ALERT TOP STORY

March and rally led to changes both subtle and deep at UVa

Bryan McKenzie Aug 11, 2021



An estimated 200 white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched through the University of Virginia, including on the Lawn, on Aug. 11, 2017, in a prelude to the Unite the Right rally in downtown Charlottesville.

It was four years ago that some 200 tiki torch-toting, slogan-shouting white supremacists and neo-Nazis tore a page from the Nazi Nuremberg rallies of the 1930s and marched about the Grounds of the University of Virginia.

Along the Lawn and up and down the Rotunda steps, reciting anti-Semitic and racist chants, they marched. At the statue of Thomas Jefferson, they verbally and physically assaulted the students surrounding the statue, swinging their lit torches like shillelaghs and filling the air with pepper spray.

The march occurred on the eve of the Aug. 12, 2017, Unite the Right rally, and the symbolism and violence of both events shattered the sense of security at UVa and forced the university community to look inward. ... Condemnation came quick.

“It is fundamental to the moral fabric of any society to condemn beliefs and behavior that are so odious they threaten the very essence of that society. And so we do,” wrote then-UVa Rector Frank M. Conner III, in an Aug. 13, 2017, message to students, staff and faculty. “The actions of those who visited evil upon us are nothing short of white nationalist and white supremacist terrorism intended to intimidate our community. They will not succeed. We will not surrender.”

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