of Charles Craven in the same place manipulates power through the corruption of memory.
The complicity of whites in maintaining the established power dynamics of the Old South was predicated on the notion that “ordinary whites - even those who would never have joined a lynch mob - benefited from lynching, just as they benefited from the other tools of white supremacy.”30 Sherrilyn A. Ifill argues in On the Courthouse Lawn that the effects of a lynching lasted for decades and “destabilized and retarded the economic, educational, and political development of a black community.”31 The placement of a larger-than-life Confederate soldier in a space conceptualized as one of justice but that embodied the lived reality of injustice and unredressed violence creates, as Lefebvre conceptually argues, the imagined space of the Old South. The heterotopic nature of the space is both a place of crisis while also a collector of time, as the place of the Courthouse Square embodies the trauma of the violence and holds the moments of lynching in the present by manifesting a dominant white power structure in the physical architecture of the space.
Additionally, despite the masculine depiction of the Confederate soldier looming over the Courthouse Square, the women's composition of this space illuminates the gendered nature of the design. The stance of the soldier with his gun raised and eyes searching for danger connotes the protection of something precious. During the hunt for Charles Craven, there was nothing in his behavior, either observed or suspected, that would indicate that he was motivated to sexually assault women. Nonetheless, white women were gathered and protected by armed white men throughout the manhunt. Furthermore, when Black men gathered on the Courthouse lawn seeking justice for Craven, the assumption was that the target of their revenge would be white women. In the physical space, “the intersections and mutual influences of ‘geography’ and ‘gender’”32 can be seen, as discussed by Massey. The statue may be male, but the effect is to create a gendered space that prioritizes white womanhood.
The Confederate memorial acts not only as an apologist for those who left the Union but as absolution for those who used violence to maintain the racialized hierarchy guarded by the boys in grey. Therefore, to change the narrative, it would be necessary to change the space that manifested it.
Four years before the unveiling of the Confederate Memorial in Loudoun County, the Virginia legislature passed a bill in 1904 making it illegal to “disturb or interfere with any monuments or memorials.” Following the June 17, 2015 massacre of Black congregants at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Charleston, SC, challenges to the glorification of the Confederacy strengthened. States throughout the South sought to safeguard their Confederate iconography, and in 2016, a Republican-sponsored bill strengthening the 1904 legislation was vetoed by the Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe.33
After years of advocating for the statue’s removal as a concerned citizen, once being sworn in as Chairman of the Loudoun Board of County Supervisors in 2016, Phyllis Randall was able to take action as an elected official. In 2017, she took the first official step toward the removal of the Silent Sentinel, asking the Board to add language to the proposed legislative package requesting that Virginia’s legislature to cede control of local statues and memorials to local governments. So many people on both sides of the issue attended the meeting that the county staff was forced to hand out tickets to keep the room from exceeding fire code limitations. Additional sheriff deputies were on hand to provide extra security during the heated meeting. “[I]n a series three separate votes, the chairwoman's attempts to not only ask the General Assembly for greater discretion over the monuments, but also to have the people of Loudoun County decide the fate of the statute by a referendum vote, and allow African Americans the ability to play a role in telling their own history, all failed.”34
“It was a 6-3 Republican board,” Randall recalls. “And I got voted down… Gary Higgins said, ‘I'm voting against this because I know what your real goal is. Your goal is to kick that Confederate statue down. So I'm voting against this for this reason.’...I remember it was one of those meetings where you have to take the vote and then keep going. So I remember kind of saying, ‘Well, the vote will fail 6 - 3. Now the next issue is…’ I've gotten really good at not emoting. And I remember going to the next issue.”35
She said, “I remember thinking I could feel Ralph Buona looking at me…and I didn't say anything else about it. I never said another word about it. But in my head, I thought, ‘I gotta get people on this board to come vote with me.’”36
A month before the failed vote, the Loudoun Times had asked twenty-eight elected officials in Loudoun County what should happen with the Confederate memorial. In that 2017 article, two Republicans and one Independent (all Town Council members must run as Independents according to Virginia law) stated that the statue should be left alone. In comparison, two other Republicans noted that the statute should remain but with context. A lone Republican, five Democrats, and two Independents said the statue should be removed. Thirteen elected officials refused to take a position: six Republicans, three Democrats, and four Independents.37
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Republican Geary Higgins expounded on his position: "In 2015, the Board of Supervisors voted to give $50,000 to support a slave memorial on the courthouse grounds that has yet to be proposed or built. This is important because, in 1860, 5,501 slaves lived in Loudoun County, 25% of Loudoun's 21,744 population. This is an important part of Loudoun's history that must be memorialized.
"The Confederate soldier statute should not stand alone on the courthouse grounds. In my view, it is only right that it should be joined by a memorial to Loudoun's slaves and a memorial to its Union soldiers. In 2015, we were talking about telling Loudoun's whole story. This is the correct approach."38
Patricia G. Davis, in Laying Claim: African American Cultural Memory and Southern Identity, argues, “In order for African Americans to build a sense of belonging to the South, they must position themselves as actors rather than as passive victims within the history that is at the core of both southern and black identities.”39 The addition of a memorial to those enslaved in Loudoun County, while acknowledging the past of human bondage, would nonetheless augment the established power dynamic materialized through the Confederate Memorial by casting in stone the subservient, victimized narrative of Black southernness.
Furthermore, as Davis states, “Once specific sets of memories are fixed upon a landscape, they become part of the official memory of the community, be it local, regional, or national. In this respect, race has had a significant impact on the spatial development of the South,... transforming its monuments, museums, and other aspects of its material culture into sacred artifacts serving the particular needs of white citizens.”40 While the inclusion of a memorial to the enslaved may pay homage to the suffering of Black people, there is also a counter-narrative that allows white viewers to see themselves as part of the group that freed the enslaved people, thus creating a space in which the appearance of Black memory is used as absolution for past wrongs.
In 2020, following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN, the Loudoun Times asked twenty-seven elected officials what should be done with the Confederate statue in front of the Leesburg Courthouse. Three years and one election later, the political makeup of Loudoun County had changed significantly. Whereas in 2017, the political break-down in the county was eleven Republicans, eight Democrats, and seven Independents, in 2020, it was five Republicans, seventeen Democrats, and six Independents. Among Republicans, one favored adding context, one wanted to leave the statue as it was, two remained silent on the issue, and one advocated to remove it. Sixteen Democrats supported the statue’s removal, along with four Independents. Only one Democrat and two Independents remained silent on the issue.41
Amid threats of violence against her, Randall once again proposed that the Board of Supervisors take official action to remove the statue. “I remember thinking,” she recalled. “Is this worth you getting dead for? Like, is this worth that? I mean, it's a statue. Is it worth you getting dead for? And somewhere along the way, I decided it was. Not that so much that hunk of metal, but what it represented…. It might be worth getting dead to get this thing down because of what it represented to us, to me.”42
When the vote came, Randall, a trained social worker with years of experience keeping her emotions in check, sobbed while taking the vote, which passed unanimously.
July 8, 2020 Loudoun Board of County Supervisors Meeting
"[I wanted the story to be, to be that it should have came down and why it came down. Not that it was violently torn down, but that it was an order. There was a vote around it. There was, there was intentionality around it. There was a reason around it. And it had to come down in order." ~Phyllis Randall43
The challenge of removing the statue continued. Exuberance over its potential removal drew crowds to the Courthouse Square, and several people climbed the figure in an attempt to pull it down. Randall found herself in the ironic position of protecting the object she had fought to remove. She knew that if a mob destroyed the statue, that would become the established narrative.44
She recalled, "I wanted the story to be that it should have come down and why it came down. Not that it was violently torn down, but that it was an order. There was a vote around it. There was intentionality around it. There was a reason around it."45
The second issue was finding a company willing to remove the statue. Although the county offered generous compensation for the job, companies refused to apply because it might put their employees at risk. Finally, a single company agreed to take the contract under three conditions: they would remove all identifying logos from their trucks and employees, they would only give three hours' notice before removing the statue, and if they perceived that the situation was unsafe, they would abandon the project. On July 21, the Assistant County Executive got the call that the crew was on its way.
Randall and a few other county officials met the removal company at the Courthouse Square. They were met by the members of the Loudoun Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who had agreed to take possession of the statue. Randall recalled, “They were praying. They were sobbing because they were taking it back. You would have thought that they were burying somebody.”46
She continued, “One of them had a good-sized dog, and she walked fairly close to me. And I remember thinking, what are we doing? I mean, have we really gone back to 1959?... I remember thinking, ‘Phyllis, you should step back because that's a dog, and he's growling.’ But I was rooted and was not going to move….I said, ‘Ma'am, what are you doing? What do you think you're doing?' And so she walks away with the dog.”
One moment stood out as Phyllis and a growing crowd watched the statue be dismantled and placed on a truck. “The thing I remember more than anything else that night is when they pulled the base of the statue up, all these roaches came out of the base of the statue. And I thought, How apropos is that? Poetic. All these roaches came out of the base of the statue…. I walked over and I looked. It was almost like this has been held up by roaches all this time.”
After the statue was removed and the crowd dispersed, Randall remained in the square for quite a while.
“It did feel surreal,” Randall recalled. “I felt my grandma, my great grandma, I felt history. I felt the call of history at the moment that that thing was coming down.”
Leesburg Confederate Statue Removal, Loudoun Times-Mirror
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1 Maya Angelou, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2010), 155.
2 Becky Hackney Fleming, “The Story of ‘Loundoun’s Silent Sentinel’ Unfolded,” Bulletin of the Loudoun County Historical Society, November 2009, 41, https://diversityandequalityfairsofvirginia.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/2008-sentinal.pdf.
3“They Lynched Craven,” Richmond Dispatch, August 1, 1902, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RD19020801.1.1&e=------190-en-20--21-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------; “Human Bloodhounds Feast on Their Prey,” The Times, August 1, 192AD, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=T19020801.1.1&srpos=21&e=------190-en-20--21-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
4 “Lynched by Citizens,” The Evening Star, July 31, 1902, 2, https://www.newspapers.com/image/145374348/.
5 Ida B. Wells-Barnett, The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader, ed. Mia Bay and Henry Louis Gates (New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 394–95.
6 “Caught on a Log Bridge,” Richmond Dispatch, July 25, 1902, 8, Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RD19020725.1.8&srpos=2&e=------190-en-20--1-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
7 “Bold Highwayman in Loudoun County,” The Times, July 25, 1902, 5, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=T19020725.1.5&srpos=1&e=------190-en-20--1-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
8 “Murder in Fairfax,” Richmond Dispatch, July 29, 1902, 6, Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RD19020729.1.6&srpos=7&e=------190-en-20--1-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------; “Two Counties Astir Over Farmer’s Death,” The Times, July 29, 1902, 1, Virginia Chronickle, Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=T19020729.1.1&srpos=6&e=------190-en-20--1-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
9 “Bloodhounds On Murderer’s Track,” The Times, July 30, 1902, 3, Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=T19020730.1.1&srpos=9&e=------190-en-20--1-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
11 “Hunting the Murderer,” Alexandria Gazette, July 30, 1902, 2, Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=AG19020730.1.2&srpos=12&e=------190-en-20--1-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
12“Branch’s Dog on Scene,” Roanoke Times, July 31, 1902, 1, Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=TRT19020731.1.1&srpos=18&e=------190-en-20--1-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
13“Human Bloodhounds Feast on Their Prey,” The Times, August 1, 1902, 1, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=T19020801.1.1&srpos=21&e=------190-en-20--21-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
14 “Strong Evidence Against Lynchers,” The Times, August 3, 1902, 21, Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=T19020801.1.1&srpos=21&e=------190-en-20--21-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
15“They Lynched Craven,” The Richmond Dispatch, August 1, 1902, 3, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RD19020801.1.1&e=------190-en-20--21-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
16“Probing Lynching,” Richmond Dispatch, August 2, 1902, 3, Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RD19020802.1.3&srpos=27&e=------190-en-20--21-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
18“Ten Men Are Named for Lynching Craven,” The Times, August 6, 1902, 1, Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=T19020806.1.1&srpos=36&e=------190-en-20--21-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
19 “The Judge Has Selected the Grand Jury,” Richmond Dispatch, August 9, 1902, 2, Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RD19020809.1.2&srpos=51&e=------190-en-20--41-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
20 “Charge To Grand Jury,” Roanoke Times, August 13, 1902, 2, Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=TRT19020813.1.2&srpos=60&e=------190-en-20--41-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
23“Declined to Honor Requisition,” Warren Sentinel, August 15, 1902, 1, Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=WST19020815.1.1&srpos=64&e=------190-en-20--61-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
24“Lyncher Wins Pity,” Richmond Dispatch, September 14, 1902, 13, Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RD19020914.1.1&srpos=78&e=------190-en-20--61-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
25“Lyncher Wins Pity,” The Richmond Dispatch, September 14, 1902, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RD19020914.1.1&srpos=78&e=------190-en-20--61-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
27“Bradley Cleared of Lynching Charge,” The Times, September 16, 1902, 10, Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=T19020916.1.10&srpos=81&e=------190-en-20--81-byDA-txt-txIN-%22Charles+Craven%22-------.
28Mary McLeod Bethune and Audrey T. MacCluskey, eds., Mary McLeod Bethune: Building a Better World; Essays and Selected Documents (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2001), 70.
29Tim Cresswell, Place: An Introduction, Second Edition (Malden, Mass: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 19.
30Sherrilyn A. Ifill, On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-First Century, Tenth-anniversary edition (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 2018), 65.
31Ifill, On the Courthouse Lawn, xii.
32Doreen Barbara Massey, Space, Place and Gender, Reprinted (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), 177.
33Karen L. Cox, No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2021), 105 digital; Bonnie Berkowitz and Adrian Blanco, “A Record Number of Confederate Monuments Fell in 2020, but Hundreds Still Stand. Here’s Where.,” The Washington Post, March 12, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/confederate-monuments/.
34Sydney Kashiwagi, “Supervisors Reject Request to Ask General Assembly for Greater Discretion over Confederate Statue,” Loudoun Times-Mirror, September 21, 2017, https://www.loudountimes.com/news/supervisors-reject-request-to-ask-general-assembly-for-greater-discretion-over-confederate-statue/article_7a10dbf4-ad95-5af8-92e5-54665c6c5999.html.
35Phyllis Randall, Interview with Phyllis Randall, interview by Kristina Nohe, November 19, 2023.
37Sydney Kashiwagi, “We Asked 28 Local Elected Officials about Leesburg’s Confederate Statue. Here’s What They Had to Say.,” Loudoun Times-Mirror, August 24, 2017, https://www.loudountimes.com/news/we-asked-28-local-elected-officials-about-leesburgs-confederate-statue-heres-what-they-had-to/article_70110990-3b04-5e47-86c0-7a04cd631f35.html.
39PATRICIA G. DAVIS, LAYING CLAIM: African American Cultural Memory and Southern Identity (Place of publication not identified: UNIV OF ALABAMA Press, 2021), 33 digital.
41Kashiwagi, “We Asked 28 Local Elected Officials about Leesburg’s Confederate Statue. Here’s What They Had to Say.”; Trevor Baratko, “We Asked 27 of Loudoun County’s Elected Officials Their Take on the Confederate Monument in Front of the County Courthouse. Here’s What They Had to Say.,” Loudoun Times-Mirror, June 12, 2020, https://www.loudountimes.com/news/we-asked-27-of-loudoun-countys-elected-officials-their-take-on-the-confederate-monument-in/article_59098146-ab52-11ea-ac61-678c05873813.html.
42Randall, Interview with Phyllis Randall.
44“Loudoun County’s First Black Chair Presides Over Vote To Remove Confederate Monument” (Washington, DC: WAMU 88.5, July 9, 2020), https://www.npr.org/local/305/2020/07/09/889361177/loudoun-county-s-first-black-chair-presides-over-vote-to-remove-confederate-monument.
45Randall, Interview with Phyllis Randall.
Kris Nohe